C (3:15)

They.

B (3:15)

In a couple hours, they said, yes, we have indeed come to a summit. But by then, most journalists, including myself, had gotten a draft copy of the declaration. So we already knew what they had agreed to. So I'll stop there for now.

A (3:24)

Okay. Yeah. And I mean, let's talk a little bit, though, about what they did agree to. Right. There was some, not much progress on debt, but a little bit. Not much progress on tax, but a little bit. Some good stuff on critical minerals. A lot of kind of strong and positive language about Africa and African self kind of determination and that sort of stuff. Where did we move forward the most, in your opinion?

B (3:51)

So it's a really good question, and I think the truthful, honest answer, based on the interviews I recorded in Johannesburg and talking to folks there and reading the declaration myself, is that this was a diplomatic win, but less of a procedural, structural, actual move forward. So someone described it to me, and I think this is the best way to put it as holding the line, which they also added, in this kind of day and age of geopolitical rift is incredibly successful. If you kind of take apart the different pieces of the US didn't come. Other countries were kind of picking apart the lines on climate and what to do and what not to do. But there was some really strong climate language in there. And I think the biggest takeaway and the biggest kind of win for the global development community is the fact that these issues were highlighted not just this weekend, but throughout the year. So seeing presidents from France to Germany to South Africa itself, obviously, but across the world talk about debt was something that was really interesting and new. So really spotlighting these issues and bringing up this idea of the fact that debt needs to be restructured and reformed and also inequality, that was another really, really big piece that was elevated throughout this entire year. So South Africa, just as a side note, is the most unequal country in the world, given various indicators. And so that was a really important thing for Ramaphosa to push forward. So you had all sorts of presidents from all sorts of countries talking about the problem of inequality. And there were various recommendations and solutions that were raised. And though they didn't make it into the declaration per se, they were picked, picked up and moved forward from other countries to do things on their own. So I think people's kind of looked at this whole process in this declaration as like, okay, we came to an agreement and that was huge. Now it's up to other countries to take forward a lot of this, especially knowing that the next President of the G20 is the United States. And a lot of this is expected to fall away.

A (5:33)

Yeah, Colomban, like these themes have been key at the United nations for quite a while. You've obviously been following closely what's happening in the UN and all of the kind of debates. Last year we had attempts to push some of this stuff with the summit of the future. How are you seeing these kind of crew line issues kind of moving forward in this environment? We've seen a few summits now where the United States has not turned up. And the other kind of leading nations in the world have said, well, never mind, Sajidan. We're going to just kind of proceed and make progress regardless, and we're going to do it without you. Difficult, as we've discussed before, to actually in practice do that. And how have you seen these issues progressing kind of in the day to day work of the United Nations?

C (6:18)

So like, first of all, I would say, like the G20 to me felt like, you know, we were back in time a year ago, before Trump came back into power. I mean, generally, in all of these UN conferences, Ethan, the G20, the UN General assembly, there had been this sort of balanced focus on all the issues that were sort of critical and vital to the global south. All the issues that Alyssa mentioned on debt, on climate, on inequality. And those were at the center of this discussion and those were at the center of this discussion in New York as well. And in all these other conferences, along with this kind of global north effort to try and rally support for its security interests on Ukraine, on the war in Ukraine and sort of other issues to sort of rein in Iran's nuclear program. So what you're seeing is that the rest of the world is continuing to try to keep the focus on, you know, on, on all of these issues that are no longer on the table in Washington. And it's unclear. I mean, at this point you mentioned, I mean, there were, there have been a couple of other agreements. There have been the Seville meeting on financing for development. And a lot of the delegates felt that it was actually a good outcome because the US did not plan, play the role of spoiler. We had the pandemic treaty. For its part, the Trump administration has had its own victories in undermining the process, either on taxation or international shipping industry, that sort of thing, pushing back on regulation. So to me, you know, it's clear that the rest of the world wants there to be momentum, but the Americans are still, even if they're not at the table, they're the key player on a lot of these issues. They're still kind of the largest economy. They still exercise a lot of influence. So I think that, you know, these issues are not going to go away. And, you know, whether it's just a question of governments waiting out the Trump administration to see whether a new administration, if we have one, actually kind of returns to the table and deals with a lot of these different issues.

