40 former Heads of State and Government are calling for “a new economic coalition of the willing” to urgently tackle inequality and “remake our world in response” to “era-defining disruption”. In a joint letter released ahead of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, they call for a restoration of development aid, comprehensive debt relief, international tax cooperation, and ambitious reform of the world’s “outdated” economic model.
The leaders include former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado, former Prime Minister of Senegal Aminata Touré, former Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin and Nobel Peace Prize winners José Ramos-Horta, the current President of Timor-Leste and Óscar Arias, former President of Costa Rica.
Rebuking the choice of “narrow unilateralism above all else”, the leaders criticize the way “any sense of a rules-based order is violently displaced by a power-based one.” In the letter organized by Club de Madrid, the world's largest forum of democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers, they warn the world is facing a “crisis in multilateral cooperation” that is compounding poverty, inequality, and environmental breakdown at a time when “trillionaires could emerge this decade, while near half of humanity lives in poverty”.
However, “a powerful shift is possible”, leaders say. “Trillions of dollars exist for financing development – but too much public money is captured by private power.” They call for “inequality-busting financing”, including effective tax cooperation on high-net-worth-individuals and on the profits of multinationals wherever they operate, alongside “coordinated Jubilee debt relief” and financial architecture reform to prevent the recurrence of unsustainable debts.
“Today’s economic system, shaped in 1944 in Bretton Woods by wealthy nations at a time when colonialism still defined much of the world, is outdated,” leaders say. Arguing that “global entities are not sacrosanct”, they urge the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to promote sustainable development “rather than prescribing shackling austerity that undermines it”. They call on governments to pursue new trade cooperation which raise labor and environmental standards and reforms intellectual property rules to prevent a repeat of the deadly vaccine inequity of COVID-19.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain 2004-2011: “To govern is to choose—and today’s leaders face a clear choice. Either we are overwhelmed by crisis, or we rise to meet the challenge of soaring inequality. There is no escaping the fact that this means confronting the rise of this inequality which undermines societies, whole regions of the world, and democracy itself. This week in Seville, we are seeing nations come together to pursue global solidarity, rather than aggressive unilateralism. But good intentions aren’t enough. What’s needed now is action— and a real commitment to building an economy that delivers for working people wherever they may live.”
The leaders highlight the Financing for Development Conference and the upcoming G20 in South Africa and COP30 in Brazil as critical opportunities to embed this new agenda. “Working together is not only a moral imperative—it is a shared interest for what is now a more multipolar world,” the leaders write. “You will find support from us and from people in every country.”
Aminata Touré, Prime Minister of Senegal 2013-2014: “People across the Global South are having to pay for crises they did not cause. Clearly, the old institutions that were meant to serve the interests of humanity are broken. But also, people of the Global South are demanding alternatives – from tax efforts at the UN to debt reform. Now more than ever, governments need to band together to combat inequality – it's in our collective interest.“
The letter was organized by Club de Madrid, with support from Oxfam International and the People’s Medicines Alliance.
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The Club de Madrid letter of former Heads of State and Government can be found here.