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Leaving No One Behind: G20 Development Ministerial Declaration for Reducing Inequalities
Rio de Janeiro, July 23, 2024
[PDF – English] [PDF – Portuguese]
We, the G20 Ministers responsible for Development, convened in Rio de Janeiro, on July 22-23, 2024 hosted by Brazil's Minister of Foreign Affairs and attended by the Ministers responsible for Development of the G20 members, invited countries and partner international organizations, to address the urgent need to reduce inequalities within and among countries and to realize opportunities for all people, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.
2. Acknowledging the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the integrated, universal, and indivisible nature of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we recognize that inequality within and among countries is at the root of most challenges addressed by the 2030 Agenda or makes them harder to solve. We reaffirm our strong commitment to accelerating the full and effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda including by specifically addressing the drivers of inequality and prioritizing its reduction (SDG 10) in all its forms and dimensions by leaving no one behind and endeavoring to reach the furthest behind first. We commit to putting sustainable development at the center of the international cooperation agenda.
3. We reiterate that unparalleled multidimensional crises and challenges are impacting people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership and have stalled or reversed years of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Inequality amplifies the negative and unequal impacts of shocks with potentially long-term consequences. We note with alarm the first increase in extreme poverty and inequality in more than two decades. Approximately 712 million people were living in extreme poverty in 2022, 23 million more than in 2019, with higher rates affecting the poorest countries, and children disproportionately affected, being twice as likely as adults to be living in extreme poverty[1]. We reaffirm that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and indispensable requirement for sustainable development. To promote sustainable development, it is critical to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development (SDG 17).
4. In this context, challenges and crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification and land degradation, environmental degradation and pollution, the learning crisis, economic slowdown, rising debt vulnerability, growing poverty and inequality including gender inequality, food insecurity and malnutrition, stalling progress on access to health services, energy poverty and insecurity, volatility in energy markets, global supply chain disruptions, disasters and conflicts, disproportionately affect persons living in poverty and in vulnerable situations and in developing countries, limiting their resources and capacity to achieve the SDGs and global development, environment and climate goals. All people, irrespective of gender, age, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, geographic location and other status, including persons in vulnerable situations, persons with disabilities, migrants, children and youth, people affected by disaster or conflict, refugees, persons experiencing or at risk of homelessness, local communities as well as Indigenous Peoples, should have access to essential services to meet their basic needs, decent work and other social and economic opportunities that ensure their full, equal, effective and meaningful participation in society.
5. Committed to leaving no one behind, we are striving to promote the social, economic, and political inclusion and empowerment of all, to ensure equal opportunity, and to reduce inequalities, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies, and action in this regard. We commit to accelerating progress toward fully and effectively implementing the 2030 Agenda and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including through recognizing the role of local and regional governments, and other local actors, in a whole-of-society approach. This is in line with the ambitious commitments from the 2016 G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the G20 2023 Action Plan on Accelerating Progress on the SDGs, and other past G20 commitments and achievements, especially those focused on development, as well as having also regard to the UNGA SDG Summit Political Declaration, and the UN Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions. We recognize the importance of embracing sustainable consumption and production and mainstreaming Lifestyles for Sustainable Development (LiFE).
6. We recognize the importance of policies that promote equal opportunities, empower persons in vulnerable situations, support productivity, and reduce income inequalities. They are crucial for human well-being and promoting strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive economic growth for all countries, full and productive employment, and decent work for all. We reaffirm our commitment to help developing countries better integrate into the global industrial, value and supply chains and accelerate their industrialization and modernization process. We recognize that human capital development is essential to tackling poverty and inequality. We note that persistently high inequality is often associated with lower, less durable economic growth and greater financial instability. Continued inequalities, including in the rural-urban continuum, undermine the potential for development as those in vulnerable situations do not have opportunities to learn and develop their skills and productive capabilities. Inequalities also have an inter-generational impact, as the unequal social mobility, opportunities and outcomes of a generation directly influence those of the next.
7. We reaffirm our shared objective to reduce income inequality and to benefit the bottom 40% of the income distribution, in line with the target SDG 10.1, which is an important transformation pursued by the 2030 Agenda. We intend to pursue this objective through a comprehensive set of actions, including the promotion of strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth; productive employment and innovation supported by adequate skills and transfer of technology on voluntary and mutually agreed terms; skill development and capacity building; fair, progressive and efficient tax systems; redistributive policies and risk management; and the provision of quality public services, with a focus on those left behind, taking into account inter-generation impact. We welcome the reconvening of the G20 Employment Working Group's Sub-group on Labor Income Share and Inequalities under the Brazilian Presidency this year.
8. We recognize universal social protection, including adaptive social protection, is a critical tool for reducing inequalities, mitigating and managing risks, and increasing resilience. We acknowledge the importance of strengthening and expanding coverage of national social protection systems and programs, and of increasing the adequacy and shock-responsiveness of programs across the formal and informal economy in response to an increase in emergent global challenges and shocks, including disasters and the adverse effects of climate change.