A (8:23)

Yeah, that does feel like maybe where we're landing at the moment. I think, I guess for our readers, it's probably a question of trying to work out how all of these big geopolitical forces that are pushing us in different directions are shaping the world of development, what that's going to mean for development strategy and development funding and all of that sort of stuff. And it does seem to be that for the rest of the world, the strategy is kind of let's accept that we're not going to make too much progress during the Trump administration, but let's just keep all the same things on the table. Let's make it clear that this is the direction of travel. Let's not lose any ground and then hope that we see a Democrat in the White House in four years time and we can actually move forward again and start to go ahead. Was that the vibe that you picked up, Alyssa? Am I reading that correctly?

B (9:06)

I think there were kind of two different tracks. And I think coming in as a journalist trying to figure out which track was the most prominent was really difficult. I flip flopped across the days I was in Johannesburg. So the first track is what you're saying, Dave, is you Know, people kind of. There's this idea of waiting it out, but I think it's. It's actually more than that. It's the shifting of geopolitics and the shifting of power. So you saw, for example, on the. On the sidelines of the G20 summit, we saw India, South Africa, and Brazil kind of come together and try to revive a coalition, trilateral coalition that they had, which includes a fund for development projects across the world. And you also saw really, really powerful statements from Lula of Brazil, again, who was just coming off the back of hosting COP and several other leaders in the Global south that were really, South Africa included, pushing this narrative of we will not be bullied, we will not stand down. So that was one thing. And I think talking to people at the summit, there was excitement about the fact that Global south feels like it's rising and is rising in a way like that. It hasn't before now. That's one track. On the other track, there's the fact that, and I think one individual put it to me really eloquently, was it's clear that the ghost of President Donald Trump is haunting this conference. And I kind of went in with questions to those experts and analysts who are watching this process throughout the year is, okay, if the US Isn't here, why aren't we more forceful on debt in this declaration? Why isn't the world really kind of, why didn't we move further, given that the US Stepped down? And the answer was kind of just like, just because the US Is here doesn't mean their influence fades. And so you saw that, for example, as Column mentioned, you know, there was kind of this one point in the summit where A number of G7 leaders in Europe had kind of went into a side room, and they were frantically trying to scramble and discuss the Ukraine plant that put on the table. And you just saw kind of like this room where they all were, and they were kind of holding a presser, and people were trying to get in. And then there was the Global south leaders in another part of the venue, and they were holding their own press conference and briefing. So then you were kind of like, okay, well, where actually is this power lying anyway? So I think it's kind of like the tale of these two different tracks. And I think we're standing on the precipice of which one at the moment weighs out.

A (11:20)

That's really interesting. Certainly something that I see here in Europe is I feel that Europe as a group is now moving to focus on its own kind of column. You mentioned the security issues in the Ukraine. I think that's one of the biggest issues to European leaders. European defense is a huge thing. And I think there's a growing concern in Europe about inequality as well, which has probably previously been primarily a global south issue. But it feels. Colin, do you think we're kind of seeing a repositioning now? Quite a significant repositioning. And it's not clear where the final position is actually going to be.

C (11:55)

Well, I mean, I think countries are naturally trying to find their sea legs in this world that's kind of, you know, feeling somewhat destabilized by the American kind of retreat. And so, you know, there is a lot of focus on this notion of minilateralism. Smaller countries banding together to, you know, try to kind of influence the course of international development. You see that. I mean, we have in New York the race for the Secretary General. And that is a process that has been historically dominated by the permanent five members of the Security Council. But you find a real push by the rest of the membership to have a say in this process and to create a process involving interviews with candidates, procedures, requirements like, you know, requiring the candidates do sort of financial disclosures on who's funding their campaign. So there's areas like in the margins where you see, you know, different smaller countries banding together. And also, I mean, when you talk to, you know, particularly from small to medium sized countries and you talk about this whole sort of crisis of international cooperation and multilateralism for them, this is absolutely existential. I mean, if you're like a diplomat or a foreign finance minister or development minister in Latvia, you know, you're, you're living next door to, you know, a very assertive, aggressive Russia. Right. And you're thinking about, you know, that you've had a history in which you've largely been, you know, dominated by foreign powers and you're wondering whether, you know, if multilateralism comes apart at the seams, is that your fate? So I think that, you know, I think that people are desperately sort of searching around for groups to try and strengthen their voices. You know, they've always had, at the un, they've always had various small groups, but I think those are becoming more important than they were in the past even.

A (13:49)

Yeah. And for development leaders, this is a very, very difficult environment to navigate because we've had quite a stable development environment for the last decade and more. And now everything is being shifted all at once. A lot of the traditional funders are going away, but also the strategy, I think, has to be very, very different than it has been in the last few years, because the global south is rising with one of the key themes that's emerging from this is the global south saying, okay, well, we are going to take more power, we're going to take more responsibility, we're going to lead on our own development. Just a complete absence of a status quo. For a long time, the United States and Europe has been in lockstep. These are the ways we want to do things. There have been some bickering around the edges, but largely this has been a single kind of driving force, and that's just suddenly disappeared. And it's not at all clear whether we are going to find a new consensus around development anytime soon.

