ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development

The ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development follow-up (FfD Forum) is an intergovernmental process with universal participation mandated to review the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (Addis Agenda) and other financing for development outcomes and the means of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The event brings together heads of state and government, ministers and high-level government officials as well as senior officials of international organizations. Civil society organizations, the business sector and local authorities will also be represented.

Additional information on preparations for the Forum, including the programme, outcome, substantive background, stakeholder participation and side events, will be made available here: un.org/development/desa/financing/what-we-do/ECOSOC/financing-development-forum/FFD-forum-home

The UN does not charge a fee for registration and participation. For any questions, please contact the Financing for Sustainable Development Office at ffdforum@un.org.

Register here: un.org/development/desa/financing/what-we-do/ECOSOC/financing-development-forum/registration

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org.

Understanding the Impact of SDG Investments by Refining Sustainability Reporting

2022 Financing for Development Forum side event: Understanding the impact of SDG investments by refining sustainability reporting

Thursday, 28 April, 8 am to 9 am (EST)

This event is being held as part of the programme for the SDG Investment Fair. For registration, please visit this link.

For more information about the Fair, visit un.org/development/desa/financing/events/april-2022-sdg-investment-fair.

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace, and Security, please visit ngocdps.wordpress.com.

Exploring Digital Finance’s Real Promises and Challenges for Development

Exploring Digital Finance’s Real Promises and Challenges for Development

Join the NGO Committee on Financing for Development on Wednesday, 27 April 2022, 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. EDT for this official side event to the 2022 ECOSOC Financing for Development Forum.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qc-6orjsuGdFhyWHfljp7ZNxV526Onoc7

Speakers:

Ms. Cina Lawson, Minister of Digital Economy and Transformation of the Republic of Togo (TBC)
Dr. Purva Khera, Economist, International Monetary Fund
Mr. Johannes Ehrentraud, Senior Advisor, Financial Stability Institute, Bank for International Settlements
Ms. Sofie Blakstad, CEO of hiveonline and author of Fintech Revolution: Universal Inclusion in the New Financial Ecosystem
Ms. Anneleen Vos, Seionr Economic Policy Officer, International Rescue Committee
Mr. Prabhat Labh, CEO, Grameen Foundation India
Ms. Mercy Buku, Program Leader, Toronto Center

Moderator: Mx. Anita Thomas, Chair, NGO Committee on FfD, Representative to the UN, Women First International Fund

Co-sponsors: ManUp Campaign, Change Management Solutions, Sisters of Charity Foundation, African Development Interchange Network, IBVM

Background:

The UN Secretary General’s task force on digital finance in its report titled “People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future,” spells out the transformational impact digital finance can have on sustainable development. Providing relief for millions around the world, supporting businesses, and protecting jobs and livelihoods, digital finance served as a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. A World Bank tally of policy responses to the pandemic finds that at least 58 governments in developing countries used digital payments to deliver COVID-19 relief, of which 36 countries made payments into fully transactional accounts that were being used for saving beyond simply withdrawing cash. According to the GSMA, international remittances processed via mobile money increased by 65 percent in 2020.

Proponents of digital finance highlight its strong capabilities to reduce transaction costs, the potential of Artificial Intelligence to provide fair and equitable treatment of credit applicants, and the scalability of cloud technology, through the use of blockchain technology, to allow consumers to transact remotely and seamlessly across multiple platforms.

While the experience of COVID-19 has proven that digitalization can transform economies and lives, it needs to be shaped with both its advantages and potential risks in mind in order to bring everyone into the digital age. For technology to benefit everyone, private sector innovation must be supported by the appropriate public goods such as the public provision of foundational infrastructure, access to electricity, mobile and internet coverage.

As in the case of any disruptive technology, without combining technological advances with sound policy measures, digital technology cannot deliver on its potential to meaningfully advance financial inclusion for everyone, including the more than 2 billion unbanked people globally. Delivering on promises to advance financial inclusion can only be considered meaningful when the account holder has a fully functional account that they utilize to save, make payments, obtain manageable credit, and mitigate economic risks and is simply not utilized to withdraw cash from cash transfers from the government, which is overwhelmingly the case at this time.

By examining successful strategies that maximize digital finance’s potential while minimizing risks to the financial sector, government revenues, and at-risk populations, attendees will gain a better understanding of how digital finance can sustainably advance development objectives.

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CoNGO Notes: The NGO Committee on Financing for Development is a Substantive Committee of the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations.

Redefining Leadership, Re-Envisioning Faith and Reconstructing Humanitarianism

Dear Religions for Peace Leaders,

We are so pleased that many of you have already registered for the UN Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW 65). If you have not already registered on the NGO/CSW platform, please be informed that the event will be live-streamed on 25 March at 9AM ET from our Facebook page.

