Doha: Financing for Development Conference

At the end of November 2008, world leaders met in Doha, Qatar for a UN-hosted International Conference on Financing for Development. The summit was a follow-up to the 2002 conference held in Monterrey, Mexico, where 50 heads of state signed on to the historic Monterrey Consensus, committing themselves to a variety of development goals including a pledge by many wealthy countries to spend 0.7% of their gross national products on development.

In Doha six years later, leaders gathered under much different circumstances. Although a slew of new commitments on various aspects of development assistance had been made since Monterrey, donor countries were collectively falling short on delivering many of these commitments. Moreover, the global financial crisis compounded the urgency of the situation, with poor countries standing to be hit the hardest by the economic crunch and donor countries in danger of retreating on their commitments to increase assistance.

ONE focused its efforts at Doha on first encouraging the G8 countries to reiterate their promises to increase development assistance; second, encouraging donors to embrace creative tools and innovative financing mechanisms to mobilize resources for development; and third, pushing new donors (especially oil exporting countries) to join in the effort and dedicate more resources towards global poverty reduction.

Although the final outcome document from Doha was not as ambitious as ONE had hoped, the "Doha Deal" struck on the last day of the conference reaffirmed important previous pledges on both the quantity and quality of development assistance (albeit weakly), included some important language on innovative financing mechanisms, and opened the way towards a strengthened follow-up process for financing the Millennium Development Goals.