United Nations Radio

Members of civil society have just wrapped up their own meeting ahead of Saturday's opening session of the Financing for Development meeting.

Donn Bobb caught up with John Foster, the principal researcher with the North-South Institute, and a former chair of Social Watch International, an international NGO, to talk about the concerns of civil society on the issue of financing for development.

Foster: Well, I think the overall concern at this point is that the Financing for Development review conference is a success; that it is not subverted by those who want to remove discussion of key macroeconomic and systemic issues from the UN. We want the UN, as a universal political body, to be the place where such discussions and debates and decisions take place.

Bobb: And whom have you expressed your concern to?

Foster: Today we expressed our concern to the President of the General Assembly. He recently signified his interest in hearing our concerns and responding to them. And we naturally welcomed that interest. So we have presented a short letter to him summarizing our concerns and a longer document with more recommendations, our declaration.

Bobb: And what are you hoping will come out of this Doha conference?

Foster: Well I think there are two possibilities. Our preference is that the governments see this as a moment of transformation, tht the economic system and its governance has to be changed. And that means the locust of decision has to be changed as well. It can't continue to be in Washington with the Bank and the Fund. It must be, as we said, at a universal institution, the United Nations. Our fear is that there are not one, but several countries, and certainly the most powerful country, the United Statesm,which basically opposes the UN's role in macroeconomic decision-making wants to keep it in a much smaller elite group and has from the beginning of these negotiations taken that position resisting forward action, meaningful forward action, on the part of the United Nations.

Bobb: The heads of a couple of BretonWoods institutions won't be turning up at this meeting. What impact is that likely to have on the outcome of this meeting?

Foster:The whole purpose of financing for development was to bring everyone into the tent - the Bank, the Fund, the WTO, UNCTAD and other relative agencies and institutions along with business and civil society. The basic principles of financing for development are inclusive and we firmly support them. To our mind, it is absolutely reprehensible that the president of the World Bank would not attend this meeting since the mandate of the World Bank largely has to do with development issues and that is precisely what we are discussing here. As for the IMF, their future is under intense debate. Within the last two or three months, the IMF was at the point of collapse, we could say, thinking about selling its gold in order to pay its staff. Now with the crisis, there are more countries coming to the IMF for assistance. But surely, the debate over the conditions of that assistance and the role of the IMF has to be had and it should be had here.

UN Radio's Donn Bobb is in Doha and filed this report.

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