United States of America
Statement of the United States of America Post-2015 Session on Issues from the Financing for Development negotiating session Delivered by U.S. Coordinator for the Post-2015 Development Agenda, Tony Pipa April 21, 2015 I’d like to start by thanking all four co-facilitators for their leadership throughout this process. Your close and considered partnership is helping us ensure alignment of both processes to make our universal agenda a reality, and to achieve the ambitious ends that each of the four co-facilitators articulated this morning. Taken together, your opening remarks provided an inspirational and compelling frame for our discussions this week and in the upcoming months, and we look forward to constructively and collectively rising to that charge. Last week’s FfD drafting session demonstrated that while we may vary in some of our ideas on how to get there, we all come to the table with the same overarching purpose: to end extreme poverty and fully promote sustainable and inclusive development in all its dimensions: social, economic, and environmental. As you have pointed out, this is a transformational agenda, and our approach on means of implementation must keep pace. With the end of extreme poverty and promotion of sustainable development as our common goals, we trust you as co-facilitators to guide us towards an outcome at Addis that reinforces and supports an ambitious and transformative Post-2015 sustainable development agenda.
Our sessions last week reaffirmed the relevance of our consensuses at Monterrey and Doha while recognizing the evolution required by our changing world and broadened agenda. The transformative nature of universality, which elevates the shared responsibility of our agenda, pushes us to expand and renew our global partnership in innovative ways.
We were heartened to experience general agreement in numerous areas, including the importance of domestic resource mobilization and the need to combat illicit finance; the continued importance of official development assistance, especially for its catalytic effect and its importance in focusing on those most in need, including fragile and conflict-affected states; the importance of capacity building in different dimensions; the need to mobilize all types of resources and optimize their value, as the ambition of our agenda goes beyond the capabilities of any one actor; and especially the need for inclusion and gender equality, if this agenda is truly to leave no one behind. We also heard wide calls for science, technology, and innovation and data to be deployed as key enablers of development – to open new opportunities for knowledge-based economies and as a result, inclusive economic growth.
We heard that STEM - science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - educational institutions, transparent regulations and the rule of law, research and development, robust financial systems, respect for property rights, and strong public-private partnerships are necessary for innovation to flourish.
While we all agreed that the FfD draft was a good starting point and we should retain the positive momentum we have built on areas we agree on, we also recognized that we have areas that we
believe need improvement, and look forward to your continued leadership as co-facilitators to help us reach consensus in the short time remaining. You laid out several different aspects for discussion that we look forward to discuss more deeply at different junctures throughout the week. At this point I just want to close by saying that we will continue to look to the four co-facilitators for your invaluable guidance on moving us forward in both processes, coordinating to create coherence and avoid duplication of efforts to ensure a single, comprehensive, holistic, modern approach where all the financial and non-financial means of implementation can be addressed within the outcome of Addis to support and accelerate progress on all three dimensions of sustainable development to be articulated within the post-2015 development agenda. Thank you.
Our sessions last week reaffirmed the relevance of our consensuses at Monterrey and Doha while recognizing the evolution required by our changing world and broadened agenda. The transformative nature of universality, which elevates the shared responsibility of our agenda, pushes us to expand and renew our global partnership in innovative ways.
We were heartened to experience general agreement in numerous areas, including the importance of domestic resource mobilization and the need to combat illicit finance; the continued importance of official development assistance, especially for its catalytic effect and its importance in focusing on those most in need, including fragile and conflict-affected states; the importance of capacity building in different dimensions; the need to mobilize all types of resources and optimize their value, as the ambition of our agenda goes beyond the capabilities of any one actor; and especially the need for inclusion and gender equality, if this agenda is truly to leave no one behind. We also heard wide calls for science, technology, and innovation and data to be deployed as key enablers of development – to open new opportunities for knowledge-based economies and as a result, inclusive economic growth.
We heard that STEM - science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - educational institutions, transparent regulations and the rule of law, research and development, robust financial systems, respect for property rights, and strong public-private partnerships are necessary for innovation to flourish.
While we all agreed that the FfD draft was a good starting point and we should retain the positive momentum we have built on areas we agree on, we also recognized that we have areas that we
believe need improvement, and look forward to your continued leadership as co-facilitators to help us reach consensus in the short time remaining. You laid out several different aspects for discussion that we look forward to discuss more deeply at different junctures throughout the week. At this point I just want to close by saying that we will continue to look to the four co-facilitators for your invaluable guidance on moving us forward in both processes, coordinating to create coherence and avoid duplication of efforts to ensure a single, comprehensive, holistic, modern approach where all the financial and non-financial means of implementation can be addressed within the outcome of Addis to support and accelerate progress on all three dimensions of sustainable development to be articulated within the post-2015 development agenda. Thank you.
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