The session, titled “Financing the SDGs: Need for a Human Rights Approach,” was one of dozens of civil society events running alongside the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council. But Ashwood’s address pressed beyond the standard development framing. At its centre was a theological claim drawn from the WCC Jakarta Declaration, marking the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: “Every person, without exception, is created in the image of God and is called to abundant life.” That principle, she argued, has a concrete corollary: economies that produce deprivation are not merely inefficient. They are structurally misaligned with the purpose of human society.
The numbers she cited underline the gap between aspiration and reality. According to the OPHI/UNDP Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2024, more than 1.1 billion people, including 566 million children, live in multidimensional poverty. Over the same period, Oxfam’s 2025 Takers Not Makers report found that billionaire wealth surged from US$13 trillion to US$15 trillion in a single year. The World Inequality Report 2022 places the income share of the richest ten percent at 52 percent of global income; the poorest half of humanity earns just 8.5 per cent.
“Fourteen years after the São Paulo Statement on International Financial Transformation for an Economy of Life,” Ashwood said, “inequality remains structural rather than incidental.” She drew directly on the New International Financial and Economic Architecture, a joint ecumenical initiative convened by six bodies, including the WCC. The New International Financial and Economic Architecture traces today’s inequalities to “the legacy of colonialism, the stolen land of Indigenous communities… and the unremunerated and unrecognised care work of women and girls.”
For Ashwood, the climate and debt crises are not separate emergencies. Climate disruption, she said, is “the unpaid invoice of extractive growth,” an argument for binding financial mechanisms on climate justice and loss and damage, not further voluntary pledges.
She closed with three demands: reform of international financial governance to serve people rather than markets; reparative and ecological justice embedded in debt restructuring; and genuine, not symbolic, participation for women, racialised, and Indigenous peoples, and persons with disabilities in economic decision-making.
“Inclusion without transformation preserves inequality,” she said. “Justice in all its iterations requires restructuring power itself.”
The event was moderated by Albert Barseghyan, UN representative of the Sikh Human Rights Group.
The New International Financial and Economic Architecture is a joint initiative of the World Council of Churches, World Communion of Reformed Churches, Lutheran World Federation, World Methodist Council, Council for World Mission, and the United Society Partners in the Gospel.
Jakarta Declaration: Witnessing and Anticipating Gender Justice in Unity and Diversity
São Paulo Statement: International Financial Transformation for the Economy of Life