9. In this context, as G20 cooperation holds a strategic position and has the potential to accelerate SDGs progress, we resolve to act in collective and concrete ways to tackle inequality within and among countries, particularly in the rural-urban continuum. We reaffirm the importance of ensuring inclusive, equitable, and quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all due to its crucial role in supporting sustainable human development and transformations and in breaking intergenerational transmission of inequalities. Likewise, it is central to improving essential health services to better than pre-pandemic levels, ideally within the next 1-2 years, and to strengthening health systems, especially at the primary health care level, to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. We recognize the importance of facilitating the development, timely distribution and equitable access to safe, effective, quality-assured and affordable vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics and other health products and medical countermeasures as well as the potential role of evidence-based Traditional and Complementary Medicine. To accelerate strong, sustainable, balanced, and inclusive growth, while leaving no one behind, we also remain committed to an inclusive, fair, and sustainable approach that leads to greater social justice, equity, and gender equality and empowerment of women in line with SDG 5, and to decent work, and social protection for all, including adaptive social protection.
10. Recognizing the importance of promoting gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls, in line with SDG 5, we welcome the creation of the Empowerment of Women Working Group under the G20 Indian presidency and the progress of the group's activities during the G20 Brazilian presidency. We encourage women-led development and remain committed to enhancing women's full, equal, and meaningful participation as decision-makers for addressing global challenges inclusively and in contributing as active participants in all spheres of society, across all sectors and at all levels of the economy, which is not only crucial for achieving gender equality but also for contributing to global GDP growth. In this regard, we underline the need to promote collective concrete and transformative actions on gender equality and empowerment of women, including through investment in the care economy and promotion of women-owned MSMEs. We reaffirm the commitment to eliminate gender stereotypes and biases, change norms, attitudes and behaviors that perpetuate gender inequality and undermine the empowerment of women, and eliminate gender-based violence including sexual violence. To this end, we commit to enhancing their full, equal and effective participation as decision-makers. We also reaffirm that gender equality is a cross-cutting issue of fundamental importance and that investing in the empowerment of all women and girls has a multiplier effect in the 2030 Agenda. We recognize that women's rights organizations and grassroots initiatives play a crucial role in advocating for and advancing policies, laws and institutions that ensure gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls for sustainable development, taking into account different national contexts and circumstances. We commit to reducing global maternal mortality and to advancing universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including for family planning, information and education and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programs.
11. We affirm that policies to reduce inequalities are essential to ending hunger and structural poverty. Unprecedented global challenges call for greater commitment, financing, and coordinated, swift and tangible actions at all levels, but existing efforts do not seem to be sufficient to achieve the goals of zero hunger and poverty eradication under the current global challenges. We, therefore, look forward to the launch of a Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty to support and accelerate efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty (SDGs 1 and 2) while reducing inequalities (SDG 10), contributing to revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development (SDG 17) and to the achievement of other interlinked SDGs, and championing sustainable, inclusive and just transition pathways. We commit to enhancing global food security and nutrition for all in line with the Matera Declaration on Food Security, Nutrition and Food Systems 2021 and G20 Deccan High-Level Principles on Food Security and Nutrition 2023.
12. We highlight the importance of politically prioritizing efforts to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, as an important part of the overall effort needed to reduce inequality in all its dimensions. To this end, we have agreed on the G20 Call to Action on Strengthening Drinking Water and Sanitation and Hygiene Services during the Brazilian presidency. We, therefore, support the promotion of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) systems that are inclusive, integrated, sustainable, and gender-responsive to build resilience to the impacts of biodiversity loss, climate change, environmental degradation, water-borne diseases, disasters, and pollution, in order to achieve better health, education and socio-economic development outcomes. We also emphasize the importance of specific policies for persons living in vulnerable situations, and responding to all forms of discrimination, especially when considering persons with disabilities. We recognize that the lack of access to services, products and education about menstrual health and hygiene for women and girls, impacts their education, health, safety, and human development. We recognize the challenges facing financing for resilient and sustainable WASH systems and call for the mobilization of resources to address this challenge.
13. We reaffirm that a more inclusive and reinvigorated multilateralism and reform aimed at implementing the 2030 agenda is essential. We reiterate our commitment to ensure enhanced representation and voice for developing countries in decision-making in global international economic and financial institutions in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable and legitimate institutions. We look forward to the ongoing discussions by Finance Ministers to deliver better, bigger and more effective Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) by enhancing operating models, improving responsiveness and accessibility, and substantially increasing financing capacity to maximize development impact in developing countries, in particular, the poorest and most vulnerable while acknowledging the substantial progress made to date as part of the MDB evolution agenda. We also call for a successful International Development Association (IDA) 21 replenishment in 2024 to support fighting poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
14. We reaffirm that a rules-based, non-discriminatory, fair, open, inclusive, equitable, sustainable and transparent multilateral trading system, with the WTO as its core, is indispensable to facilitate the integration of developing countries in the global economy and advance growth, innovation, job creation and sustainable development.
