Authors: Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Isabel Ortiz
The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) will bring world leaders together to forge a new international consensus on how to finance a better future for all. Yet, in practice, the first drafts of its outcome reveal a glaring omission: people. Despite rhetoric about inclusivity, the drafts are strikingly weak on social issues, as if financing and macroeconomic policies exist in a vacuum, detached from the lives they impact.
This is not just an oversight—it’s a continuation of a decades-long mistake in economic policymaking, where abstract macroeconomic principles have been always prioritized over human welfare, inflicting suffering on billions. “Must we starve our children to pay our debts?” asked Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania, in the 1980s. Today, 3.3. billion people live in countries that spend more on debt service than health and education, and 6.7 billion endure austerity cuts. For too long, neoliberal economic policies have treated people as an afterthought.
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