Beyond the Plus 5s:
Financing for Development:
a Partnership to Mobilize Resources for Development

By Oscar de Rojas

An unprecedented collaboration between the United Nations and the major multilateral economic institutions (MEIs) will explore policies and actions and find innovative ways to address the many issues affecting the financing of development. Mandated by the UN General Assembly, the process, known as “Financing for Development”, is a United Nations initiative but also represents a new partnership at an intergovernmental level. The World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are active partners, with the UN, in the process. Moreover, other intergovernmental organizations, civil society and the private sector are also participating in achieving the overall goal of facilitating financial flows and enhancing the capacity to effectively channel them to the cause of development.

Propelled by poverty

      What triggered this process? The past half-century has seen unprecedented economic gains. But 1.2 billion people are still living on less than $1 a day. The combination of extreme poverty with extreme inequality between countries, and often also within them, is an affront to our common humanity. While globalization has provided unprecedented opportunities for many countries and peoples, it has also posed challenges for policy makers. In particular, there have been increasing anxieties caused by some of the outcomes of globalization including, in particular, that related to the stability, volume and distribution of financial flows. Some of these concerns came to a head during the Asian financial crisis, which led to increasing calls for international monetary and financial reform. While the financial crisis mainly affected middle-income countries that have enjoyed access to private international financing, recent trends have not been propitious for lower income countries either. Except for oil, commodity-exporting countries are operating with much reduced international prices and this deprives them of tax revenues as well as import capacity and jobs. Moreover, the total amount of official development assistance peaked in 1992 and while aid flows have begun to rise again, they are still well below the levels of the early 1990s.

      Increasingly, important questions are being posed at the UN and other fora on issues pertaining to the financing for development. A perception began to grow that a fresh political impulse in international cooperation is needed, with the participation of all countries and stakeholders, to pave the way for increased and more stable access to financial resources by developing and transition economies. After years of confidence building, the United Nations political process led to an agreement by consensus to hold a high-level intergovernmental event in 2001 to address these very issues.

Six main themes

     The Financing for Development agenda addresses six main themes. These are:

  • the mobilization of domestic financial resources;
  • the mobilization of international private resources for development, namely foreign direct investment and other private flows;
  • trade;
  • increasing international financial cooperation for development through, inter alia, Overseas Development Assistance;
  • debt relief;
  • enhancing the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems so as to better promote development and limit excessive financial volatility.

     Substantive support for the process is being provided by a Secretariat team drawn from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, as well as the United Nations itself, including the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Regional Commissions. Other international organisations are also collaborating.

     Policy recommendations arising in the substantive process will be considered by Governments in an inter-governmental Preparatory Committee, made up of the whole membership of the UN General Assembly, that will hold discussions in the run up to the 2001 event. Preparations will also draw input from other official intergovernmental bodies such as regional and sub-regional development banks, as well as other entities from the civil society and the business communities. These discussions will culminate in the high-level intergovernmental event where finance and foreign ministers are to agree on specific proposals.

The UN: what could be more appropriate?

     Is the United Nations the appropriate forum in which to address these issues? Admittedly, discussions on national and international financial arrangements have largely moved to other fora. However, the United Nations is uniquely equipped to consider the intersection of the political, economic and social dimensions of finance for development. Having said this, though, it is appreciated that, for the process and the 2001 meeting to succeed, there needs to be partnership and collaboration at an intergovernmental level between the United Nations, the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO.


Oscar de Rojas is Executive Co-ordinator of the Financing for Development Secretariat, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). A Venezuelan career diplomat, Mr. de Rojas recently served as his country’s deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

How to get involved

Linking your activities and efforts in the area of development to the preparatory process leading to the High-level event on Financing for Development will increase the impact of your views and experiences on policy making in the national, regional and international arenas.

Interested organizations can:

  • Provide input to the Regional meetings by contacting the UN Regional Commissions and UNCTAD Offices. The next regional meetings will be in:
    • Latin America and the Caribbean: Colombia (9-10 November 2000)
    • Africa: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (21-23 November 2000)
    • West Asia: Beirut, Lebanon (23-24 November 2000)
    • Europe: Geneva, Switzerland (6 – 7 December 2000)

  • Provide substantive contributions to the analytical work carried out by the Secretariat;

  • Participate in the two sets of “hearings” are scheduled to be held with civil society (6 – 7 November 2000) and with the business community (11- 12 December 2000) at UN Headquarters, New York. The aim will be to receive proposals that civil society and the private sector would like to see implemented and to take note of their concerns by enabling a discussion with delegations, UN Agencies and other stakeholders on relevant issues contained in the agenda of financing for development.

