World leaders meet in Paris for global finance summit

The New Global Financing Pact summit began on Thursday and brought together more than 300 participants, including more than 40 heads of state, various international NGOs and private sector partners. “No country should have to choose between reducing poverty and protecting the planet,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in his opening remarks. Macron called for a substantial increase in public and private funding to tackle rising inequality. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres outlined some of the challenges facing developing countries and said more than fifty nations were now in or near debt default. Guterres said the global financial system — conceived at the end of World War II — was failing to meet modern challenges and now “perpetuates and even worsens inequalities.”