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UN crisis conference postponed, outcome may lead to institutional reforms
28 May 2009
The President of the General Assembly announced yesterday that the Conference on Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development has been postponed and will now be held on 24 – 26 June. According to diplomatic sources, the postponement is due to the fact that several heads of state that wanted to take part could not come on the original dates of 1-3 June. Another factor is that there is little time left to negotiate an outcome document, since negotiations on the outcome document only began last week.
The UN Conference is a direct outcome of the UN Conference on Financing for Development held in Doha last November, and an important victory for developing countries and CSOs. Developing countries are now keen that the conference results in specific commitments. One of the co-facilitators for the conference, the Ambassador of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, expressed in a meeting with CSOs in NY on April 28th that developing countries want to prevent this meeting from becoming “yet another UN conference whose outcome is simply calling for another meeting. We want to see specific deliverables and go back home with specific outcomes to report on.”
After intense negotiations among main country groupings during the week of 11 May, a new draft outcome document was released on 18th May. The new draft is brief on the causes and impacts of the crisis but rich in proposals for "prompt and decisive action" in four areas:
- making the stimulus work for all;
- containing the effects of the crisis and improving resilience for the future;
- improved regulation and monitoring;
- and reforming the international financial and economic governance.
Eurodad is participating in international civil society efforts to achieve a will continue to focus on the priority issues for which we advocated in the context of the Doha conference. This includes pressing for tax justice, debt and reform of the international economic and financial institutions. An updated policy position on all these issues in the context of the financial and economic crisis was elaborated at the last EuroIFInet meeting in Brussels and has since been used in our advocacy efforts.
The European cross-sectoral network on the combined crises has drafted a document with key policy demands "Fix the crisis, not the bank's profits" focusing on financial regulation that richer countries should adopt. Marta Ruiz from Eurodad has been actively involved in the meetings of the cross-sectoral network in Paris and Frankfurt in the first half of this year.
Links
- Eurodad Update on UN Conference on Financial Crisis
- Eurodad's brief analysis of the UN Conference draft outcome document
- Overview of the UN - ECOSOC High Level Meeting