March 19, 2024
 
 
 
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Advocacy Services

DFI has taken a leading role in helping developing and developed country governments, international organisations and CSOs to advocate for more and deeper debt relief, and more and better quality aid, in order to enable developing countries to reduce poverty, develop their national economies and achieve the MDGs. The advocacy support involves drafting briefings and background papers for policymakers to debate, facilitating and chairing debates to ensure they produce concrete focussed policy recommendations, organising press conferences and media interviews and writing press briefings and releases, setting up lobbying meetings with key policymakers in G8 and other donor countries and international organisations, and liaising with other stakeholder groups to build effective coalitions for international change.

In particular, DFI has provided the secretariat for a highly effective low-income country voice on debt issues, the HIPC Finance Ministers Network. It has also recently been providing support to developing country representatives at the G20 meetings, the BWI Spring and Annual Meetings, the Accra High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, and Ministerial meetings sponsored by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Organisation International de la Francophonie (OIF). This support has had a major impact on the content of HIPC and MDRI debt relief initiatives, the Accra Agenda for Action on Aid Effectiveness, and recent G20 communiques.


Latest work DFI carried out in this area:

Q4 2012 - New Rules for Global Finance FSB-Watch Coalition and Global Financial Governance Report

New_RulesNew Rules for Global Finance has established a coalition with issue-specific campaigns on bank legislation, commodity/food speculation and hedge funds, tax havens and shadow banking, and sovereign debt, to monitor more closely the work of the FSB and G20 on regulating global private financial flows. To support the coalition, it has expanded and updated the www.fsbwatch.org website as well as the www.new-rules.org website, and appointed “translators” to provide concise user-friendly summaries of FSB and other documents for advocacy purposes. DFI will help New Rules to facilitate meetings in April in Washington to plan a Global Financial Governance report, assessing the governance, accountability, transparency and impact on inclusive and sustainable development of the G20, IMF, World Bank and FSB; as well as a meeting in Basel in June to plan more specific activities on the FSB and G20. 


14-15 November 2012 - ODI CAPE Conference: Development Cooperation in Tomorrow’s World

ODI_LogoDFI chaired a session of this conference focussing on the role of South-South cooperation. Featuring panellists from Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa, the session discussed the comparative advantages of South-South cooperation and what more can be done to enhance evaluation of results. The conference also had sessions on climate finance, philanthropy and social impact investment, recipient country perspectives on different actors, and how these fit with the current focus on maximising results from development cooperation. 


25-26 June 2012 , Accra - Why Debt Management Capacity Building Is Still Vital

World_BankDRI spoke on this topic at the World Bank Debt Management Facility Stakeholders Forum organised in Accra. The presentation focussed on lessons for best practice in building capacity, and especially emphasised the need for “downstream” (country-level) financing to be provided to other organisations to complement the “upstream” role of the World Bank in the DMF. To download a copy of the presentation click here. To see the wider programme and summary of proceedings of the forum click here


 

14-15 May – Development Cooperation for Sustainable Development

ECOSOCDFI supplied a resource person for the UN Development Cooperation Forum symposium in Brisbane. Participants discussed the need for the post-2015 Development Agenda to be based on economically, socially and environmentally sustainable development, and what this would mean for delivery of aid, financing and partnership mechanisms, mutual accountability and the international architecture. 


20 April 2012 - DFI supports Commonwealth-OIF Outreach with G20 on Food Security

ComsecOIFDFI has contributed to a joint Commonwealth Secretariat – Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie paper on food security, which presents the perspectives of their smallest, poorest and most vulnerable member countries. The paper was presented at an outreach meeting with Mexico, which encouraged a continued focus on food security during Mexico’s G20 Presidency. Drawing on their own experiences, developing country participants ranked food insecurity among the most urgent priorities to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable growth. They called for a cohesive set of measures to increase food production and access, including securing longer-term commitments for investment, financial and technical assistance; adapting new research; and developing tools to help increase productivity for smallholders and promoting long-term sustainable use of natural resources. 


