Gallagher Publishes OpEd on Importance of Multilateralism

Kevin Gallagher, Director of the Global Development Policy (GDP) Center and Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, co-wrote a recent Op-Ed on the importance of multilateralism for the world’s least developed countries.

Gallagher’s Op-Ed, entitled “For the Least Developed Countries, Revitalising Multilateralism is Life or Death,” was co-written with Daniel Gay and published by the United Nations on August 29, 2019.

From the text of the article:

Few would deny that the international system governing the environment and economy is under pressure. Globalisation itself is wobbling, to the chagrin of governments in rich and emerging economies. What’s less talked about is the effect on the world’s 47 least developed countries (LDCs), home to a billion people, a quarter of whom live in extreme poverty.

The financial system has long been rusty. Criticism was again this year leveled at the selection process for the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Developing-country voices called for an open and transparent process based on a pool of candidates drawn from all countries, rather than only from the United States and Europe. Leadership by the world’s marginalised nations would give them voice, reorientating the Bank and Fund toward their own needs.

Donors aren’t as generous as they used to be  — with worse to come after it recently emerged the United States might chop $4 billion from its aid budget. Development aid to LDCs has stagnated in recent years as some rich countries reallocate or cut aid. The latest figures show that support from official donors to all countries fell to US$146.6 billion in 2017 as donors spent less on in-country refugee costs. Only five out of 30 countries from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee currently meet their pledges on aid, down from a peak of six.

Recent moves to redefine and repackage development assistance as a joint public-private endeavour have been criticized in some quarters as attempts by official government donors to escape their obligations. Per the deal, the private money mobilised in LDCs is only a third of the global average. Only eight per cent of blended finance goes to LDCs, with most going to middle-income countries. Of the $52 billion directly mobilized by multilateral development banks in long-term private co-financing during 2017, only $2 billion went to LDCs and other low-income countries.

 

Gallagher serves on the United Nations’ Committee for Development Policy and co-chairs the T-20 Task Force on International Financial Architecture at the G-20. He previously served on the investment sub-committee of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy at the US Department of State and on the National Advisory Committee at the Environmental Protection Agency.   Gallagher has been a visiting or adjunct professor at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico; Tsinghua University in China, and the Center for State and Society in Argentina. Follow him on Twitter @KevinPGallagher.

 

View all posts