The UN summit closes with a watered-down agreement that does not convince civil society: “It is disappointing”

• The “Seville Commitment” has been ratified by 192 countries with the marked absence of the United States.
• Organisations and platforms regret that the text has not included some of their key demands

In the Palacio de Congresos de Sevilla these days it has not been possible to show banners, badges, fans, or T-shirts with protest messages. The restriction has only been lifted this Thursday for a strict half hour in which different organizations and platforms have raised their voices. “We want the debt to be canceled now!” or “We are not for sale”, are some of the messages they have expressed. The Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) comes to an end today and civil society believes that the final document, the so-called ‘Seville Commitment’, is far from sufficient. The hackneyed slogan “the people united will never be defeated” has been heard with accents from the five continents that have claimed a space that, they denounce, they have not had at this summit, where they have felt “marginalized”. “They have left us only half an hour to exercise our right. People from different regions express our feelings and our perspectives today,” said one of the spokeswomen, megaphone in hand. During the summit, the participating countries adopted the “Seville Commitment” by a consensus that only came about after the withdrawal of the agreement by the United States, the world’s leading economy and the great absentee at this meeting. In fact, the text, which includes the pending issues and seeks to lay the foundations for a future reform of the financial structure, was closed before the conference started and, as expected, no changes have been made.

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