WASHINGTON — Dozens of heads of state, top United Nations officials, and the heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund gathered virtually last week in the largest convening of its kind about the economic response to COVID-19. They discussed a number of proposals from an ongoing U.N. process and pushed the Group of 20 and other multilateral bodies to take further action.
“Failing to take action now is not a failure of generosity but an act of self-harm,” Mark Lowcock, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said at the High-Level Event on Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond, summing up the urgency expressed at the event.
This meeting was part of a process started by the U.N. in May to address funding the pandemic response. The process has focused on six key areas — external finance, remittances, jobs and inclusive growth; recovering better for sustainability; global liquidity and financial stability, debt vulnerability; private sector creditors engagement; and illicit financial flows — each of which had a discussion group working over the past few months to come up with a specific menu of options.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