20 April 2012 – LIC Finance Ministers Demand Fair Representation in G20

Spring_Meeting_2012_2Francophone LIC Finance Ministers met in Washington DC under the co-presidency of Cambodia and Cameroon. At a press conference, they demanded fair representation in the G-20 and the Financial Stability Board, further progress on innovative financing, debt relief, and aid quantity and quality. Combined with a substantial lobbying process by the Global Campaign Against Poverty, these discussions resulted in a rapid reconfirmation of Africa’s seats at the G-20 table. For a copy of the communiqué, click here


18-19 October 2011 - DCF Luxembourg Symposium Discusses Mutual Accountability, Catalytic Role of Aid

DFI participated at the Development Cooperation Forum meeting in Luxembourg, speaking on the need for strong global mutual accountability mechanisms on development cooperation, without which developing countries cannot hold donors accountable. DFI's presentation is available here. For the conference programme and other papers (mainly on the role of aid in catalysing microfinance, investment and tax revenue) click here


24 September 2011- Workshop Creates FSB Watch Network

New_RulesA workshop organised at the BWI Annual Meetings agreed on the creation of a network to monitor and analyse the Financial Stability Board (FSB Watch Network) to complement the FSB Watch website. Various participants including DFI agreed to mobilise key stakeholder groups (governments, UN agencies, trade unions, CSOs, expert researchers) to support the network, which will operate in coalition with networks already working on key issues (governance, transparency, commodity speculation, tax havens, bank regulation, debt workouts). The workshop was part of the joint AERC-Brookings-DFI-New Rules project on FSB funded by the Ford, C.S. Mott and Connect US Foundations. 


23 September 2011 – High-Level Panel Demands Improvements in FSB Governance

BrookingsAn independent high-level panel composed of experts from developed and developing countries, and hosted at the Brookings Institution, launched a report demanding improvements in the governance of the Financial Stability Board. These included clarification of its legal status; greater transparency, accountability and disclosure; and stronger representation of developing countries. The panel was supported financially by the joint AERC-Brookings-DFI-New Rules project on FSB funded by the Ford and Connect US Foundations. At the meeting to launch the report, the FSB Secretary General welcomed the recommendations as a valuable input to the FSB's own report on governance which will be presented to the G20 Summit in November. 


23 September 2011 - New website to examine FSB operations and governance

FSBAt the height of the international financial crisis and following the G-20 London Summit in 2009, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) was established to formulate and oversee the implementation of regulatory, supervisory and other financial sector policies. Despite its importance, there is extremely limited knowledge as to how it operates or is governed. DFI has worked with the Brookings Institution, New Rules for Global Finance, and the African Economic Research Consortium to establish the FSB Watch website that examines and promotes efforts towards an effective, inclusive, transparent and accountable global regulation of the financial system. 


15 April 2011 - Workshop on Financial Stability Board and Development

New_RulesDFI helped to facilitate a packed CSO workshop on how the FSB impacts on global development, launching a New Rules for Global Finance-AERC-Brookings project on the FSB, at the BWI Spring Meetings. Participants agreed next steps in the construction of a global CSO network to monitor and lobby the FSB, which New Rules will support. See the video and presentations of the workshop. 


13-16 April 2011 - OIF Ministerial Meeting of 28 Low-Income Countries Backs Financial Transaction Tax

OIFDFI continued its support for this ministerial forum, which met at the BWI Spring Meetings on 15 April. A highly successful press conference after the meeting resulted in extensive press coverage and discussion of Ministers’ conclusions with G20 Ministers and officials. The press communiqué can be found here. Further support to OIF is planned in Q3 around the BWI Annual Meetings. 


27-28 January 2011 - DFI Resource-Person at GCAP G8-G20 Advocacy Planning Meeting

GCAPDFI was funded by the Heinrich Boell Foundation to attend this meeting of more than 100 global development CSOs, planning their engagement with the G8 and G20 for 2011, in order to analyse implications for cooperation between CSOs and low-income countries. For regular updates by the Foundation on the G20, click here.

 

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