B (14:48)

I think I will say, though, it seems like there are a lot of ideas floating around. There's a lot of energy for this. And in a way, it really tracks with what the US Government wants the world to do. Right? It wants the world to pick up the pieces of its own development. And this is why I thought the Social Summit was actually quite interesting, what I mentioned at the top of the podcast, this, this civil society convergence, because I saw a lot of those ideas specifically from the African continent. So one was there are a number of kind of UNDP is among them. There's also the Development bank of South Africa pushing the idea of a Pan African sovereign wealth fund. And this is kind of a one of these technical finance things that. That, again, we're seeing more and more, I think, throughout the course of the year of people approaching sustainable development finance in a new and new way with more energy. And this was one example of that. Now these ideas are floating. So this example of the sovereign wealth fund has not yet been initiated, but people are working on it. They're behind it. There was also different ideas about, okay, can African countries come together to, for example, figure out a pot of money that we can put toward women's health, given that it's fallen off the map, Is there kind of different ways that we can look at sustainable development finance with, you know, social, social impact bonds or these other types of things that are increasingly floating to the top? And I think people are just speaking about them with much more fluency in a way that I did not see last year, because I think they need to. Right. We need to come up with new ways. That also came out in the critical minerals conversations that circulated, both the Social Summit and the Leaders Summit. And I think this is something that I saw reporting of ours from our colleagues, Jesse and I and I, about this Also going on in COP in Brazil. So how to really harness the domestic resources that certain developing countries have to push forward growth in a way that's domestically driven and not driven by donors like the United States?

A (16:30)

Yeah, it looks like that is really interesting, isn't it, that we're seeing so many different ideas emerging, so, so much energy around, kind of, okay, this was. This wasn't good. We didn't like this. We wouldn't have done it like this. But we're here now. Let's see what we can make of it. How can we fix this up, like, and a lot of leadership from Africa that was maybe suppressed under previous systems.

D (17:00)

Are you interested in the intersection of business and social impact? Do you want to know how corporate sustainability, esg, impact investing and more can contribute to development finance? My name is Adva Saldinger. I'm a senior reporter at devex, and I've been reporting on these issues for nearly a decade. I'm the author of Devex Invested, our free weekly newsletter dedicated to development finance. Every Tuesday, we explore how companies, investors and market mechanisms are reshaping the world of development finance. Visit devex.com newsletters and join us on Tuesdays.

A (17:39)

Colin, is there anything else you would like to come in on this? You have a couple of other stories that I would really like to get to.

C (17:45)

Yeah, I think. I mean, I think Alyssa is really kind of having come back from the G20, is really kind of the best voice on this. But. But yeah, we. A lot's been going on on a number of other fronts as well.

A (17:57)

Okay, I think that's fair enough. And anyone who hasn't tracked down all of Alyssa's reporting on this, Alyssa wrote half a dozen stories over the last few days, kind of bringing us up to date on exactly what's been happening at the G20. And a special newsletter that came out, I think, on Tuesday. I'm not sure when this will go out, but a couple of days ago, in any case, kind of summarizing all of the key issues. So please do track that down. Okay, let's move on. So another kind of key question at the moment in this space is who's going to be the next leader of unhcr? You've been talking to several of the candidates. You may talk to all of the candidates. I understand. So tell us kind of, what's the position with this race? Who are runners and riders? Why is this such a crucial position? Why should people be watching this?

C (18:42)

