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Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been saying for three decades that traditional measures of development, primarily used for the allocation of concessional resources, i.e. GNI per capita, insufficiently capture their vulnerabilities.

The call for the development of a globally accepted vulnerability assessment was first made in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. This was repeated by SIDS in 1994, in the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of SIDS and was endorsed by the General Assembly in resolution 49/122. Between 1995 and 2003, there were several further calls for the development of a multidimensional vulnerability index.

In 2005, the Mauritius Strategy for the Further Implementation of the SIDS Programme of Action reiterated the concern of the international community about the vulnerability of SIDS. This was restated in September 2014, where UN member States in the Third International Conference on SIDS reaffirmed their commitment “to take urgent and concrete action to address the vulnerability of SIDS”. Additionally, the SAMOA Pathway calls upon the United Nations to develop appropriate indices for assessing the progress made in the sustainable development of SIDS and to develop vulnerability-resilience country profiles.

International agencies including the World Bank have now set up dedicated offices for small states, created special funds to address their specific needs and given them a stronger voice in international discussions.

Nevertheless, there remains a lack of international consensus on how to characterize and, by extension, mitigate their vulnerabilities. There have also been attempts to develop measures of vulnerability that are relevant for SIDS. In this regard, a variety of metrics exist e.g., the Economic and Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) developed by the Committee for Development Policy, the Human Development Index (HDI) developed by UNDP, metrics designed to capture climate (global climate risk index) and disaster risk (WRI). These metrics have all been criticized for their choice of indicators and data availability.

Consensus on an index that accurately takes into account the vulnerability of small island developing States could assist them to develop and adopt more informed policies and strategies for building and sustaining long-term resilience. In June and August 2020, with the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the dire economic and debt situation that ensued for SIDS, Belize, the then Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), wrote to the UN Secretary-General reiterating the need to advance work on a multi-dimensional vulnerability index (MVI).

The Secretary General responded that the ongoing work on an MVI, including the recent initiative of the UN Resident Coordinator’s Offices in SIDS to advance and develop a composite index, will be crucial to redefine eligibility for financing for sustainable development in SIDS.