Agenda / Press Release / Background Papers / Logistics / Process / Participant List / Photographs / Meeting Summary

Press Release

FFD MULTI-STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATIONS ON SYSTEMIC ISSUES

November 16-17, 2004

Washington, DC

Co-sponsored by:

Foreign Ministry of Sweden, UN Financing for Development Office, UN Foundation, New Rules for Global Finance Coalition

For immediate release: November, 15 2004, 18:00 GMT 

United Nations Consultations to Produce Recommendations

To Reform International Financial Markets

On November 16-17, the New Rules for Global Finance Coalition in collaboration with the United Nations’ Financing for Development Office will convene the first in a series of meetings in Washington DC to develop new policy recommendations for international financial markets and their regulation.  The reforms are aimed at increasing the flow of capital to the developing world and preventing systemic financial crises such as those recently suffered in East Asia, Turkey and Argentina.  The agenda includes proposals to provide credit in times of crises, debt bankruptcy procedures, risk management, prudential regulation of financial markets, and governance of international financial institutions and regulatory bodies including the IMF, World Bank, BIS and the Financial Stability Forum.  The consultations are aimed at producing a series of policy recommendations to be discussed at the UN’s next High-Level Dialogue scheduled for 2005.

The meeting will include Executive Directors and senior staff of the IMF and the World Bank, Finance and Foreign Ministers, academics, civil society experts and private sector representatives.  Subsequent meetings will be held in Lima, Nairobi and New York.  These consultations are a follow up to the 2002  UN Financing for Development summit held in Mexico that produced the Monterrey Consensus agreement calling for a reform of the international financial system.

“This is an unprecedented effort to bring people from across all sectors to reach a consensus on concrete policy measures,” said Jo Marie Griesgraber, Chair of the New Rules for Global Finance Coalition.  

New Rules for Global Finance is a coalition of individual scholars and organizations with interests in development, human rights, labor and the environment. The Coalition is dedicated to the reform of rules and institutions governing finance in order to stabilize the world economy, reduce poverty and inequality, uphold fundamental rights, and protect the environment.  For more information on the consultation visit http://www.new-rules.org/ffdconsultation.htm.

Contacts:  

Jo Marie Griesgraber, New Rules for Global Finance, (202) 277 9390

Randall Dodd, Financial Policy Forum, (202) 486 3131