So obviously the crisis with refugees is getting worse, not better. The numbers are Increasing politically, it's become more fraught as both the US and key donor countries in Europe are cutting back funding. And they're also at unhcr at the High Commissioner for Refugees office. Facing a major financial crisis. They've had to lay off 5,000 workers this year in a $300 million budget hole, according to their current High Commissioner, Filippo Grandi. Uh, and this is a year which they have, you know, they have received, you know, more than a billion dollars less than they received in 2024. So things are not going great for them. And there is kind of a desire as we're leading towards the end of Grande's tenure, to find someone who can help stabilize the organization. So there are a lot of voices, most of them are from Europe. I mean, so far I think there are. I mean, I have like written down 11 candidates. There might be one or two more, but we have a number of European candidates. We have from Switzerland, we have Christine Schrainer Bergener, who has a lot of experience in dealing with refugee migration issues. She also was a special representative on Myanmar. She's also kind of made the case that like the race for Secretary General, there hasn't been a woman at the head of the organization in many years since Sadako Ogata, the Japanese High Commissioner, you know, was, was installed as in this position. And so, you know, we're also. There's a German candidate as well, Neil Zanin, who's also kind of a lot of experience in migration, refugee issues, you know, also, you know, from Spain, I interviewed recently the former Foreign Minister of Finland, Pekka Visto. I mean, one of the sort of similar themes that's coming out is that first there's a need to kind of stabilize the organization financially. There's a need to try to reach out for alternative sources of funding, whether that be the private sector, other non traditional donors. Everybody, I mean, this is like what everybody's been saying for the last decade, but, you know, hoping that the Gulf states will contribute more and that sort of thing. Really, you know, you have kind of really interesting, you know, candidate like the, the former executive, chief executive at ikea who's thrown his hat into the ring, Jesper Broden. And he has like sort of, you know, talking about, you know, that he could use his sort of business experience. He has also at ikea, they had been involved in programs and finding jobs for refugees, you know, over the years. And so he wants to sort of see if he can sort of bring that to light in some of the work that they're doing. You know, traditionally it's a job that's gone to diplomats, former politicians, inside players. We have one African candidate, and that's kind of interesting. We have Matthew Krensel, who is a, is, is a Ghanaian candidate. He is the head of the UNHCR office in Uganda. And he's trying to make the case that, look, it made sense that the Europeans should own this job in the early years when it was focused primarily mission on dealing with post World War II refugee crisis in Europe. But now it's a global crisis and it's time for someone outside the region. He may have a tough time making the case that, you know, his candidacy could help bring funds to the organization. I think that they would hope and expect, you know, because generally you're not just hiring or appointing an individual, you're also hiring an individual from a certain country. And that country generally needs to have a tradition of contributing, having a kind of respectable refugee policy. And also there's been a kind of informal understanding that as the Americans always get the top jobs at World Food Program, at the UN Children's Fund, UNHCR is for the Europeans. So it's a little tough to, you know, to, to kind of, to sort of, you know, deal with the politics of, you know, of a Secretary General reaching outside of Europe. I think there's going to be a lot of pressure from the Europeans to keep the job at home.

A (23:05)

Yeah, but it's a particularly key job right where we are right now because we've got more displaced people in the world than we've had at any state since World War II. I think more than 300 million displaced individuals. And obviously the, the, it's risen right to the top of the agenda in many global north nations where it's, it's something that. Prime Minister here in the United Kingdom, it's one of the three or four most hot button issues, I would say, for, for the, for the kind of administration and a key to, I mean.

C (23:35)

A key task for all of the candidates I've been talking to. You know, I've been asking them, how are you? You know, what's the case that you're going to make to Washington to continue to get them to continue supporting unhcr. They have already pretty much undermined the traditional kind of U.S. refugee resettlement program. They are trying to kind of globalize a more restrictive policy that focuses more on borders and national sovereignty rather than the interest of protecting refugees. So that's going to be a difficult conversation. I mean, someone like Broden would say, you know, the Swedish candidate who was with Ikea. You know, hopefully his dip, his, his business experience would be something that would, you know, that, that would align with kind of the, the kind of support for private sector outcomes in Washington. The Europeans, I mean, a number of them have been both on the donor side and also on the UN side asking for money. And so they feel that they kind of understand the dynamics of this. And also, you know, they've all kind of highlighted that they want to be both principled support, protection of refugees is the major goal, but also pragmatic. And that often means making certain kinds of compromises to address concerns that the Europeans, the Americans are having about not letting too many migrants into the country. I mean, I just want to go back to that number you mentioned about the number of displaced, which is true, but the refugee population is smaller. It's still massive, but it's closer to between 35 and 40 million. The others are internal.

A (25:15)

Those individuals are refugees. Yes, we're running low on time. But I do just want to bring up one last extraordinary story which you're working on right now, which we hope to publish in the next day or so. It may very well. We expect that it will be published by the time this goes out. Obviously, we can't be absolutely certain it's not live at the time of publication, but we expect it will be by the time you hear this, which is the situation in Haiti, where the argument is over exactly how violent a peacekeeping force should get. Do you want to fill us in on the details about that one as well?

