NEWSLETTER: Dispatches from Seville

Greetings from a sweltering summer in the Northern Hemisphere, where our team has been hard at work conducting new research and convening critical conversations on a number of topics, most notably the intersections and tensions between feminist foreign policies and the financing for development agenda—the topic of a recent UN conference held in Seville, Spain. 

In the lead up to the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (or FFD4) much ink was spilled, including by our Senior Fellow Beth Woroniuk, warning that gender equality was in danger of being eliminated from the negotiated outcome document. Salvaging some commitment to gender was among several priorities of our team and partners, including in ongoing advocacy efforts throughout the preparatory process in the weeks and months leading up to the conference.  

Amidst the backdrop of increasingly muscular and imperial “might makes right” foreign policy, and as long-time development champions raid aid coffers to boost budgets for bombs, never have we needed a feminist foreign policy more. And yet never had it felt so out of reach.

So, at long last, after sustained efforts by a number of partners, how did we fare? 

Negotiations were fraught, with the United States storming out and the outcome document, Compromiso de Sevilla, failing to meet the moment in the eyes of many of our partners: It lacked ambition on issues of debt, taxation and reforms to the international financial architecture. It left out issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights, neglected the reality of increasing military expenditure at the cost of development budgets and fell short on climate justice goals (Read more: Fòs Feminista, CARE France). At the Conference itself, activists were shut out of sessions, with security confiscating water bottles and fans if they contained slogans regarding, for instance, debt cancellation or relief for Gaza—despite the extreme heat.  

But, in spite of these shortcomings, the FFD cohort of feminist foreign policy countries offered a much-needed glimpse of leadership—providing some hope for a project which, as I wrote in my end-of-2024 missive, was in real need of some good news. 

This was the subject of our official side event, “Financing for Development and Feminist Foreign Policies: Exploring the Synergies,” highlights from which are presented below. The governments of Mexico and Colombia championed the care economy, sharing their domestic and international commitments, and delivering a recognition of this issue in the text. Slovenia pledged to gender-responsive solutions in financing for development, including in humanitarian processes, and the host country of Spain was the rare government increasing both its overall and gender equality development financing while resisting the global trend to increase military spending. Together with UN Women, Spain also sought opportunities to innovate, launching new mechanisms for investing in gender equality and ending gender-based violence through new multistakeholder partnerships for action, which the Collaborative was proud to support. Civil society advocates and experts from FEMNET, ICRW and Walking the Talk provided crucial vision and pressure, advocating to reverse slashes to development budgets, sustain resourcing for feminist movements and asserting that debt relief should be a core component of a feminist foreign policy.

The small but strong cohort is doing something refreshing right now: showing the world what’s possible when North and South work together.

As I return to my desk and prepare for a busy remainder of 2025—from the upcoming meetings of the UN General Assembly to the French-hosted IV Ministerial Conference on Feminist Foreign Policy—I do so with a boost of cautious optimism. The obstacles are numerous, the opposition fierce, the circumstances more difficult than ever. But progress, while small, is still possible. Seville showed me that and affirmed the importance of our work to support a truly global coalition that has the courage to keep pushing, even when the going gets tough. I am inspired by and grateful to our constellation of partners who are showing up and speaking up for the future we want.

Forward.

Lyric Thompson

Founder and CEO, Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative