Financing for Development (FfD)

An intergovernmental accountability mechanism for UN partnerships with the private sector is urgently needed. Regulation and safeguards must replace laxity and low taxes, so that the prevailing paradigm benefits developing countries rather than the corporations that invest in them. Regions Refocus 2015, Third World Network (TWN) and DAWN present their joint recommendations for Addis Ababa.

DAWN briefing on Financing for Development (FfD): The article review the main elements of the FfD process in order to set current debates in a context, identify conflict areas between the different blocks of countries, and introduce some of the recommendations DAWN have been promoting with the purpose of reorienting global economic governance and development patterns towards economic, ecological, and gender justice. 

The change in the current development paradigm that the leaders of the world are going to approve next September will require bold reforms and policy shifts. Can they be accomplished without involving the Finance Ministers?

2015 is a pivotal year. The post-2015 sustainable de­velopment agenda currently being drafted is premised on the reality that the present model of development is not working, given worsening in­equalities and straining planetary boundaries. All countries and peoples—and the planet on which we depend–have the right to live with a better model, one that is inclusive and sustainable.
An increasingly urgent imperative for change informs the two-track negotiations unfolding at the United Nations from now until September. One track in­volves the post-2015 sustainable development agen­da; the second focuses on financing for develop­ment, an independent process that began at the 2002 Monterrey Conference. While the two talks are separate, the issues in each are deeply interlinked, and the success of any new model depends on the outcomes of both. The political stakes are high, but so are the opportunities—perhaps once-in-a-genera­tion—for genuine transformation.

Despite snowstorm warnings and ice-cold temperatures in New York, the Financing for Development (FfD) negotiations managed to pick up speed when governments convened for the first drafting session at the end of January. They are currently negotiating the outcome of the upcoming Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development, which will take place on July 13-16 this year, and is planned as a key milestone ahead of the Post-2015 Summit and the UNFCCC Climate Conference later this year.

A broad international group of Civil Society Organizations following the Financing for Development (FfD) process prepare a response to the FFD Elements Paper.

Read the letter here or download the pdf version here.

The Third UN Conference on Financing for Development will take place in Addis Ababa in July 2015. The key question will be how to finance the Sustainable Development Goals.

In September 2015 the UN will finalize the new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The political negotiations within the Open Working Group (OWG) have produced an ambitious catalogue of 17 main goals and numerous sub-goals, all of which focus equally on economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable development. It is yet to be seen whether the goals put forward by the OWG will be watered down by the time the negotiations are over. Several countries have already announced their opposition to specific proposals.

As far as financial issues are concerned, the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) is shaping up to become 2015’s most important summit. If an ambitious global financing framework is not agreed in Addis Ababa next July, the success of the September summit on new Sustainable Development Goals and a post-2015 framework will also be in jeopardy. Even the climate summit in Paris at the end of 2015 risks being undermined. Before the actual FfD negotiations start in January, the UN conducted ‘a substantive informal session’ in New York from 10-13 November, which aimed to launch an open debate on the financing for development issues at stake in Addis.

2015 will be a landmark year for the global fight against poverty and for equitable and sustainable development, with three crucial summits in just six months. A central issue for all three summits is concrete proposals for reforms to international financial and trade systems so that they support the achievement of global sustainable development goals. Such reforms should be based on the right to development for all countries and ensuring economic and social rights for all. There are sufficient funds available to achieve human rights for all, end poverty and to achieve global sustainable development goals: but political decisions to change structures and systems are needed to make this possible. On these issues, the Third UN Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Addis Ababa in July will play a critical role. To formulate civil society positions towards this upcoming conference, a coalition of CSOs has compiled a position paper and is looking for endorsements.

In a week, Governments at the United Nations begin their preparatory meetings for the International Conference on Financing for Development(FfD) in Addis Ababa in July 2015. That conference is widely viewed as the last opportunity to agree to a package of proposals on financial, trade and global governance measures before the summit meeting in New York in September 2015 to ring down the curtain on the Millennium Development Goals and raise the curtain on new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). If there is nothing underlying pretty words in the outcome document of Addis, there will be no time to come to meaningful "means of implementation" for the SDGs two months later. That will condemn the global effort to devise SDGs over the past few years to empty rhetoric. Governments at the UN thus recognize that the Addis meeting must be a "success", but does anyone see the Governments of North and South coalescing around any interesting proposals? Well, they have about 3-5 months to find those proposals. Perhaps we can help move the discussion in a fruitful direction.

Syndicate content