C (25:50)

What we have is a situation where the United States has had some success at the UN in the last couple of weeks. They've authorized an international force for Gaza. They have authorized or they have pushed through the Security Council a resolution which creates a gang suppression force in Haiti. Right. But what they haven't done is provided a lot of detail on the rules of engagement about, you know, personnel, what countries are going to be participating. There's a lot of open questions and those are being hammered out now, and those are difficult questions. So on Haiti, what's going on is there's a bit of tension between what kind of force is this, Is this a law enforcement operation that's dealing with, you know, criminal gangs and they're trying to kind of impose, you know, law enforcement solutions, or is this an all out armed conflict, in which case there are two different legal regimes that would apply. In a law enforcement operation, you would operate under the rules of international human rights law. Under an armed conflict, it would be international Humanitarian law. And the difference is under any international humanitarian law, basically those are the laws of war. Those mean that you have pretty wide scope for searching, seizing, attacking, killing enemy combatants. On law enforcement there's all sorts of requirements to, you know, to use force in self defense and other limited ways and also issues about how do you detain, you know, who gets to detain these people that you're fighting with. They should be detained by the local authorities under human rights law. But the judicial and police systems in Haiti are quite dysfunctional. So a lot of this is really very complicated issues to work through. But you can see that there's some tension with the US being naturally pushing a little harder on the more robust mandate and others a little bit concerned about getting drawn into that. One of the reasons they're concerned is that they're watching the US deal with drug traffickers around the issue of Venezuela. And the US has been going out and you know, summarily killing alleged drug dealers. And there's a concern that, that the US are treating that like an armed conflict when a lot of their, their own, the US Government's own lawyers see it as a law enforcement operation. So there's concern that these general kind of rules of the road are being expanded and changed in a way that could be difficult for some member states to swallow. So they have had some successes in these negotiations. Yesterday on, well that would have been on, on Tuesday there was a meeting at the Canadian mission where interested governments, a number of governments, including the US finally agreed to identify a special representative who would provide special sort of strategic guidance in the mission. And that's a UN veteran peacekeeping operations, a South African national named Jack Christophides. And he has had a lot of experience everywhere from the Middle east to Africa and been at this game for decades. They still haven't identified a lead battalion that will go in and establish this forces kind of presence. And that's going to be a difficult negotiation. They're hoping there's going to be what's called a force Generation meeting on Dec. 9 at the Canadian mission where they try to convince other governments to participate. But so far I think they have Benin and Chad have made commitments, but others are sort of waiting to see what the rules of the road are, what happens when they finally agree to the concept of operations. So far they've provided a summary of it, but they're still trying to work out the last minute details of what's going to be in the concept of operations. And hopefully we'll have it done by December 9th when they have this meeting to try and persuade others to join the mission.

A (29:42)

Okay. This was an extraordinary story. I thought I read it. The argument over whether we should use the word kill seemed like an interesting. But you don't see that very often in this kind of diplomatic negotiation.

C (29:54)

Right. I mean that I didn't mention it, but essentially what happened is that they had been negotiating this, you know, concept of operations, which is basically lays out the detailed kind of rules of the. Of engagement for the operation. And it's much more detailed than the general UN Security Council resolution that authorizes the fourth. And so diplomats and officials have been telling me that in earlier drafts, the Americans had language sort of explicitly sort of identifying as one of the key tasks, basically going after searching, seizing gang members and kill, killing them. The others, I think, were a little uncomfortable with that language. There's actually plenty of language in the original Security Council resolution that gives them the authority to kill people under certain circumstances. But you know, they haven't worked out the exact sort of, you know, regime, the legal regime, and sort of when until countries are more comfortable about that, they will change. But they've used instead of the word cool, kill, they have used this word neutralize, detain and deter is the language they use. And so it provides them with pretty broad authority to engage in lethal operations. But. But it isn't quite so explicit.

A (31:08)

Yeah, it doesn't make kind of lethal operations. The first is not plan A. Yes, I'd love to, to talk more about this, but I think we probably want to. To wrap this up. Our readers probably want to get back. If you're an American reader, you're probably wanting to get back to Turkey or left over turkey, depending on when you're listening to this.

B (31:28)

They mostly need to get back to read column's story because it's jaw dropping. So.

A (31:32)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, for all of these, I would say go and read the actual story. Right. Elizabeth's coverage of the G20 and Colm's Haiti story. They're all fantastic journalism, as you would expect from Devex, if I do say so myself. With that in mind, I think we're probably going to have to wrap up here. It just remains for me to say thank you very much to Alyssa and Colm and to all of our listeners, and we'll. We'll be back with you next week. Thanks so much.

C (31:54)

Great. Thanks, David.

B (31:55)

Happy Thanksgiving.

C (31:57)

Yep. Happy Thanksgiving. Take care.