UNCTAD was established in the post-decolonization era as a hard-won demand from the Global South. It was meant to counterbalance the Bretton Woods institutions and provide space for developing countries to pursue international economic reform and structural transformation. It remains an essential space for advancing the goal of a just international economic order.
The 16th session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD16) follows on the heels of the Fourth Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), where the outcomes fell largely short of systemic reform. For this reason, it is seen by many feminists as a test of multilateralism and as a critical forum to counter the false solutions and gender-blind analysis that define the Compromiso de Sevilla. UNCTAD16 comes at a time when the global economy is in shambles, with overlapping crises of trade, debt, and financial governance that are cementing global inequalities and testing the relevance of multilateralism. UNCTAD’s mandate to support developing countries in using global trade as a means of structural transformation remains deeply relevant for achieving every aspect of feminist economic justice.
Heightened geopolitical tensions and trade wars have allowed rich countries and their corporations to push through a new wave of highly asymmetrical, predatory trade agreements with developing countries in secretive, closed-door negotiations. Unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) have been used to pressure states into policy change, in violation of international law and further weakening existing multilateral trade norms. These dynamics have deepened the existing climate and debt crises, expanded wars of aggression, and widened divisions within and between the Global North and Global South. This has undermined human rights and exacerbated poverty and inequality, with women bearing the heaviest burden.
As the global trade turmoil spills over into other arenas, the intersections of feminist trade and debt justice are becoming more urgent. Through unequal integration into international trade, developing countries have been boxed into a regressive pattern of productive and trade specialization, which perpetuates a logic of colonial appropriation. This trade is dependent on the extraction and unsustainable use of natural and fossil fuel resources, worsening ecological breakdown, and fueling conflicts to access and control resources. It also creates chronic revenue shortfalls, necessitating more loans and deepening debt dependence– a pattern entrenched over decades of austerity and structural adjustment policies. These dynamics divert money and resources from essential public services women desperately need, pushing them further into the margins.
This Gender and Trade Coalition UNCTAD16 side event, co-convened by Regions Refocus and the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), will present a feminist analysis of the intersections of trade and debt justice, and voice feminist demands to achieve them.
Date: 20 October 2025 – 1:15 PM to 2:45 PM (90 minutes)
Location: Room Concordia I – Palais des Nations, Geneva
Convenors
