40 former Heads of State and Government are calling for “a new economic coalition of the willing” to urgently tackle inequality and “remake our world in response” to “era-defining disruption”. In a joint letter, originated by the Club of Madrid and signed by President of Timor-Leste and member of the Club of Madrid Board of Directors José Ramos-Horta, the global leaders called for a restoration of development aid, comprehensive debt relief, international tax cooperation, and ambitious reform of the world’s “outdated” economic model.
Other leaders included former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado, former Prime Minister of Senegal Aminata Touré, former Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin and Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President of Costa Rica Óscar Arias.
Rebuking the choice of “narrow unilateralism above all else”, the leaders criticize the way “any sense of a rules-based order is violently displaced by a power-based one,” they warn the world is facing a “crisis in multilateral cooperation” that is compounding poverty, inequality, and environmental breakdown at a time when “trillionaires could emerge this decade, while near half of humanity lives in poverty”.
However, “a powerful shift is possible”, leaders say. “Trillions of dollars exist for financing development – but too much public money is captured by private power.” They call for “inequality-busting financing”, including effective tax cooperation on high-net-worth-individuals and on the profits of multinationals wherever they operate, alongside “coordinated Jubilee debt relief” and financial architecture reform to prevent the recurrence of unsustainable debts.
“Today’s economic system, shaped in 1944 in Bretton Woods by wealthy nations at a time when colonialism still defined much of the world, is outdated,” leaders say. Arguing that “global entities are not sacrosanct”, they urge the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to promote sustainable development “rather than prescribing shackling austerity that undermines it”. They call on governments to pursue new trade cooperation which raise labor and environmental standards and reforms intellectual property rules to prevent a repeat of the deadly vaccine inequity of COVID-19.
The leaders highlight the Financing for Development Conference and the upcoming G20 in South Africa and COP30 in Brazil as critical opportunities to embed this new agenda. “Working together is not only a moral imperative—it is a shared interest for what is now a more multipolar world,” the leaders write. “You will find support from us and from people in every country.”
The letter was organized by Club de Madrid, the world’s largest forum of democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers, with support from Oxfam and the People’s Medicines Alliance.
