UN Financing for Development Forum (FfD)

The third FfD Forum will be convened by the President of ECOSOC from April 23-26, 2018 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The event will bring together ministers, high-level officials from ministries of finance, foreign affairs and development cooperation, Executive Directors of the World Bank and IMF, as well as senior officials from the UN system, including the major institutional stakeholders, and other international organizations. Civil society organizations, the business sector and local authorities will also be represented.

The ECOSOC Bureau has adopted the overall framework of the tentative programme for the 2018 FfD Forum. The Bureau will decide on the further details of the programme in the course of the preparations for the event. Building on the success of the 2017 FfD Forum, the programme of the 2018 FfD Forum includes similar building blocks. Certain refinements and new elements are introduced with the view to attracting a larger number of ministers, representatives of international financial institutions and other stakeholders, as well as to increasing the interactivity of the discussions. The 2018 FfD Forum will begin with the ministerial segment, which, on 23 April, will feature the Special High-Level Meeting with the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. It will provide an opportunity for the heads of international trade and financial institutions as well as their intergovernmental bodies to interact with their United Nations counterparts on issues of common interest in the follow-up to the FfD outcomes.

The ministerial round tables, to be held on 23 and 24 April, will respond to the mandate in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda for the FfD follow-up process to promote the sharing of lessons learned from experiences at the national and regional levels. Each round table will bring together a balanced mix of ministers from developed and developing countries, as well as high-level officials of international organizations and other stakeholders to share their steps taken towards implementation of commitments contained in the Addis Agenda and other FfD outcomes. Member States will also have the opportunity to express their views through the general debate.

The interactive dialogue with intergovernmental bodies of major institutional stakeholders will take place on 24 April. As a continuation of the Special High-Level Meeting, discussions will engage United Nations Ambassadors and Executive Directors of the Bretton Woods institutions and representatives of WTO and UNCTAD intergovernmental bodies in a focused discussion on the coherence, coordination and cooperation in the follow-up to the FfD outcomes as well as a systemically important theme selected jointly by the institutions involved.

The expert segment, which will take place from 25 to 26 April, will focus on all seven action areas of the Addis Agenda, as well as other specific issues that Member States may mandate the FfD Forum to address. It will also feature a dialogue with stakeholders, such as civil society and the business sector, which will complement extensive participation of these stakeholders throughout the Forum.