Sudanese President to participate in UN summit of financing for development

November 22, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir at the top of a high-level delegation, will participate in the second United Nations Summit on Financing for Development (FfD), held in Doha, Qatar, November 29 – December 2.

The Doha Summit is to review the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus reached in March 2002. Those goals of Monterrey meeting included universal primary education, halving world poverty, and reducing child deaths by two-thirds – all by 2015.

Sudan’s ambassador to Qatar, Ibrahim Abdullah Fagari said today that Sudan will participate in the follow-up to the International Summit on Financing for Development with a delegation led by President al-Bashir.

The Sudanese delegation will include Minister of the Presidency, Major General Bakri Hassan Salih, Minister of Foreign Affairs Deng Alor, Minister of International Cooperation Abdul Saleh Tegani Fadil and the Sudan Permanent Envoy to the UN, Ambassador Abdel-Mahmoud Abdel-Halim.

The agenda for the 2nd Global Conference on Financing for Development is primarily defined by the issues and results of the first FfD conference. There the governments adopted the so-called Monterrey Consensus which contains decisions on the following issue areas: mobilisation of domestic resources, foreign direct investment, trade, debt, international financial and technical co-operation; systemic issues: coherence within the international monetary, financial and trade systems.

However, this “consensus” remained vague and placed the primary responsibility for mobilising additional resources and for structural changes on the developing countries. In Monterrey, the industrialised countries’ governments refused to commit to any binding obligation to increase their development assistance, to further debt cancellation, and to introduce innovative financial instruments.

(ST)