From billions to trillions: Is the Financing for Development Agenda universal and inclusive?
The origin of the Financing for Development Agenda
The United Nations Millennium Declaration of September 2000 marked the resolve of the international community to put an end to poverty and to strive for social dignity for all. This culminated in the formulation of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be attained by 2015. The Declaration was followed by an International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in 2002 in Monterrey, which focused on mobilizing the financial means for implementation associated with the set of MDGs. It resulted in an international commitment to generate an additional fifty billion US dollars for development assistance. Furthermore, it called upon philanthropic and commercial financiers to accelerate their contribution to the development goals; and appealed to the developing countries to bolster their domestic revenues generation. In July 2015, the international United Nations community assembled in Addis Abeba to make a final evaluation of the progress made on the financial means of implementation generated since the Monterrey Conference. The Addis Abeba Conference was also forward looking in seeking a commitment to mobilize adequate financial means of implementation for achieving the recently formulated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have financing requirements estimated at between 200 and 600 billion US dollars up to 2030. This note focuses on the means of implementation generated since the Monterrey Conference for attaining the MDGs in the Sub Saharan African (SSA) countries. The issue at stake is whether the Monterrey Consensus constituted an inclusive action agenda, thus creating an equal chance for all developing countries to benefit from the additional financial resources mobilized. And more precisely, whether the most vulnerable SSA countries had equal chances to attract additional financial flows compared to the Asian Emerging Economies.
Read the whole Working Paper here.
This is ASC Working Paper 123 / 2015.
About the author(s) / editor(s)
Marion Eeckhout pursues her PhD project about institutional gaps in state-business relations on a parttime basis since January 2012. She joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1991 as a senior technical advisor on micro and macro economic issues. From 1981 to 1991 she worked for the UN and private consultancy firms on long term and short term missions in several countries in East and West Africa as a technical consultant on micro and macro economic issues. Her research interests pertain to micro-macro linkages in poverty reduction strategies; the role of social capital in state-business relations; and institutional political economy.
Posted on 2 December 2015, last modified on 18 December 2015