The FfD Chronicle

As the scheduled 3rd intersessional from NY was starting, the co-facilitators opened the meeting with some procedural updates and then closed the rest of the session to informals mode with no observers allowed. The rest of the intersessional is therefore closed informals mode. In this context we share the 41st issue of the FfD Chronicle.

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Once again, we're calling it like it is: the IFIs are not equipped to tackle ecological breakdown—and we’ve got the evidence to back it up.

Remember the good old times before the tariff wars, before the rise of fundamentalisms across the globe, before a widespread mistrust of multilateralism because a privileged group of countries manipulated it for their own interests?

Following yesterday’s discussion on systemic issues was like watching some nightmarish rendition of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Can we please just be honest about what’s really happening? This issue also discusses how the three previous conferences on Financing for Development, regardless of the technicalities, managed to keep a high standard for civil society access.

The trade section in the zero draft offers some positive entry points for addressing some of the current challenges restricting the role of trade as a development tool for the Global South. The comments from Member States yesterday during the Third Prep Com confirm this. However, the level of ambition must be raised in order to ensure that such challenges are addressed

The FfD Chronicle is puzzled that an issue as important as the assurance of transparency and inclusion of this process has remained in the drawers of the Chairs, Vice-Chairs and Bureau of the 4th International Conference on FfD for too long. We are already halfway through the Third Preparatory Committee Session (3rd PrepCom), and there is an understated assumption that it is okay to undermine civic space as long as everyone pretends that some enforced technicalities fell from the sky, with no one being truly responsible for such regression.

As civil society, we laboured through the long zero draft, trying to make sense of often contradictory messages, to provide a comprehensive response. We hope governments will review our inputs carefully. In the meantime, here is a summary!