Press Release | January 29, 2002
New York - After two weeks of intensive negotiating, countries reached agreement on a wide range of issues that puts development at the centre of global financial reforms and paves the way for the International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Monterrey, Mexico on 18 - 22 March 2002.
The agreed Monterrey Consensus presents "an opportunity to build on global partnerships" - a need emphasized by the events of 11 September and the dramatic shortfalls in resources required to reach internationally agreed upon development goals - said Preparatory Committee co-chair H.E. Ambassador Shamshad Ahmad (Pakistan) at a 28 January press conference.
However, Monterrey is not to be viewed as "a stand alone event, but the first building block in a long and continuing process", Ambassador Ahmad stressed. The point is an important one to the Group of 77, representing over 130 developing countries, and to non-governmental organizations who had fought for such an acknowledgement in the agreement.
The sixty-four paragraphs of the Monterrey Consensus tackle trade, aid, debt, investment, strengthening national capacities and coherence of global and regional financial structures. "Divergent positions" between the developed and developing countries remain, said Ambassador Ahmad. But these positions now have equal representation in a common ground for discussion and a coherent document that allows participating countries to follow up language with action in Monterrey.
Without progress in the area of financial resources, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, universal goals agreed to by 147 Heads of State and Government and 191 nations at the Millennium Summit - such as cutting in half extreme poverty by 2015 - are in jeopardy.
Co-chair H.E. Ambassador Ruth Jacoby (Sweden) pointed out that the FfD process is "unique". She noted that it brings the United Nations together with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and representatives from civil society and business. The participation of all stakeholders, from the very beginning through to the final hours of negotiations, had "never been done before". In contrast to many other global conferences, the Monterrey meeting will not be about negotiating a text but instead about charting new territory in development financing and global financial systems, Ambassador Jacoby indicated.
Negotiations over paragraph 34 and 34bis resulted in agreement on the need for "a substantial increase" in ODA and for building support for increasing aid by urging developed countries "to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7% of GNP as ODA", a long-standing benchmark approved in recent UN conferences. Secretary-General Annan had called for a doubling of current ODA by $50 billion at the opening of the Preparatory Committee meeting on 14 January 2002, a figure NGOs and other stakeholders were eager to see included in the Consensus. However, while objections from some developed countries led to compromise, Ambassador Jacoby stressed that the paragraph showed the direction in which the world was committed.
Countries also agreed on a "follow up International Conference to review the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus", whose format would be decided upon no later than 2005. For developing countries, a time frame in which world leaders would reassemble to take stock of implementing the results from Monterrey was important. But other parties argued that it was too early to set a fixed date for the next stage of the Consensus' implementation. Regardless of specific dates, all participants are agreed that the progress on development financing begun in Monterrey will continue on afterwards, Ambassador Jacoby noted.
Further opportunities to discuss the way forward will come through the roundtable format in Monterrey, which brings Heads of State and Government together with civil society leaders, CEOs and international financial institution chiefs for two days of open dialogue. But developing countries, the initiators of the FfD Conference, were pleased with language on trade and other institutional reforms that will give them a chance to more fully integrate into the world's financial system, Ambassador Ahmed added.
The agreement also represents a first in recent UN global conferences, with an outcome document fully drafted and agreed to before the actual conference. The benefits to delegates and stakeholders from across the political map are immediate. Instead of negotiating a text, governments are freed to make concrete proposals and substantive announcements to improve development finance and the integration of all nations into the world economy.
FfD, the first-ever global Conference focused entirely on development financing, is aimed at mobilizing the resources needed to boost the economic growth of developing countries and to fulfill internationally agreed social and humanitarian goals. Another distinctive feature of the Monterrey meeting will be national representation at a high-level by finance and foreign ministries, as well as by Heads of State and Government, and their engagement with representatives from civil society, private sector and international financial institutions also participating at Monterrey.Press Release:
