Financing for Development from Monterrey to Seville: A 25-Year Retrospective

The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Seville, Spain, from June 30 to July 3, 2025, builds on a quarter-century of global efforts to achieve a more peaceful, prosperous, and just world. It reflects on 25 years of international commitment to mobilizing the resources needed for sustainable development.

In 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, identifying development and poverty reduction as key priorities for the twenty-first century. They committed to a set of bold objectives—the Millennium Development Goals—and acknowledged the critical challenge developing countries face in mobilizing adequate financial resources. In response, they called for a high-level conference to address this issue, laying the foundation for the Financing for Development (FfD) process.

FfD encompasses both public and private resources, from domestic and international sources, aimed at helping countries meet their development goals. What has been accomplished since that first conference? What are some FfD trends? What did Seville achieve? This publication offers a retrospective overview of the major milestones, emerging trends, and ongoing challenges in the global FfD agenda.

First International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, 2002

In the resulting Monterrey Consensus, leaders acknowledged that there was an imperative need to mobilize and increase the effective use of financial resources to eliminate poverty, improve social conditions and raise living standards, and protect our environment. Five specific areas were highlighted:

• Mobilizing domestic financial resources for development.
• Mobilizing private international capital flows for development
• Increasing donor-financed international financial and technical cooperation for development (foreign assistance)
• Relying on sustainable debt financing to mobilize resources for public and private investment
• Addressing systemic issues to enhance the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial, and trading systems in support of development

Participants at Monterrey called for “a follow-up international conference to review the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus.”

Second International Conference on Financing for Development in Doha, Qatar, 2008

Participants at Doha adopted the Doha Declaration on FfD, in which they endorsed an expanded list of measures:

• Mobilizing domestic financial resources for development
• Mobilizing foreign direct investment and other private flows as key international resources for development
• Recognizing international trade as an engine for development
• Increasing international financial and technical cooperation for development (foreign assistance)
• Providing relief from the debt of developing countries
• Enhancing the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial, and trading systems in support of development

Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2015

In 2015, the United Nations replaced the eight Millennium Development Goals with a more ambitious set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), accompanied by 169 targets in a 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In the lead-up to adopting this new framework, the Third Conference on Financing for Development took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That event produced a new post-2015 global framework for financing development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and identified priority areas for attention in the global framework. These included public services, hunger and malnutrition, infrastructure, sustainable industrialization, employment, protection of ecosystems, and promoting peaceful and inclusive societies.

Although the document did not specify total funding requirements, leaders acknowledged a substantial gap in financing needed to achieve development goals. For instance, estimates for basic infrastructure alone place the annual shortfall between $1.0 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Beyond foreign aid and domestic resources, a key recognition was the role that private finance can play in meeting these goals. The mantra “billions to trillions” called on donors to use the billions of foreign assistance to catalyze trillions in private finance. Even if donor countries met the target of allocating 0.7 percent of their GDP to foreign aid, the total would amount to just over $420 billion—still insufficient to meet global development needs.

In this thoughtful way, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda elicited commitments by participants to respond to the enormous challenges of FfD in the context of the emerging 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, it provided for an annual Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development follow-up and also encouraged the UN secretary general to establish an interagency task force to report annually on progress. The new task force, the Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development, has published annual monitoring reports from 2016 through 2024 and also produced a series of policy briefs to inform the Fourth Conference on Financing for Development in Seville in 2025.

Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, Spain 2025

In a time of progress, reversal, and uncertainty, the issues of financing for development were taken up at the recent conference in Seville, Spain. The FfD agenda was discussed there against the backdrop of a challenging global landscape, as countries emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, facing rising debt levels, ongoing conflicts, heightened geopolitical tensions, and growing macroeconomic risks. In addition, many donors had decided to reduce their assistance budgets, and the United States, which had been a founder and leader throughout the history of international development cooperation, had all but eliminated its foreign assistance program and did not even attend the Seville conference.

Nevertheless, the assembled heads of state and government and high representatives undertook in Seville to fashion “a renewed global financing for development framework.” Their commitments, recommendations, and observations covered some 42 pages of text. The Conference outcome document (the Seville Commitment) launches a Seville Platform for Action, which includes over 130 initiatives to turn the pledges into real-world results.

Key issues addressed in the Seville Commitment included:

