The ONE Campaign, the global anti-poverty organisation, released the below statement following the news that the IMF Executive Board officially endorsed the creation of the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) as a new mechanism to support countries in responding to the pandemic and longer-term development challenges.  

Amy Dodd, Policy Director at ONE, said: “We welcome the IMF’s new Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), which could not come at a more critical time. More and more countries are struggling to respond to the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the continued economic aftershocks of the pandemic, climate and debt crises. 

“These converging crises are already having a devastating effect on the world’s poorest people and new financing is desperately needed to support a sustainable recovery. 

“It is disappointing that eight months after the historic allocation of Special Drawing Rights, the target to recycle $100 billion has still not been met, despite repeated promises from the G7 and G20. The $36 billion in confirmed pledges was an important first step but the time for first steps has passed. Wealthy countries, particularly those that have not committed SDRs, must urgently do their part and commit to funding the RST.”

Notes to editors

• The new Trust will provide a new means to channel SDRs from the new allocation of $650 billion in August 2021. African leaders have called for at least $100 billion to be urgently recycled but $36 billion has been pledged so far.

• The ONE Campaign has been calling for advanced economies to channel at least 25% of their share of the new $650 billion allocation of SDR to low and vulnerable middle-income countries. Check out our data dive to find out more about SDRs, what they’re for, and who’s pledged what.
• Since 2020, ONE has been tracking the impact of the pandemic on people in the world’s poorest countries via its Africa Tracker and the ONE Ukraine tracker in order to pull together a series of datapoint to map out how these converging crises – conflict, pandemic, debt, climate – are having a devastating economic impact on people living in the world’s poorest countries.
• The IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings will take place from 18-24 April. ONE is urging global finance chiefs to address the economic impact of these converging crises – starting by protecting existing ODA budgets and ensuring any financial support for refugees and the Ukraine crisis comes in addition to existing aid allocation. ONE is also calling for G20 countries to urgently recycle at least $100 billion in Special Drawing Rights, fix the Common Framework and leverage new lending through multilateral development banks.