Social Justice in Global Development
SocDevJustice

 NEW  HUMAN NEED - NOT CORPORATE GREED!

Civil Society Declaration to the High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development, United Nations, New York, 7-8 December 2011

By Eva Hanfstaengl/ SocDevJustice and Kevin Dance/ Chair of the NGO Committee on Financing for Development 

Civil society worldwide are criticizing the financial sector for taking advantage of deregulation to run big risks through reckless lending, create huge speculative bubbles and pay themselves princely bonuses. When the bubbles burst, banks were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few conditions and insufficient corrective regulation attached. The swift and massive response of governments of the richest countries to bail out banks and other private financial institutions with more than three trillion US dollars of public guarantees and funds stands in stark contrast to their failure to respond decisively to the unabated crises of hunger, poverty, and marginalization that has afflicted the majority of the peoples in the world, including in some of the developed countries themselves.  

Civil society organizations gathered at the high level dialogue of the General Assembly therefore demanded global economic structures and policies that put peoples´ rights first, that respect and promote human rights and social and environmental justice, that ensure decent work opportunities which are based on employment opportunities, respect for labor rights, social protection and social dialogue. The UN should hold a second international conference in order to comprehensively review the international financial architecture and the gaps in global economic governance. The ECOSOC-BWI High-Level meeting should become a more effective and action-oriented instrument. In addition civil society sees a need for a new mechanism within the UN, which ensures implementation of the internationally agreed development goals and brings together all institutional stakeholders. In the longer term, the G-20, with its restricted membership, should be replaced by a selective permanent body under the auspices of the UN with regional representation and a rotation system that can deal with pressing economic and financial issues in a comprehensive way.  

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Civil Society Declaration adopted submitted to the Official Review Conference on Financing for Development on 2 December, 2008

We, the members of more than 250 civil society organizations and networks from around the world gathered before the official Review Conference on Financing for Development in Doha, Qatar, 25 - 27 November 2008 under the theme "Investing in people centered development". We reviewed the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus and discussed pressing new challenges and debated possibilities for innovative financing. The Monterrey conference emerged out of a financial crisis in Asia and Latin America in the 1990s. But it was also guided by a perceived crisis in development: the need to examine the shortfall in resources required for countries to achieve international agreed development goals including Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to cut the number of people living in extreme poverty by half by 2015, improve social conditions such as health and education, employment, raise living standards, support gender equality and women's empowerment, and protect the environment.

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Civil Society Key Recommendations, 30 August, 2008

Analyses carried out by civil society organizations for the review process on Financing for Development (FfD) highlight the fact that governments are facing a double challenge at the up-coming FfD Conference in Doha: On the one hand, they have to find ways of substantially increasing the transfer in real terms of public resources to the South, while ensuring that public revenue is generated and mobilised for poverty eradication, decent work, achieving gender equality, and improving the livelihoods of the population. On the other hand, they have to agree to take steps to address the global imbalances and inappropriate economic and trade policies that are fuelling the current global crises in the food and energy sectors, and in the financial markets, and severely compromising development prospects for the countries of the South. For one, it has now become clear that agriculture, food security and food sovereignty need to be put back on to the development agenda. Further, the challenge of financing climate adaptation and mitigation must be addressed. In this regard, international agreements must be based on the principle of additionality in relation to already promised resources for development.

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List of Signatories of the "Civil Society Key Recommendations for the Doha Draft Outcome Document. For the full list of signatories click here >>>

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Civil Society Benchmarks Document, 27 June, 2008

Since the 2002 Monterrey Conference, financial flows to support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed goals, especially in the South have remained grossly inadequate, unpredictable, and volatile. The rapid growth of global capital flows has not automatically led to a corresponding increase in means available for poverty eradication and decent work. Worse, recurrent crises and dynamics in the international financial system have had grave consequences for many developing countries. The political conditions for creating an enabling environment for development, linked to the six thematic areas of the Monterrey Consensus, have, by and large, not materialized

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