• Domestic Public Resources: Participants committed to strengthening transparency and accountability in fiscal systems, including taxes, budgets, audits, and management. They emphasized sustainable development in national plans, targeting tax evasion, gender responsiveness, environmental considerations, and social protection. Commitments also included institutional and technological capacity building, stronger subnational systems, and efforts to curb illicit financial flows and corruption. Notably, participants committed to helping developing countries raise their capacity to collect taxes to 15 percent of GDP.
• Business and Finance (Domestic and International): Participants pledged to foster investment environments for sustainable development, including stronger domestic capital and financial markets and improved access to financing and remittances. They supported foreign direct investment; blended finance; entrepreneurship; micro, small, and medium enterprise formalization; women’s workforce participation; and better business regulation.
• Development Cooperation: Participants highlighted declining development assistance amid growing global needs, especially for vulnerable and conflict-affected countries. They urged increased aid aligned with recipient countries’ priorities and supported South-South and triangular cooperation. Emphasis was placed on using and strengthening national systems, building resilience, and enhancing local capacity.
• International Trade: Concern was expressed over threats to the multilateral trading system, including noncompliant tariffs. They called for fair, inclusive trade rules and greater developing country capacity in value-added sectors like critical minerals. Support for regional trade, dispute resolution, and fair competition was also emphasized.
• Debt and Sustainability: Debt crises were identified as major development obstacles. A call was made for fair, transparent debt architecture and responsible lending practices. Proposals included a UN-led working group on sovereign borrowing guidelines, better debt databases, increased local currency lending, and anti-corruption measures.
• International Financial Architecture: Participants reiterated the need to reform global economic governance and enhance the United Nations’ role. They proposed greater developing country representation in financial institutions, credit rating reform, improved cross-border payments infrastructure, and expanded capacity-building.
• Science, Technology, and Innovation: Acknowledging disparities in access, they called for affordable technologies, national innovation strategies, and better digital market regulation. They supported technology transfer, vocational training, academic exchanges, and digital solutions to help bridge development gaps.
• Data and Monitoring: They emphasized the need for timely, disaggregated data to drive sustainable development. Commitments included boosting financial support for data systems in developing countries, improving data interoperability, and involving all stakeholders in monitoring frameworks.

Regarding follow-up, they called on the Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development to continue to report annually on progress in implementing the financing for development outcomes. In closing, they pledged to implement the Seville Commitment and to consider, by 2029, the need to hold a follow-up conference on financing for development.

Trends in Financing for Development

Over the past 25 years—from the adoption of the Millennium Declaration in 2000 to the Seville Conference in 2025—financing for development has undergone significant evolution:

• Foreign aid, or official development assistance (ODA), experienced a substantial increase from about $80 billion provided by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) donors in 2000 to more than $220 billion in 2023. In 2024, donor countries had disbursed 0.37 percent of their GDP in foreign aid. However, since 2024, there has been a sharp decline of about $13 billion in total volume and this decline seems certain to accelerate in 2025 in light of decisions announced by several key donors to reduce their assistance budgets in order to meet other priorities such as defense spending (e.g., Germany, Italy, and France). Especially significant is the decision by the United States, historically the largest national donor, to terminate most of its existing foreign assistance programs. One informed estimate has indicated that the year-on-year reduction in global development assistance may be on the order of $40–60 billion. Devex estimates that there has been a 17 percent decline in ODA in 2025.
• Even while foreign aid was growing in annual amounts, it was declining as a share of the total resources available to developing countries. Domestic resource mobilization through improved taxation and other measures, remittances from nationals working abroad, private domestic and international investment, trade, and private philanthropy have all grown over the years, eclipsing in volume the contribution of ODA. While data are not systematically collected on these sources, available reporting indicates that, combined, they were annually exceeding $5 trillion 10 years ago and have continued to increase.
• Gains in domestic resource mobilization by developing countries have often been offset by illicit financial flows out of those same countries. The Addis Ababa conference recognized this challenge, and the SDGs included a target of significantly reducing illicit financial flows by 2030 (target 16.4). As discussed in a report by the UN secretary general, there has been some progress in addressing this persistent negative factor in domestic resource mobilization.
• Even in the face of the current decline in foreign aid, the trend toward diversification of development finance has continued. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) has just launched (at Seville) a new initiative to increase the prices of three unhealthy products—tobacco, alcohol, and sugary drinks—by at least 50 percent by 2035 through tax increases. WHO anticipates that this 3 by 35 Initiative will mobilize an additional $1 trillion in public revenue globally over the next decade. Innovative tools such as green bonds, debt indexation, and diaspora investment are tools that need to be scaled.
• Private finance has not been mobilized at the rates initially anticipated. The OECD has estimated that in 2023, foreign aid only mobilized $70 billion in private finance. This is not the “billions to trillions” originally envisaged during the 2015 Addis Ababa conference. In this context, Seville has once again highlighted the need to enhance tools such as blended finance, risk mitigation (including guarantees and insurance), and local currency financing.

Conclusion

Over the 23-year cycle of the four international conferences on financing for development, there has been a maturing of the structure for identifying and addressing key issues and challenges and framing recommendations for addressing them. It has been observed that there is a lot of similarity in the various conference declarations. However, the thoughtful analysis that went into the detailed commitments and recommendations set out in the Seville Commitment is unprecedented. From initial reports, the abandonment by the United States of its traditional leadership role in international development cooperation (and its absence from the conference) was viewed with deep concern by the 15,000 delegates present in Seville. The substantial cuts in ODA budgets by other donors further cast a shadow of concern and uncertainty over the deliberations.

At the same time, there was a recognition that the development issues and the challenges will remain, and it is now up to the international community to address them seriously, even in the absence of the United States and the broad negative trend in foreign assistance as a principal instrument in development cooperation. Seville reflects a recognition that responding to development challenges will have to proceed with less reliance on official development assistance. In fact, the gap between financing needs and available resources appears to be growing, now estimated at $5 trillion annually.

There is reason to expect that the work of translating the Seville Commitment into concrete results will move ahead in a more complex and less aid-centered environment for international cooperation. The return of the United States to a leadership role in the process and some restoration of donor financing will be welcome, but their absence in the meantime will only heighten the sense of a need for stronger and more diverse efforts than ever before to put the results of the outcome document into practical reality.

James Michel is a senior adviser (non-resident) with the Project on Prosperity and Development at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.