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A Public Future: A Global Call to Transform the Financial Architecture and Reclaim Public Services
On 23 June, the occasion of Public Services Day, we joined a collective statement calling to transform the financial architecture and reclaim public services, ahead of the 4th UN Financing for Development Conference.
With less than one-fifth of the Sustainable Development Goals on track for 2030, one of the main drivers of failure is the chronic and systemic underfunding of public services worldwide. In three-quarters of lower-income countries, debt servicing now exceeds public health spending; half spend more repaying wealthy creditors than they do on education. Unfair global tax and trade rules continue to drain much-needed resources from the Global South. Meanwhile, the IMF persists in imposing austerity, cutting public service budgets, and deepening poverty and inequality.
This year, UN Public Services Day comes just one week before the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), which will take place in Seville. We joined hundreds of civil society organisations calling for bold, systemic transformation of the global financial architecture that continues to impoverish nations and weaken human rights protections. With 54 countries facing new debt crises, a UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt is urgently needed, alongside new global agreements on responsible lending and borrowing, and a shift of power away from the IMF towards a genuinely representative UN body.
The climate crisis adds even greater urgency to this call for reform. Debt and climate vulnerability are deeply intertwined: indebted countries are often forced into environmentally destructive extractive industries to generate hard currency, while the most climate-vulnerable nations are charged higher interest rates, exacerbating debt crises. The Global North owes a historic climate debt to the Global South for having appropriated the atmospheric commons and triggering today’s climate emergency. That debt must be addressed through climate finance delivered as grants, not further loans, to enable just, equitable transitions anchored in publicly funded systems.
At the core of these global challenges lies fiscal injustice. Current global tax rules—dominated for decades by the OECD—have allowed corporations and the ultra-wealthy to avoid taxes while stripping public budgets of vital resources. The recent UN General Assembly decision to develop a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation represents a historic opportunity to build a more transparent, equitable, and accountable global tax governance system. We firmly support this process and urge the FfD4 conference to strengthen, not undermine, this breakthrough.
As aid budgets are slashed and military spending rises across wealthy nations, it is increasingly clear that the private sector cannot and will not fill these gaps. The failed “billions to trillions” approach has been discredited even by the World Bank. What is needed now is strong public regulation of private actors, and accountable states that lead in financing and delivering quality public services. This demand echoes the voices of more than one thousand representatives from over 100 countries who gathered in Santiago in 2022 under the banner of “Our Future is Public.”
On this UN Public Services Day, we reaffirm our commitment to public services as the foundation of human rights, social justice, and democratic governance. The FfD4 summit must mark a turning point, committing to a new global compact where people and planet are prioritised over profit, and where universal public services and social protection are fully and sustainably financed, leaving no one behind.
You can read the full statement here.
