The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, called on Monday to hope to achieve “a future of peace, justice and prosperity” in the midst of the escalation of tensions in the Middle East and in the face of other conflicts such as the war in Ukraine.
Sánchez made the call for hope in his speech to the UN Future Summit, an event held ahead of the opening of the new session of the UN General Assembly.
“In times of uncertainty such as the one we are living in, fear is our worst enemy. A future of peace, justice and prosperity can only be built on the basis of hope,” said the head of the Spanish Executive, who defended the validity of the United Nations acquis. A legacy of which, according to him, respect for international law, international humanitarian law and the Charter of the United Nations itself is part.
He did not explicitly refer to the situation in Lebanon, but he did refer to Palestine, ensuring that Spain defends and promotes the principles of the UN with determination and consistency in all contexts, whether in the Palestinian territory, in Ukraine or in any other part of the world.
To ensure a peaceful future, it was also considered necessary to promote more effective, inclusive and equitable governance of the multilateral system, and the Future Summit declared that this was a key step for the necessary reform of the UN and its institutions so that they are more representative and transparent and their functioning is more democratic.
Fairer taxation and more international cooperation
Sánchez also called for greater international cooperation to advance the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and explained that Spain accompanies this aspiration with actions by committing to increase official development assistance to 0.7% of gross national income in 2030. Likewise, he recalled that Spain is the first contributor to the Common Fund for Sustainable Development Goals.
Furthermore, before the IV International Conference on Financing for Development, to be held in Seville in 2025, Pedro Sánchez said that Spain wants to agree on two specific measures that will allow all resources and policies to be mobilized to promote sustainable development.
The first of these is to strengthen the multilateral development banks, by completing the review of their capital adequacy framework and deepening their reform processes, and the second, to optimize the use of special drawing rights and their possible redirection mechanisms.
In this regard, he stressed that Spain, fulfilling its commitment to channel up to 50% of the rights received in 2021, has reached an agreement between the IMF and the World Bank so that both institutions can use the Resilience and Sustainability Fund in the fight against climate change.
Sánchez said it was also necessary to include emergency clauses in debt contracts beyond natural disasters for other crises, as he explained Spain has done recently, because he believes this would provide a better response to food crises and health emergencies.
All this was recommended to be accompanied by fairer taxation, more effective and transparent tax policies promoting the mobilization of domestic resources.
This is why he reiterated his commitment to a global minimum tax on large fortunes and to the full implementation of the two OECD and G20 pillars on the taxation of multinationals as the basis for a future Framework Convention on Tax Cooperation.
The President of the Spanish Government has also chosen to work for the responsible development of artificial intelligence and other new technologies.
In this regard, he explained that Spain created the first artificial intelligence supervision agency in the world and, based on the value of this experience, he defended that the United Nations play a key role in defining a global governance system for this technology.