Kindly be sure to select our event, “Redefining Leadership, Re-Envisioning Faith, and Reconstructing Humanitarianism” on 25 March here. To join the webinar, please select the button “Join Meeting,” which will appear exactly at 9:00 am ET.

Program Agenda

Moment of Silence

PART I: WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS

Prof. Azza Karam, Secretary General, Religions for Peace

PART II: A CONVERSATION ON WOMEN IN PUBLIC LIFE: REDEFINING LEADERSHIP

Moderated by Prof. Azza Karam, Secretary General, Religions for Peace

Dr. Mary McAleese, Former President, Republic of Ireland; Advisor to the Religions for Peace Secretary General
H.E. Sima Samar, Former Minister of Women’s Affairs; Member, Religions for Peace Standing Commission on Advancing Gender Equality, Afghanistan
Mr. Humberto Carolo, Executive Director, White Ribbon Campaign Canada, MenEngage Network, Religions for Peace Standing Commission on Advancing Gender Equality, Canada
Hon. Ela Gandhi, Trustee, Gandhi Development Trust and Religions for Peace Co-President, South Africa
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President, Union for Reform Judaism and Religions for Peace Honorary President, United States

PART III: A CONVERSATION ON RE-ENVISIONING FAITH AND RECONSTRUCTING HUMANITARIANISM

Moderated by Grand-Mother Marie-Josée Rankin-Tardif, President, Kina8at Together; Elder from the Anicinape (Algonquin) Tradition, Canada

Rev. Clement Joseph, Secretary General of the Social Mission of Haitian Churches; Secretary General, Religions for Peace-Haiti, Haiti
Rt. Rev. Francisco Duque-Gomez, Anglican Bishop and leader of Religions for PeaceColombia, Colombia
Ms. Nageeba Hassan Tegulwa, Board Member, Women of Faith Uganda, Executive Member, African Women of Faith Network; Board Member, ACRL; Member, IWCC, Uganda
Ms. Fatima Hallal, Junior Researcher, Hartford Seminary-Interreligious Relations; Member, International Youth Committee, Lebanon

PART IV: Q&A

PART V: CLOSING REMARKS

Prof. Azza Karam, Secretary General, Religions for Peace

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Mr. Pietro Bartoli at pbartoli@rfp.org or Ms. Lexie Ruth Mitchell at lrmitchell@rfp.org.

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief, please visit unforb.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-NY, please visit ngocsw.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Vienna, please visit ngocswvienna.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Geneva, please visit ngocsw-geneva.ch.

Civilian Safety in Armed Conflict: Strategies and approaches for direct prevention of violence

Civilian Safety in Armed Conflict: Strategies and approaches for direct prevention of violence

In this first of two webinars exploring existing efforts to improve the safety of civilians during armed conflict, we at PHAP will be discussing “primary” prevention programs, which focus on advocacy, armed actor behavior change, and direct engagement with armed actors, either by the humanitarian organization or by facilitating this engagement by communities. We will hear from civil society organizations and UN agencies about their approaches to primary prevention – what the main considerations are and in which situations they are effective. We will also discuss what other organizations can learn from their approach and the implications this has for the humanitarian community as a whole.

The event will be held virtually, and participants will need to connect via Zoom. Simultaneous interpretation will be provided in Spanish, English, and French. Register here!

Background:

In armed conflict, the humanitarian community continues to witness highly disturbing situations where the safety of civilians is ignored or not addressed, or where civilians are purposely targeted by parties to a conflict. While protection services continue to provide much-needed support to vulnerable and marginalized groups and individuals and respond to protection concerns with remedial service provision, limited progress has been made on contributing to civilians’ safety in armed conflict. As Hugo Slim expressed it in the recent Oxford Lecture Series on Protection: “When you look at protection’s track record through wars, protection is at its weakest here, in this challenge in protecting people from physical harm and unlawful devastating attacks on their persons and homes.”

In the last few years, there has been a push by both humanitarian agencies and donors to examine how we can prevent and protect civilians from physical harm during conflict. Key questions remain: what does prevention mean and look like within our protection of civilians programming? Where does civilian safety “fit” within the humanitarian architecture?

There are, however, several existing approaches to mitigate and reduce risk in armed conflict for the civilian population, including how to prevent violence from happening in the first place and how to strengthen civilian self-protection strategies through community-based initiatives. This two-part webinar series aims to provide an overview of the range of strategies currently undertaken by national and international civil society organizations, UN agencies, and donors, providing examples of good practice, and discuss how such efforts can be advanced and systematized in the wider humanitarian community.

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace, and Security, please visit ngocdps.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org.

Decreased Access to Safe Water in Asia: Challenges to Human Security

The Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) will organise a webinar on ‘Decreased Access to Safe Water in Asia: Challenges to Human Security’ in conjunction with the World Water Day–2021.

