Financing for Development Update 1

First drafting session of the outcome document of the third International Conference on Financing for Development

The first drafting session of the outcome document of the third International Conference on Financing for Development, Doha Declaration took place in New York, 28-30 January 2015. The Conference, which will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 13-16 July 2015, will focus on, inter alia: assessing progress in the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus and the Doha Declaration; addressing new and emerging issues; and reinvigorating and strengthening the financing for development follow-up process.

The outcome document, which is expected to be negotiated, and agreed at the Conference, to be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 13-16 July 2015, will make an important contribution to the post-2015 development agenda. Drafting sessions are also planned for April and June 2015. In addition to the draft programme, Member States had before them the Elements paper.

Statements on Gender Equality

During the drafting session statements were made on issues related to gender equality, following the recognition in the Elements paper that commitments related to gender equality had not been met, including in reducing gender inequalities and on gender-responsive budgeting. In particular a statement on Gender Equality in the Financing for Development Process was made by Iceland, also on behalf of Albania, Austria, Cabo Verde, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, and the UK. It referred specifically to domestic public finance and domestic resource mobilization, both budgeting and tax policies that provide important opportunities for reducing inequalities, particularly gender inequalities and gender dynamics around unpaid care work; and the lack of access for women to formal financial services. Global trade, financial and investment agreements, as recommended in the March 2014 Agreed Conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women, should be conducive to the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment as well as the human rights of women and girls. There is a need for more systematic sex-disaggregated tracking and analysis of investment, as well as a more systematic analysis, monitoring and evaluation of the contributions of investments to the reduction of gender gaps. As the statement concluded, “If the Post-2015 Agenda shall really be transformative as is stressed again and again, the most necessary transformation would be to achieve gender equality.”

For full statement see: http://bit.ly/1FTllir

In addition, other Member States referred to gender equality in their interventions including Rwanda, Morocco (on behalf of the African Group) and Tuvalu.