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News in RSSFinancing for development (FfD) is about how domestic and international resources contribute - or don't, in some cases - to ensure that all countries are able to meet the Millennium Development Goals and eradicate poverty. It encompasses aid, trade, debt relief, international and national finance, domestic budgeting and global governance. At the Monterrey Conference in 2002, wealthy and poor countries pledged concrete actions towards funding development. Progress was reviewed in Doha between November 29 and December 2, 2008. Ahead of this U.N. summit, a parallel process of multi-stakeholders, the U.N. Development Cooperation Forum, took place in July. Even though gender equality is essential to ensure poverty eradication, women's empowerment, and effective development, the FfD process has not yet led to any substantial change in the feminisation of poverty. As 2008 was a year of stock-taking, activists seized their chance. Gender was high on the FfD agenda.

Accra Action Agenda
Better known by its acronym AAA, it has been drafted through a broad-based process of dialogue at both country and international levels, carried out through the work of Working Party on Aid Effectiveness and Donor Practices (WP-EFF) and its joint ventures, regional preparatory consultations, the partner country contact group, the Advisory Group on Civil Society, and the non-DAC donor group (including China, India, the Gulf States).

The views of more than 80 partner countries, some 60 civil society organisations (CSOs), all DAC (Development Assistance Committee of the OECD) donors, and many non-traditional providers of development assistance informed the final draft AAA (dated July 25, 2008). It is expected that the AAA can support accelerated progress in aid effectiveness.
Accra Agenda for Action
DEVELOPMENT: Crucial Role for EU at Accra Meet on Aid
Q&A: "Where Women Can't Thrive, MDGs Are in Jeopardy"
Monterrey Consensus
The United Nations organised the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in 2002. More than 50 heads of state and 200 ministers of finance, foreign affairs, development and trade participated, along with representatives of the civil society, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the U.N. The outcome is known as "The Monterrey Consensus".

The Monterrey Consensus included commitments for "new development aid" from rich countries, as well as agreements on debt relief, the fight against corruption, public-private partnerships, and Official Development Assistance (ODA). Since its adoption, it has become a landmark in global development.
Major Donors Cut Assistance
Migrant Earnings to Be Counted as Foreign Aid?
Japan's More Is Not Enough
Paris Declaration
Three years later, more than 100 ministers, heads of agencies and other senior officials representing donor and recipient governments and multilateral aid organisations signed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

The Paris Declaration sets out an agenda to make aid more effective and efficient by reducing duplication, transaction costs, and misdirected aid.

In some quarters, the Paris Declaration is almost synonymous with aid effectiveness; it is expected that aid will be effective and achieve development outcomes when the principles are observed for government sector aid. However, there continue to be criticisms and alternative views, particularly from aid-focused non-governmental organisations.

Implementation of the Paris Declaration is also questionable; concrete targets set for 2010 (such as an increased proportion of aid to be untied; establishment of "mutual accountability" mechanisms in aid recipient countries; and for two thirds of aid to be delivered in the context of so-called programme approaches rather than projects) seem unlikely to be met, according to data on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) website.
The Paris Declaration
Special Report on Aid Harmonisation
2006 Survey
2008 Survey

