The finance ministers of 11 countries, including Britain and Japan, have recently called for “coordinated emergency support” to help countries hit by disruptions from the war in the Middle East between the USA-Israel alliance and Iran.
“We call on the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank to provide a coordinated emergency support offer for countries in need, tailored to country circumstances and drawing on the full range and flexibility of their toolkits,” the ministers said in a joint statement issued by the UK government.
“Renewed hostility, a widening of the conflict or continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz would pose serious additional risks to global energy security, supply chains, and economic and financial stability,” the statement added.
“Even with a durable resolution of the conflict, the impacts on growth, inflation, and markets will persist.”
It added that they reaffirmed unwavering support for Ukraine and their determination to maintain economic pressure on Russia.
The countries that signed the statement were Australia, Finland, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
The IMF recently cut its 2026 outlook for the global economy due to the US-Israeli war on Iran, warning that disruptions in commodity markets are driving up energy and food prices, with developing countries hit hardest.
Highlighting that if not for the onset of the war, world growth would have been revised upward to 3.4 percent on the back of massive investments in artificial intelligence, the IMF said the outlook is increasingly uncertain amid the fluidity of the situation in the Middle East.
Many Asian countries, the Philippines included, have been reeling from the energy crunch caused by the war and the near-total stoppage of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which affects almost 20 percent of the global oil supply.
The world has long assumed that along with a rules-based approach, international cooperation would be automatic among nations and its leaders. However, with the recent trend of world leaders taking their nations to war on a whim, it seems like countries that are either attacked, or in dire need because of the ramifications of such wars, can no longer count on either. The call for “coordinated emergency support” underscores the situation in this new world order.
At this point, we can only hope that present and future leaders are still capable of building a world where cooperation, peace, and helping each other will somehow prevail.*
