UN conference seeks boost for aid as US cuts bite
SEVILLE - A UN conference aiming to rally fresh support for development aid begins in Spain on Monday with the sector in crisis as US-led funding cuts jeopardise the fight against poverty.
At least 50 world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Kenya's William Ruto, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and UN head Antonio Guterres will gather in the city of Seville from 30 June to 3 July.
But key player the United States is snubbing the biggest such talks in a decade, underlining the erosion of international cooperation on combating hunger, disease and climate change.
More than 4,000 representatives from businesses, civil society and financial institutions will also attend the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development.
UN sustainable development goals set for 2030 are slipping from reach just as the world's wealthiest countries are withdrawing funding for development programmes.
International charity Oxfam says the cuts to development aid are the largest since 1960 and the United Nations puts the growing gap in annual development finance at $4-trillion.
More than 800 million people live on less than $3 per day, according to the World Bank, with rising extreme poverty affecting sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
Disruption to global trade from Trump's tariffs and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have dealt further blows to the diplomatic cohesion necessary for concentrating efforts on helping countries escape poverty.
Among the key topics up for discussion is reforming international finance to help poorer countries shrug off a growing debt burden that inhibits their capacity to achieve progress in health and education.
The total external debt of the group of least developed countries has more than tripled in 15 years, according to UN data.
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A free-for-all where AI firms can scrape whatever they find online and creators and publishers have no protection. This is essentially what happened during the training period of the AI models. A second path would be one in which there is a strict policy of no use of intellectual property of news media. This seems to us to be unrealistic. This leaves the most likely options, all of which involve paying for the use of IP. One would be through a fixed scale of fees that are predetermined. Payments to pharma companies during periods of compulsory licensing of medications are one example. Payments to musicians for each music download is another example of a royalty or fixed fee for use; and Another option is where the fees to be paid are determined in the context of a negotiations framework. A framework is essential because the larger competitive environment has a direct bearing on the ability of publishers to negotiate. 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Either the US is isolationist and out of the picture for the long term, in which case the rest of the world has to move ahead in all sorts of areas without us. Or the US comes back to sanity, in which case it's good to have spent a few years developing smart policies and the US can catch up later. DM Watch
