Vice President Uz Hussain Mohamed Latheef has called for urgent reform of the global financial system to better support the needs of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), emphasising the importance of fair representation, debt relief, and equitable credit rating systems.

He made these remarks while delivering the keynote address at Multi-Stakeholder Roundtable 6, titled “Reforming the International Financial Architecture and Addressing Systemic Issues”, during the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), being held in Seville, Spain.

In his remarks, the Vice President outlined three core priorities for reforming the global financial architecture: ensuring fair representation for SIDS, establishing debt relief mechanisms for resilience building, and promoting accurate and development-sensitive credit rating systems.

As part of the call for fair representation, he urged fellow co-chairs to reform governance structures by updating quotas, reforming voting rights and decision-making rules, increasing board participation of developing countries, and enhancing transparency and coordination among international financial institutions.

He also highlighted the importance of ensuring debt sustainability through adequate and accessible financing. The Maldives, he noted, advocates for the creation of a “debt relief for resilience building” mechanism that does not add to existing debt burdens but instead provides the fiscal space needed for sustainable development and climate adaptation.

In addition, the Vice President stressed the need for fair and contextually appropriate credit rating systems, pointing to current ratings that often fail to reflect the structural vulnerabilities of SIDS, which in turn limits their access to affordable financing.