On 2 November 2020, GI-ESCR’s Executive Director, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, spoke in the UN Meeting for Civil Society in Financing for Development in the Era of COVID and Beyond. Convened by the UN Secretary General and Deputy Secretary General this meeting was an opportunity for civil society to share perspectives on development finance, the COVID-19 recovery and systemic solutions to fix the broken global economic architecture.

Magdalena spoke as part of the second dialogue of the meeting, which focused on how the UN can strengthen the fiscal and policy space for the socio-economic transformation of developing countries.

The austerity policies that have been implemented over the past four decades have led to the systemic under-funding and privatisation of public services essential to the realisation of human rights, which has in turn deepened poverty and exacerbated existing structural inequalities,

Magdalena Sepúlveda highlighted.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the repercussions of systematically weak investment in public services and social protection services. Research has revealed that the countries less equipped to deal with the pandemic have been those whose governments have invested less in public services and social protection measures.

Despite this, and its own warnings regarding deepening inequality, the International Monetary Fund alarmingly appears to be continuing on the same failed pathway: 84% of the loans it has negotiated since the pandemic was declared encourage, and in some cases require, countries in the global south to adopt more austerity measures.

Investment in public services must be central to the COVID-19 recovery. The IMF and other financial institutions must turn away from the mistakes of the past and adopt a policy plan that supports governments in ensuring the human rights of all and in tackling gender and economic inequalities,

Magdalena added.