Fighting Inequality to Finance Sustainable Development

February 13, 1:15-2:45 PM | UN Headquarters

As the SDG financing gap is widening, trust in multilateralism is eroding, and inequality has created a development crisis with billions of people left behind. At the same time, 1% of the global population controls over 95% of global wealth. This extreme inequality threatens social cohesion and democracy, making reforms to the international financial architecture a critical priority. Wealth concentration directly impacts many of the challenges that will be addressed at the UN this year, in particular at FfD4, WSSD, COP30 and the negotiations on the UN Tax Convention. All of these frameworks provide an opportunity for a more systematic approach to tackling inequality.

To advance this discussion, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), in partnership with Oxfam International and NYU’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC) Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, hosted a dialogue featuring keynote remarks by renowned global expert on inequality, Professor Ingrid Robeyns, author of “Limitarianism: The Case against Extreme Wealth”, followed by observations from UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy Guy Ryder. The event offered new perspectives on inequality and proposed ways for the UN to strengthen global norms, framing extreme inequality as incompatible with basic fairness and therefore with the creation of an enabling environment for international cooperation and human development.