Guyana, Norway to lead UN on financing for development

Last Updated on Saturday, 26 December 2015, 20:59 by GxMedia

Ambassador George Talbot (File photo/ UN)

The Permanent Representatives of Guyana and Norway have been appointed by the President of the United Nations General Assembly to lead a UN process on financing for development, the Foreign Ministry here announced on Wednesday.

Ambassador George Talbot of Guyana and his Norwegian counterpart, Ambassador Geir Pedersen, have been mandated to conduct inclusive and transparent intergovernmental consultations, with the participation of major institutional stakeholders, on all issues related to the forthcoming third international conference on financing for development, including the date, format, organisation and scope of the conference. The conference will likely be held in 2015.

 With the United Nations currently embarked on the elaboration of a post-2015 development agenda as a successor to the Millennium Development Goals framework that has anchored the Organisation’s work in development since 2000, an agreement on the means of implementation, including on financing, will be critical to the efficacy and successful implementation of the new agenda. The financing for development conference is expected to provide a holistic framework for mobilizing resources from a variety of sources and for the effective use of financing for the achievement of the sustainable development goals that will be at the core of the post-2015 development agenda.

Public financing, including ODA, will remain a key component of global financing for development. The leveraging of financing from other sources, including new private sector investments, unlocking domestic resources, harnessing trade flows, and curbing illicit outflows will be among the important questions that the conference will address. The forthcoming conference will follow up and build on the Monterrey Consensus adopted at the International Conference on Financing for Development held in 2002 in Monterrey, Mexico, and the Doha Declaration which emanated from the 2008 Doha conference on the subject.

Guyana’s appointment is a reflection of the respect that the country enjoys at the United Nations, in particular on issues of sustainable development. It affords a special opportunity to contribute to the effort to update and strengthen the multilateral financing framework that could help to translate the post-2015 development agenda into meaningful outcomes for member countries.

This latest Guyana-Norway collaboration at the multilateral level follows on the already established bilateral cooperation arrangement between the two countries in the promotion of sustainable development and the combat of climate change.