The spokesperson for the President of this annual General Assembly told journalists at UNHQ/NY on Tuesday that the President is, indeed, disappointed that there was not sufficient high-level attendance at the meeting that opened Tuesday.
The President’s “disappointment”, the spokesperson said, “reflects is the fact that he was expecting them, probably based on assurances, to be here at a high level. In fact, if you may remember the whole process of scheduling this particular high-level debate or dialogue, the original date was 22nd and 23rd of October. Then, because of the meetings in Washington of the World Bank and the IMF, this had shifted to 23-24 in order to allow for those meetings to conclude and to have finance and development ministers, central bankers here, and also high-level representation from the international, financial and other relevant institutions. We’re not talking about the financial institutions only but, for example, World Trade Organization, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), etc., the ones that are relevant for FfD [Financing for Development]. So, in that context, yes there was expectation for something higher, thus the expressed disappointment”.
Of course, there is a problem in explaining the purpose of the two-day High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development — just look at this jargon: “The two-day high-level event is a key element of the preparatory work mapped out by the Assembly to hold the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus in the second part of 2008 in Doha. That Review Conference is supposed to assess progress made on the key elements of the Monterrey consensus, which, as you may remember, was adopted in 2002. The idea there is to reaffirm goals and commitments made and share lessons learned … The two-day Dialogue that we have here now is to provide impetus to preparations for the Review Conference and also to provide some substantive elements as to what that Review Conference is going to look like”.
That’s the way the UN talks — and it’s hard to sell that.
The problem, the President of the UN General Assembly told the meeting, is that promises have been made, but not kept. The spokesperson reported that the President said: “if implemented, existing commitments to finance development were enough to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, even in Africa”.
The Monterrey Consensus, he explained, had two prongs: “developing countries [were supposed to] adopt comprehensive national strategies, then donors must deliver on commitments to provide additional assistance”.
The spokesman also noted that the President had told the meeting: “If this — the greatest anti-poverty partnership in history — was insufficient to break from ‘business as usual’, many developing countries and campaigners around the world would be left without hope”.
Some 30 Ministers and Deputy Ministers are reportedly attending the meeting (out of 192 UN member states).
Is it any surprise that the attendance is disappointing? Here you have a meeting called to show that various parties have not lived up to their commitments, while the UN and all its various actors prefer to either (1) sound alarms, or (2) proclaim victory.
“Disappointment”, while diplomatic, is not compelling.