Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, the Honourable Gaston Browne, delivered a compelling and urgent address at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), forcefully advocating for systemic change in the global financial architecture to ensure justice and survival for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Speaking at the General Debate, Prime Minister Browne underscored the persistent economic and social vulnerabilities of SIDS and the global community’s failure to deliver meaningful reform over the past three decades.
“Without fundamental reform of the global financial architecture, SIDS will remain trapped in a vicious cycle of costly borrowings, escalating debt, and rising vulnerability,” he asserted.
The Prime Minister expressed disappointment in the tepid outcomes of the Conference, criticizing the soft language and lack of ambition in its declaration. He warned that repetitive appeals without action reflect “global inertia, benign neglect, and perhaps most likely, disrespect.”
Prime Minister Browne also highlighted the bold initiatives developed by SIDS themselves, particularly through the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS), which was adopted at the SIDS4 Conference in 2024. He emphasized the establishment of the Debt Sustainability Support Service (DSSS)—a SIDS-led mechanism designed to Create fiscal space, Reduce financial risk, and Unlock critical investment.
He described the DSSS as a practical tool grounded in the lived realities of island states, and not a substitute for international institutions but a necessary enhancement to ensure inclusive development.
“Lip service cannot build resilience. Platitudes cannot fund preparedness,” Prime Minister Browne said. “We now urge this Conference to explicitly support the operationalization of the DSSS.”
In a stark critique of the existing financial order, the Prime Minister highlighted how SIDS are routinely penalized for their climate vulnerability and investment in resilience, which perversely leads to lower credit ratings.
He cited a DSSS-commissioned study showing that properly valuing resilience could increase SIDS’ credit ratings by 35% and reverse economic contraction. He also noted that SIDS have paid over $10 billion more than the original value of their debt due to currency depreciation—more than the combined annual education and health budgets of all SIDS.
“We borrowed for socio-economic development and to repair damaged infrastructure, incurring penalties we never agreed to,” he stated. “This is one of the great economic failures of our time.”
Prime Minister Browne also issued a clear and actionable call to the global community:
- Establish and support the DSSS with transparent governance.
- Engage the private sector, development banks, and philanthropic partners in supporting SIDS through capital and innovation.
- Institutionalize the SIDS Centre of Excellence, as recommended in the FfD4 outcome.
- Adopt the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) across all major platforms including the UN, Bretton Woods institutions, OECD, and the Paris Club.
Rejecting any notion of charity, Prime Minister Browne closed with a strong message of solidarity and shared responsibility:
“We seek not sympathy but solidarity; not pity but partnership; not charity but change.”
He concluded with a challenge to all development partners to “walk with us, stand with us, reform with us,” warning that failure to act would not only betray SIDS but humanity at large.