15. Mobilization of affordable, adequate and accessible financing from all sources and implementation of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) remain major challenges for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and progress has not been shared evenly within and among countries, further deepening existing inequalities. We call on all partners to mobilize affordable, adequate and accessible development finance from all sources, including domestic and international, public and private, including the use of innovative financing mechanisms such as blended finance, de-risking instruments and other sustainability-related financial instruments in a timely manner. We reaffirm our commitment towards the mobilization of affordable, adequate and accessible financing from all sources to support developing countries in their domestic efforts to address bottlenecks for implementation of the 2030 Agenda and AAAA. We also stress the importance of fair, progressive and efficient tax systems, taking into account national circumstances, to enhance domestic resource mobilization for combating poverty and inequality. We call upon developed countries to fully deliver on their respective ODA commitments that complement and encourage development financing from all other sources, including public and private, domestic and international, in a timely manner, and contribute to addressing the financing needs of developing countries. G20 reaffirms the importance of promoting development finance, respecting the applicable finance-related principles while noting the importance of transparency and mutual accountability. In this regard, we look forward to the Summit of the Future in September 2024 and the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, Spain, in July 2025.
16. We also support the role of international development cooperation in tackling inequality. We recognize the need to build capacity in developing countries at the community level, and in local and regional institutions and authorities, to strengthen local capabilities, institutions, expertise, and human resources, where appropriate and including education at all levels. This should contribute to national development priorities, be at the request of developing countries, and recognize the importance of localization of SDGs, taking into account national circumstances. We also stress the role of promoting demand-driven and country-owned development cooperation models that are scalable and tailored to local conditions in developing countries, including by promoting knowledge sharing, transfer of technology on voluntary and mutually agreed terms and mobilization of adequate finance. In this regard, we recognize that development cooperation, including North-South, South-South and Triangular cooperation, enables developing countries to achieve progress towards sustainable development. We reaffirm the BAPA+40 as a major milestone in the evolution of South-South and triangular cooperation, recognizing that this cooperation modality contributes to, inter alia, promoting partnership, unity and cooperation which contribute to establishing a fair, inclusive and equitable international economic order and to achieve the SDGs.
17. We reaffirm our commitment to narrow digital divides and promote inclusive use of data for development, harness the benefits of safe, secure, and trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) for good and for all in a responsible, inclusive and human-centric manner, improve access to digital services and digital public infrastructure, and leverage digital transformation opportunities to boost sustainable and inclusive growth. These can enable rapid transformation, combat inequalities within and among countries and accelerate the achievement of sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environmental, as well as public service delivery. We recognize that safe, secure, trusted, accountable and inclusive digital public infrastructure, respectful of human rights, personal data, privacy and intellectual property rights can foster resilience, and enable service delivery and innovation.
18. We acknowledge the pressing need to strengthen and invest in national statistics institutions and data-driven and evidence-based policies, including by harnessing Data for Development, and to strengthen international actions to accelerate progress on SDG 10 and linked targets in other SDGs. In this regard, we reaffirm the need to enhance capacity-building support, including for developing countries, and to increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable disaggregated data to ensure that no one is left behind. We invite consideration on the integration of inequality reduction objectives in our programs and policies and of possible development of measurement of how our actions contribute to reducing inequalities, in accordance with national circumstances. The Brazilian presidency has commissioned studies on reducing inequalities and empowering people living in vulnerable situations from the World Bank, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and the International Labour Organization (ILO) in partnership with the Brazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), Global Alliance for Life Economies Research and Innovation (GALERI) and partners, and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Brazilian Presidency looks forward to the participation of our knowledge partners in the G20 Social Summit.
19. We highlight the importance of data-driven and evidence-based policymaking to address development challenges, including inequalities, and to accelerate progress towards the SDGs through quantitative and qualitative data insights. This can support constructive decision-making processes, efficient planning and resource allocation, maximized synergies across SDGs, improved service delivery, effective monitoring and evaluation of impacts, improved accountability, and empowerment of communities and individuals. We also encourage countries that have effectively implemented data-driven policies to lead by example by adopting further measures to promote inequality reduction, in accordance with national circumstances. In this respect, we note with appreciation Brazil's adoption of its own commitment on inequalities, titled "SDG 18 – Combating Racism and Promoting Ethnic and Racial Equality."
20. We express our appreciation to Brazil for its leadership of the G20 in 2024 in accelerating actions towards reducing inequalities. In this regard, we recognize and appreciate the contributions of all the participating international organizations – AUDA-NEPAD, CAF, ECLAC, FAO, IDB, IFAD, ILO, OECD, SHF, UNCTAD, UNDP, UNICEF, UNIDO, WFP, WHO and the World Bank. We welcome the Republic of South Africa's G20 Presidency in 2025 and the United States of America's G20 Presidency in 2026 to take forward the collective agenda of the G20 DWG.
[1] According to World Bank Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report, 2022; UNICEF's Commitment to Ending Child Poverty and Achieving the SDGs: Measurement, Advocacy and Evidence Based Policies, 2022; ILO, UNICEF, Learning for Wellbeing Institute. The promise of universal child benefits: The foundational policy for economic and social development. Social Protection Spotlight, February 2024. ↩
Source: Official website of Brazil's 2024 G20 presidency
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