  • Apply for ad-hoc consultative status to the Preparatory Committee if you do not already have consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, by contacting the FfD Secretariat;

  • Attend and contribute with innovative policy ideas, in the scheduled meetings of the Preparatory Committee that will hold its second session from 13 to 23 February 2001 and its third session from 30 April to 11 May 2001.

Contact us:
Financing for Development Coordinating Secretariat
Two United Nations Plaza -Room DC2-2386
Tel.: 212-963-2587, Fax: 212-963-0443
Website: www.un.org/esa/analysis/ffd
Email: ffd@un.org
Attention: Mr. Oscar de Rojas, Executive Coordinator

ECOSOC
UN Establishes Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues

     The United Nations Economic and Social Council today adopted by consensus a resolution to establish a Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues – an unprecedented event in the international community. Today’s action was the latest step in a long process initiated in 1993, when the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights first proposed such a forum.
The Permanent Forum will break new ground. Indigenous representatives, not only representatives of Member States, will, for the first time, participate in a high-level forum in the United Nations system. Indigenous peoples have been seeking representation on the international level since they first approached the League of Nations early in the twentieth century.

     When the United Nations General Assembly adopted the programme of activities for the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004), it identified the establishment of the Forum as one of the main objectives of the Decade. The General Assembly also called for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People to be observed annually on 9 August... United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Coordinator of the International Decade, welcomed the decision as a “historic step forward”. “The Permanent Forum”, she said, “promises to give indigenous peoples a unique voice within the United Nations system, commensurate with the unique problems which many indigenous people still face, but also with the unique contribution they make to the human rights dialogue, at the local, national and international levels.”

From ECOSOC Press Release 5932, 31 July 2000

Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection
of Human Rights: Fifty-second session
THE REALIZATION OF ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS
Globalization and its impact on the full enjoyment of human rights
by J. Oloka-Onyango and Deepika Udagama

3. …the Special Rapporteurs have selected two dominant themes for this preliminary report which we believe extend to the core of the phenomenon of globalization and its impact on the full enjoyment of human rights. Our first concern is with the institutional framework that has been developed to pursue the essential goals of globalization...the multilateral institutions (MLIs), which include the Bretton Woods agencies and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and of course with their relationships to individual States within the international community. Secondly, we examine the related questions of equality and non-discrimination, with a particular focus on the effects of globalization on the situation of women.

44. The negative impact of globalization – especially on vulnerable sections of the community – results in the violation of a plethora of rights guaranteed by the Covenants… Developing States are, more often than not, compelled by the dynamics of globalization to take measures that negatively impact on the enjoyment of those rights… The critical question is the following: Can international economic forces that are engineered by both State and private actors be unleashed on humanity in a manner that ignores international human rights law?

45. The view that States or other actors cannot be held responsible for violations of economic, social and cultural rights is seriously being questioned as a flawed premise, both empirically and conceptually. …in its General Comment on the nature of the States parties’ obligations under the ICESCR . (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights declared that concrete legal obligations are imposed by the Covenant under article 2. At a minimum, States parties are obliged to realize minimum standards relating to each of the rights utilizing available resources in an effective manner. …the Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1997) drawn up by groups of experts, and increasingly gaining in currency before United Nations forums… recognize a triad of obligations – to respect, protect and fulfill. As such, when State conduct falls short of these obligations, or fails to achieve the required level of realization of rights, it is responsible for violating the rights in the ICESCR. Violations can occur either through commission or omission... It is also significant that the Maastricht Guidelines recognize violations by States resulting from their failure to exercise due diligence in controlling the behaviour of non-State actors, such as transnational corporations, over which they exercise jurisdiction, when such behaviour deprives individuals of their economic, social and cultural rights.

60. It is abundantly clear that those human rights bodies and specialized agencies that have focused attention on the impact of globalization on human rights have been ably assisted by NGOs that monitor and are well versed in global economic trends.

65. … the rules of international trade, investment and finance require urgent reform. At the same time, if this study has shown nothing else, it is that the institutions that currently make the rules that govern the processes of globalization as we know them also require reform.

The full text of this useful report (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2000/ )is found at http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/