A Crucial Moment for Global Development

To navigate the evolving, multiple crises worldwide and rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the quality and impact of international development cooperation must be significantly enhanced. Nearly 600 million people face extreme poverty by 2030, with developing countries grappling with annual SDG financing gaps of up to $4 trillion.

Over the past decade, the international development cooperation landscape has expanded with new actors and approaches, offering fresh opportunities for collaboration and impact. However, this evolving complexity challenges efforts at coordination and efficiency to ensure resource are effectively aligned with countries’ long-term sustainable development priorities.

The outcome of this milestone meeting will shape policy actions throughout 2025, including at the ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development, the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) and the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

Core Objectives of the 2025 DCF

• Sharpen understanding of what international development cooperation must deliver in a world with rapidly evolving needs, priorities and vulnerabilities
• Promote better alignment between international development cooperation with nationally identified sustainable development needs and objectives
• Update and strengthen, through universal participation, the principles for effective, high quality and high impact international development
• Generate concrete recommendations for action at country, regional and global levels to create a more coherent and responsive development cooperation system