Saudi Arabia’s Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan, the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) chair, center, listens while International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, right, speaks at a news conference following the IMFC meeting during the World Bank and IMF spring meetings at IMF headquarters in Washington, Friday, April 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) It is no wonder that Americans overwhelmingly say that economic issues ― finding the money to put food on the table, fill up the tank, and pay the rent ― are their top concern right now. Families get sticker shock when they go to the gas station. More sticker shock waits for them when they drive to the grocery store.
It seems like prices are going up for almost everything, while U.S. farmers struggle to sell their crops ― in some cases because foreign countries themselves cannot afford to import things like soybeans, corn, and grain like they did before.
Meanwhile, far too many people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere are struggling also ― to be able to buy food, to pay for medicines, to send their kids to school ― in short, to provide a decent life for their families.
In my travels, I’ve seen too many times what this looks like firsthand. Men and women working multiple jobs in order to scrape cash together when their wages aren’t keeping up with rising prices. Transportation costs spiking. Imports of foodstuffs and other essentials decline because the local currency doesn’t buy as much as it did a year ― or even a month ― before.
Even prior to the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, millions of people around the world were experiencing food insecurity. More than 318 million people are facing acute hunger right now, according to the World Food Programme, and this number is expected to rise due to fertilizer shortages and higher oil prices that drive up transportation costs.
Disease outbreaks ― like what is happening with ebola right now in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ― become harder to control and illnesses harder to treat.
If it all sounds too familiar, that’s because we all went through this just six years ago: massive economic shocks to the global economy, declining economic growth, inflation, and supply chain disruptions wreaking havoc.
It took too long, but in 2021, the world’s leading economies ― acting through the International Monetary Fund ― provided $650 billion in support that saved hundreds of thousands of lives, helped to stabilize countries’ economies, and helped to contain a global pandemic ― all without creating new debt that countries might struggle to pay off for years, or even decades.
This vital life-saving support came in the form of Special Drawing Rights. — a special reserve asset created by the International Monetary Fund in times of global economic crisis and distributed to all IMF member countries according to their quota. The countries that receive them can use them to make debt payments, keep them on their balance sheets and improve credit-worthiness, or exchange them for hard currency if they need it. Many countries used the Special Drawing Rights they got in 2021 to buy life-saving equipment, vaccines, medicine, and food, among other purposes. And they cost nothing to U.S. taxpayers.
For many years my church, the Oklahoma City First Church, has worked to help give orphans and vulnerable children in Zambia a better future by providing nutrition and scholarships so that these kids can get an education. The COVID pandemic hit Zambia hard, but when it received $1.3 billion in Special Drawing Rights in 2021, Zambia was able to use the funds for much-needed pandemic response measures, cash transfers, and other support for its people. Economists estimate that some 10,000 lives were saved as a result.
This is a case where helping people overseas will also help us at home. Special Drawing Rights give countries the assets they need to import more food and other much-needed goods ― including from the U.S. Research shows that at least 41,000 U.S. jobs would be created if the IMF made a new allocation of them of the same size as in 2021.
There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a global economic crisis again. With hundreds of millions of people facing hunger ― and in too many cases, the threat of malnutrition; with the danger of new disease outbreaks; and with the cost of almost everything going up, this moment again calls for life-saving Special Drawing Rights. The U.S. Treasury Department must tell the IMF that it supports a new major allocation; with its veto-power at the IMF, Treasury has the loudest voice at the table.
It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of people died in 2020 and 2021 because it took the IMF so long to act and issue SDRs following the start of the COVID pandemic. The IMF must act fast before more lives are needlessly lost.
The Rev. Jon Middendorf is Senior Pastor at Oklahoma City First Church.
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