IMF's Lagarde and World Leaders Will Attend Historic Ethiopia Summit
The United Nations, International Monetary Fund
(IMF), World Bank and finance ministries are meeting in New York to finalize an
agreement for the Financing for Development Conference (FfD) to be held in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July. The summit seeks to tackle global poverty and
features the IMF's Christine Lagarde, heads of state, business leaders and
humanitarian groups such as Jubilee USA Network. Pope Francis has committed to
attend the Sustainable Development Goals Conference to follow up on the
commitments from the Financing for Development process.
"These negotiations are
critical for billions of people living in poverty," said Eric LeCompte,
executive director of the religious development organization, Jubilee USA
Network. LeCompte and Jubilee USA are involved in negotiating the FfD
outcome document. "This is a rare opportunity to create a binding global
plan to drastically diminish poverty in our lifetime."
This summer's conference is the third Financing
for Development summit. The first summit was held in 2002 in Monterrey, Mexico.
It produced the "Monterrey Consensus," which laid out six areas of
development financing. The 2008 summit in Doha, Qatar, led to commitments from
developed nations to continue aid to developing nations and to address a number
of systemic global economic concerns that contribute to global poverty such as
debt, trade and tax issues. As the United Nations Millennium Development
Goals expire, current negotiations continue to focus on
these "systemic" issues in the form of domestic
resource mobilization, or supporting developing countries to raise more
revenue in their countries.
"The Financing for
Development outcomes can curb corruption, tax evasion and unsustainable debts
in the developing world," noted LeCompte, who serves on UN expert groups
that focus on global finance. "If we succeed in changing tax, trade and
debt policies, we can raise trillions of dollars to address poverty."
Poor countries pay several times as much
on debt payments as they receive in official aid. There are also efforts to
address so-called "illicit
financial flows" through the FfD process. Developing
countries lose nearly $1 trillion each year to these flows, which include
corruption, tax evasion and crime, according to the research organization Global
Financial Integrity. The recent Africa Union high-level panel led
by former South African president Thabo Mbeki noted that Africa loses $50
billion annually to such flows. Another aspect of "domestic resource
mobilization" is transparency and accountability in the budgets
of countries. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
developed principles for responsible
lending and borrowing. The final agreement in Addis Ababa could
standardize such accountability principles across the globe.
"Lending, borrowing and
budget transparency is key," said LeCompte, who helped UNCTAD develop the
principles. "Adopting responsible lending and borrowing raises billions of
dollars and costs nothing."
Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of more than 75 US organizations and 400 faith communities working with 50 Jubilee global partners. Jubilee's mission is to build an economy that serves, protects and promotes the participation of the most vulnerable. Jubilee USA has won critical global financial reforms and more than $130 billion in debt relief to benefit the world's poorest people. www.jubileeusa.org