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UN Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres urges debt, financial reforms and an end to wars to close $4 trillion SDG financing gap
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Summary
At a financing‑for‑development forum, UN Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres outlined three priorities—mobilizing finance, restructuring sovereign borrowing, and reforming global financial institutions—and warned the conflict in the Middle East and rising military spending are worsening a shortfall he placed at more than $4 trillion annually to meet the SDGs.
United Nations Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to rapidly scale up finance for development, overhaul sovereign debt practices and reform international financial institutions, saying current geopolitical shocks and rising military spending are worsening a shortfall he placed at more than $4 trillion a year to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Speaking at a forum convened after the Sevilla commitment, Guterres framed the meeting as “the first major gathering on financing for development since member states adopted the Sevilla commitment,” and said the world faces “a moment of profound turbulence” marked by deepening geopolitical divides and the spillover effects of the conflict in the Middle East.
Guterres said those shocks are driving up the cost of fuel, fertilizer and food and pressuring government finances, and he warned that aid is declining while “military spending skyrockets.” He stated, “The financing gap to achieve the sustainable development goals now stands at over 4,000,000,000,000 US dollars annually.”
He outlined three broad areas of focus to close that gap. First, he called for efforts “to rev up the machinery of finance,” including increasing the leverage of multilateral development banks, advancing blended finance platforms to combine public and private finance, mobilizing domestic resources and tackling illicit financial flows. He also urged governments to reverse the upward trend in military spending, saying, “It's time to stop this madness.”
Second, Guterres said borrowing must work for, not against, developing countries. He highlighted the Sevilla commitment’s debt measures, noted a borrowers' platform launched the previous week to give developing countries a stronger voice, and called for principles for responsible sovereign borrowing and lending along with effective mechanisms for debt relief.
Third, he urged reform of the international financial architecture, arguing that institutions designed decades ago still reflect “the economic and power structures of the past,” and recommending more inclusive governance and a rethinking of credit rating agencies that he said often exclude developing countries from borrowing tools.
Throughout his remarks Guterres stressed that financing for development is ultimately about people—access to food, education, health systems, infrastructure and social protection—and he urged states to translate recent diplomatic commitments into “concrete progress for people and countries that need it most.”
Guterres closed by thanking delegates. The moderator thanked the Secretary‑General and moved the agenda to the next item.
