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UNU-WIDER contributes to global efforts towards reforming the international financial architecture

UNU-WIDER is implementing a new project seeking to contribute to global efforts toward reforming the international financial architecture (IFA). This project will lead UNU-WIDER to organize and participate in a range of activities in 2024 and 2025, bringing together academics, policymakers, and the private sector to discuss how to foster a fairer, more equitable global financial system that supports the economic needs and ambitions of Global South countries. 

UNU-WIDER Deputy Director Patricia Justino will attend the Summit of the Future in New York in September 2024, where she will join a side event co-organized by UNU Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), and Global Citizen Now. The event will take stock of the progress made in establishing new international financial governance models to deliver more sustainable funding for public goods. 

UNU-WIDER will also organize a symposium in March 2025 to discuss practical and politically feasible set of solutions that can make the global financial and governance arrangements a level playing field for all developing countries, and in particular, the least developed countries. 

UNU-WIDER and the reform of the international financial system

UNU-WIDER has contributed to the UNU-CPR report ‘The Demand for a Fair International Financial Architecture’. The paper details a series of key outcomes that the Global South seeks from the reform. These outcomes will guide the efforts of the UNU-WIDER's project as it focuses on the public debt crisis, multilateral development bank and International Monetary Fund reforms, and domestic revenue mobilization. 

The IFA refers to the global framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic practices that together govern international financial relations and global economic governance. This architecture, which includes the rules and institutions that facilitate in investment, revenue mobilization, and financial flows, has been increasingly criticized for not evolving in line with the economic realities of the Global South, resulting in persistent inequalities and restricted economic growth in these regions.