Inaugural session of Financing for Development Forum
Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at 1:53PM As reported by IISD, the inaugural session of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) forum on financing for development follow-up (FfD Forum) was held in New York on Monday 18 April with discussions on current global economic challenges, including slow economic growth and massive waves of forced migration, the need for concerted action, and innovative development financing options, as well as on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA).
The Forum was opened by ECOSOC President Oh Joon (Republic of Korea) who said that the launch of the FfD Forum marks a new chapter in ECOSOC's history, recalling its mandate from the AAAA to serve as a platform for policy dialogue on FfD follow-up, and to assess progress, identify challenges and facilitate the delivery of the means of implementation of sustainable development. The UN Secretary-General called on Member States, UN entities and stakeholders to sustain the political momentum that had led in 2015 to the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, the AAAA, and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
According to Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), spending on young people's education could deliver the biggest development gains. Toferry Primanda Soetikno, Chairman, IMF/World Bank Development Committee, noted the importance of pandemic prevention and suggested fostering a new market for pandemic risk management insurance. Calvin McDonald, IMF, said financial market volatility is rising due to increased terrorist incidents, international migration crises and corruption, while Mahmoud Mohieldin, World Bank Group, specified areas where cooperation is needed, including in data- and evidence-sharing, joint engagement in the field, innovative financing instruments and risk assessment, have been identified by the UN and World Bank.
Helen Clark, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), spoke about monitoring the implementation of sustainable development commitments as being a complex exercise, with the Forum being in a position to support the process with adequate planning. The Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Roberto Azevêdo, said that the Forum can contribute to coherence of FfD outcomes and identify obstacles and opportunities.
Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), stressed that they have “started off on a bumpy ride” to realize the efforts of the 2030 Agenda, and called for “repurposed” international institutions, refocused expertise and more coherent action. Noting that official development assistance (ODA) flows are at a standstill, he called for addressing the paradoxical relationship between forced migration and support to developing countries. According to Alfredo Suescum, UNCTAD can serve as an “incubator of ideas” including on the revitalization of the multilateral trading system and current international investment agreements.
Wu Hongbo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, and Chair of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on FfD, presented the IATF's inaugural report, which reflects contributions from over 50 UN agencies, programmes, offices and other relevant institutions. It maps out the commitments and actions contained in the AAAA, including their relationship to the means of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); presents the monitoring framework and data sources that would allow for monitoring of progress; and contains more than 100 thematic clusters, each of which contains a number of action items.
During the afternoon's interactive dialogue with major institutional stakeholders on the theme ‘Fostering policy coherence in the implementation of the AAAA,' the ECOSOC President highlighted that, at the operational level, cooperation between the UN and other intergovernmental bodies has been strengthened in countries emerging from conflicts and complex emergencies. Merza Hasan reported that the World Bank has redesigned country-specific approaches, sought to improve public-private partnerships (PPPs) and placed greater focus on regional cooperation.
During the general debates that followed, ministers and other officials addressed, among other issues, the need for increased capacity-building; the importance of creating enabling environments to assist developing countries in achieving the SDGs; taking measures against illicit financial flows; fulfilling unmet official development assistance (ODA) commitments; the importance of national ownership in sustainable development; gender equality; and ways of integrating the AAAA and the 2030 Agenda into national plans and priorities.