POLITICS: U.N. in Final Push for 2015 Development Goals
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS - A special U.N. summit of world leaders, scheduled to take place next year, is expected to make "a final push" to help reach the world body's widely-touted development goals by the targeted date of 2015.
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DEVELOPMENT: To Grab, Or To Invest
Analysis by Paul Virgo
ROME - The World Food Security Summit in Rome this week opened up a dispute between what may be investment in farmland to some, but is seen as land grab by others.
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DEVELOPMENT: Hunger Summit’s Failure Exposes Grim Reality
By Paul Virgo
ROME - There are two main ways the flop of this week’s United Nations World Food Security Summit in Rome - which has been snubbed by the world’s top leaders, has failed to deliver binding aid commitments, or to set a target date for the eradication of hunger - is being read.
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DEVELOPMENT: Farmers Not Invited to Food Summit?
By Sabina Zaccaro
ROME - World farmers are not part of the official delegations at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food summit on food security that opened here Monday. But they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis.
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DEVELOPMENT: Scandinavia, Ireland Tops in Humanitarian Aid
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - Of the 22 major western donor nations, Norway, Sweden, Ireland and Denmark responded most effectively to humanitarian emergencies around the world in 2008, according to the latest of three annual assessments of humanitarian aid released here Tuesday by Development Assistance Research Associates (DARA).
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HAITI: Clinton Revives Modest Optimism for Island's Economy
Analysis by Garry Pierre-Pierre*
NEW YORK - Since his appointment last spring as United Nations special envoy to Haiti, former U.S. President Bill Clinton has been called, half-seriously, "president of Haiti" and "viceroy".
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DEVELOPMENT: Hunger and Conflict Go Hand in Hand
By Suzanne Hoeksema
UNITED NATIONS - Countries emerging from conflict need more international assistance to rebuild their food production, since hunger and scarcity may prompt a return to fighting, United Nations and development officials warned this week.
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HEALTH: U.S. Urged to Double Aid to Global Projects
By Matthew Berger
WASHINGTON - As the effort to achieve universal health coverage within the U.S. crawls forward in Washington, a new report by a coalition of global health organisations details how the U.S. can "help lead the world to universal access to comprehensive health care in developing countries".
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DEVELOPMENT: Scandinavia Leads World in Pro-Poor Policies
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Scandinavian countries pursue policies that are most effective in promoting development in poor nations, according to the latest edition of the annual "Commitment to Development Index" released by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD).
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HEALTH: One in Five Infants Still Lacks Essential Vaccines
By Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON - A record 106 million infants were vaccinated in 2008 - the highest rate of immunisation ever - according to a report released Wednesday in Washington, but NGOs are calling for an increase in funding to fill the gap affecting the world's poorest nations and communities.
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DEVELOPMENT: Anti-Poverty Fight Needs More Than Money
By Suzanne Hoeksema
NEW YORK - "Investing in children and securing their rights is one of the surest ways to ending poverty," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told 1,500 students at the United Nations International School in New York City Friday as part of the Stand Up Take Action Campaign organised by the U.N. Millennium Campaign.
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DEVELOPMENT: More Than a Billion Going Hungry
By Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON - The global economic crisis has led to an historic increase in hunger and undernourishment in the world's poorest countries, with broad consequences for political security and stability, according to two reports released for World Food Day, observed Friday.
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DEVELOPMENT: Meeting MDGs "Not Rocket Science"
By Andrea Bordé
UNITED NATIONS - Achieving an ambitious set of anti-poverty benchmarks will take much more financing from rich countries, Jeffrey Sachs, the special advisor to the U.N. secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), warned Monday.
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DEVELOPMENT: Resource Crunch Signals Larger Ecological Crisis
By Zarrín Caldwell
WASHINGTON - How would development programmes look if viewed from the position of scarcity, especially the scarcity of food, water, and energy?
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CLIMATE CHANGE: Food Supply Hangs in the Balance
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada - Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity's grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this week.
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SOMALIA: President Calls for More Aid in U.S. Visit
By Zach Rosenberg and Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the leader of Somalia's beleaguered Transitional Federal Government (TFG), appealed here this week for increased U.S. and international security and humanitarian assistance for his efforts to defeat hard-line Islamist rebels and reconstruct his war-torn nation.
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Q&A: "Latin America Faces a Tough Balancing Act"
Suzanne Hoeksema interviews ALICIA BÁRCENA, head of ECLAC
UNITED NATIONS - Chile is leading the way towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), while Honduras is seriously lagging behind, says Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
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ECONOMY: "Put Africa on the G20 Agenda in Pittsburgh"
By Stephanie Nieuwoudt
CAPE TOWN - With South Africa being the only African country with a seat on the Group of 20 (G20), while serving as co-chair of the working group on reforming the International Monetary Fund, it has "a moral obligation towards the continent to call for more responsible management of the global financial system".
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FINANCE: Aid Losses Prompting "Development Emergency"
By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS - A new U.N. report warns that the world is likely to suffer more economic and environmental disasters if the richest countries fail to shoulder their share of development aid to poorer nations.
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Aid is one part of the FfD agenda and civil society is mobilising to build up pressure to make it better. The new aid buzzwords are effectiveness, quality, ownership and harmonisation. In 2008, we witnessed the review of the new aid architecture agreed by donors in Paris in 2005. Accra hosted the aid effectiveness assessment in September 2008. From November 29 through December 2, Doha hosted the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to review the Monterrey Consensus. In Doha, it was decided that the U.N. would hold a conference on the global financial crisis and its impact on development. The time and place is yet to be announced.

Terraviva
The South Speaks Out
Financial Meltdown

Women's Development and Environment Organisation
Civicus - World Alliance for Citizen Partnership
The Reality of Aid
UN Economic and Social Council - ECOSOC
Financing for Development
Better Aid
IPS is not responsible for the content of external sites
News in RSS
WOMEN'S HEALTH - A SMART INVESTMENT IN TROUBLED TIMES
    by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
POOR COUNTRIES RAILROADED INTO WEAK COMPROMISE AT UN FINANCIAL SUMMIT
    by Sylvia Borren
INDIA: PUSHING FOR CHANGE
    by Syeda Hameed
DEVELOPMENT FINANCING CONFERENCE: THE INEQUALITY-POVERTY NEXUS
    by Cecilia Alemany and Anne Schoenstein
A LIFE FREE OF VIOLENCE IS EVERY WOMAN'S RIGHT
    by Nicole Kidman
FINANCING GENDER EQUALITY: A CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE
    by Ines Alberdi

25 February - 7 March
Commission on the Status of Women

April 20-25
UNCTAD XII - Accra, Ghana

June 12-13
Development Cooperation Forum, Stakeholder pre-meeting - Rome, Italy

June 18-21
CIVICUS 8th World Assembly - Glasgow, Scotland

July 2-3
First Biennial Development Cooperation Forum - New York

Aug 31-Sep 1
CSO Forum on Aid Effectiveness - Accra

September 2-4
3rd High Level Conference on Aid Effectiveness - Accra

Nov 29-Dec 2
Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Monterrey Consensus - Doha, Qatar.

This page includes independent IPS news coverage which is part of a partnership with UNIFEM to mainstream gender in reporting about Financing for Development