Author: Wolfgang Obenland

EU Ministers met on May 26 to finalise the EU’s position ahead of the crucial UN Financing for Development (FFD) summit in Addis Ababa. The EU position reveals that the Ministers prefer to promote a controversial and problematic reliance on private finance rather than tackling crucial systemic issues such as the need for global tax reform. Other issues addressed during the meeting were the existing aid commitments as well as tax justice. However, according to the head of Tax Justice and Financing for Development at Eurodad, Tove Ryding, there is a very real risk that the international negotiations will collapse if the EU Ministers don’t become more ambitious. Read more …

Statement by Tessa Khan, Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development during the Joint Session between FfD and Post-2015 Processes: Interactive Dialogue with Major Groups and Other Stakeholders (23 April 2015).

In both the financing for development negotiations and the post-2015 development process, attention is given to trade policies as an instrument for sustainable development, both within the World Trade Organisation and preferential trade and investment agreements. The question of how to align those policies with our objectives here requires us to urgently re-order the hierarchy of obligations to which many Member States currently subscribe. It is a question of policy coherence at its most stark. Read more…

by Manuel Montes, South Centre

Developing countries—emerging, middle-income, and least developed—will be going to the Third Financing for Development (FfD) Conference in Addis Ababa in July 2015 with a set of demands to reform and rebalance the international financial system in order to facilitate the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Read more…

By Wolfgang Obenland, Global Policy Forum

The outcome of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) will affect the ability of states to fulfill their human rights obligations, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets being set for the post-2015 agenda. Both human rights and the SDGs are similar in that they are universal, and entail individual as well as common responsibilities, taking into account varying national capacities to achieve them. Read more…

by Wolfgang Obenland, Global Policy Forum

For the first time, the international development agenda, through the FfD3 and post-2015 processes, is considered universal, applying to every country. Current deliberations, however, reveal different understandings of what universality means. Read more…

The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and Christian Aid have published an interesting paper on a set of preliminary global indicators for the SDGs, which was prepared for discussion by the UN Statistics Commission at its meeting this week. For the original discussion paper, click here. For a longer background paper on the proposal, click here.

The CA/CESR working paper can be downloaded in pdf format here. Read more…

By Bhumika Muchhala (Third World Network)

The United Nations General Assembly negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda kicked off on 19-21 January 2015 with Member States putting forward the broad contours of what they envision for the next 15 years of international development cooperation. Read more…