State of Affairs: Post 2015 - MOI, Global Partnership for Development and Technology Facilitation Mechanism

The last month has seen two processes try and complement each other these being the Financing for Development and the Post 2015 Development Agenda's Means of Implementation and Global Partnership for Development.

Means of Implementation 
I have made a number of suggestions on HOW there could be more synergy in previous blogs. The process is stuck at the moment until this is resolved. Three additional meetings for Finance for Development have now been added to the agenda in the next 6 weeks. The additional dates are the 11-15 May, 26-29th of May and the 1-5th of June. A total of 14 additional days of negotiations.

There is much more to be discussed in the FfD process but by the end of the first new session an agreed approach does need to become solid for the rest of the negotiations to move forward.

Financing for Development
It is unclear what the follow up process will be. Will it be through the HLPF? Will it be through the similar mechanism that was set up after Monetary which was a high level meeting of the Economic and Social Council with the World Bank, the IMF and WTO?


I am not a fan of either follow up process. I believe that a better way would be to have a finance prepcom for the HLPF around April or May every year and in addition keep the EcoSoc session with the Bank, IMF and TWO. The FfD process is more than a mechanism to fund the SDGs and any follow-up on mechanism needs to reflect that.

Global Partnership for Development
As I have said in previous blogs traditionally the FfD Global partnership for Development has been primarily around government to government commitments. There is now a move to expand this to multi-stakeholder platforms how the accountability mechanism s are set up for this is critical and I made some suggestions int he paper i did for UNDESA.

Corporate Reporting
There were some interesting text in the zero draft of FfD that dealt with corporate reporting and some concerns were raised about compulsory reporting on Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) issues. This was dealt with very effectively in the Rio+20 process by suggesting that companies listed on stock exchanges should have to apply the rule of report or explain. The explain can mean that a company requires more time or building capacity to address the issue of reporting but this should NOT be controversial. Further suggestions on the Post 2015 Financial fitness Test can be found here.

Technology Facilitation Mechanism
Another issue from Rio+20 is that of the Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM). A process was set up in the UNGA to explore this but it didn't get as far as was hoped for at the time.  The Secretary General has suggested the way forward is through:
  • the mapping of existing frameworks through the online platform;
  • improved UN cooperation on technology transfer; and
  • the need to promote capacity building
The main disagreement between developed and developing countries is that the developed countries argue that Intellectual Property (IP) is mostly owned by the private sector and developing countries quiet rightly say that much of the development was through initial public funds. This has been the stand off since 1992 on why there hasn't been more effective work done in this area.

These Secretary Generals ideas can be built on. I would like to see for each goal a UN Agency or Programme assigned as a Task Manger for technology Facilitation - they can map out existing frameworks and technology in their ideas, an inter agency group established under the Secretary Generals Chief Executive Board (CEB) could then work to ensure lessons learnt inform an online platform and report to member states through the High Level Political Forum. 

Indicators


The Statistical Commission - Interagency and Expert Group (IAEG) have set the date for their first meeting which will be June 1st and 2nd

The IAEC will present their framework and indicators to the Statistical Commission in March 2016 with the set of indicators. These will still have to go to ECOSOC and then the UN General Assembly in November and December 2016.

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