Scheduled to be held on 22 March 2021 from 12 PM to 2 PM (Bangkok time), the webinar will highlight the importance of access to water as a human right and its challenges to human security and will focus on the problems related to the right to safe and clean water and challenges to human security.

The panelists of the webinar will include representatives of UN agencies, NGOs working in the field of water, sanitation, and hygiene issues, as well as church and ecumenical organisations.

Those who are interested in participating in the webinar, kindly register using the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrdO6qpjwpGdTg_D6dlkhiGiUzSqPJBhnp

For more details, please refer to the Background Information note here.

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values, and Global Concerns-NY, please visit csvgc-ny.org.

Civilian Safety in Armed Conflict: Community-based protection, early warning, and conflict preparedness

Civilian Safety in Armed Conflict: Community-based protection, early warning, and conflict preparedness

In this webinar, the second of a two-part series exploring existing efforts to improve the safety of civilians during armed conflict, we at PHAP will be discussing “secondary” prevention programs, in particular those focusing on strengthening communities in conflict-affected areas to reduce the risk of harm and mitigate the effects of armed conflict on civilian populations. We will hear from NGOs active in situations of armed conflict around the word about how they approach building capacity for prevention in communities – what the main considerations are and in which situations they are effective. We will also discuss what other organizations can learn from their approach and the implications this has for the humanitarian community as a whole.

Register here!

Background:

In armed conflict, the humanitarian community continues to witness highly disturbing situations where the safety of civilians is ignored or not addressed, or where civilians are purposely targeted by parties to a conflict. While protection services continue to provide much-needed support to vulnerable and marginalized groups and individuals and respond to protection concerns with remedial service provision, limited progress has been made on contributing to civilians’ safety in armed conflict. As Hugo Slim expressed it in the recent Oxford Lecture Series on Protection: “When you look at protection’s track record through wars, protection is at its weakest here, in this challenge in protecting people from physical harm and unlawful devastating attacks on their persons and homes.”

In the last few years, there has been a push by both humanitarian agencies and donors to examine how we can prevent and protect civilians from physical harm during conflict. Key questions remain: what does prevention mean and look like within our protection of civilians programming? Where does civilian safety “fit” within the humanitarian architecture?

There are, however, several existing approaches to mitigate and reduce risk in armed conflict for the civilian population, including how to prevent violence from happening in the first place and how to strengthen civilian self-protection strategies through community-based initiatives. This two-part webinar series aims to provide an overview of the range of strategies currently undertaken by national and international civil society organizations, UN agencies, and donors, providing examples of good practice, and discuss how such efforts can be advanced and systematized in the wider humanitarian community.

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace, and Security, please visit ngocdps.wordpress.com. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Migration, please visit ngo-migration.org.

Covid-19 Vaccination: How churches can ensure that stateless people are not left behind

Covid-19 vaccination: How churches can ensure that stateless people are not left behind

Link to join the webinar on Monday 15 March @ 13:00-14:30 CET: oikoumene.org/live

As any virus, Covid-19 is an invisible threat which has changed our lives and affected our economies a great deal. The current Covid-19 pandemic has been a good reminder that the right to health is a universal right, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 25). It is a right that every individual is entitled to, irrespective of his or her legal status.

The pandemic is also a reminder that we need to work together as a global family to escape this global health crisis. This means that vaccination should be accessible to all, ideally as soon as possible before the virus mutates and becomes resistant to existing vaccines.

In these times of health crisis, governments have been confronted with difficult decisions to make, including avoiding economic disaster while at the same time finding a decent response to the pandemic. It is almost natural that their primary concerns are their nationals. Yet, there are many individuals living on the margins in their territory, such as undocumented migrants, refugees, and stateless people.

Stateless people, i.e. people with no legal identification, have been in most cases overlooked and forgotten. Invisible, yet living in our midst.

How can governments ensure that an invisible threat like Covid-19 does not disproportionately affect people and communities who have been always been overlooked and treated as invisible in other times? The pre-existing vulnerability of stateless people, i.e. their invisibility, put them at greater risk of being left behind when national public health campaigns (such as vaccinations) are planned.

How can churches and ecumenical bodies ensure that the vaccinations are accessible to all, including stateless people and other people undocumented people living on the margins during this time of pandemic?

The current pandemic is an important reminder that we are all equally vulnerable in the face of the current pandemic: Covid-19 does not discriminate, but our responses to it does.

Speakers include (alphabetical order):

Mr. Amal de Chickera, Co-Director, Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion
Dr. Ronald Lalthanmawia, Programme Coordinator for Prophetic Diakonia, Christian Conference of Asia (CCA)
Ms. Mira Neaimeh, Regional Executive, World Student Christian Federation – Middle East
Ms. Marcella Rouweler, Legal Officer, UNHCR Statelessness Section
Mr. Gorden Simango, Director, All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC)

The webinar will be moderated by Rev. Prof. Dr Cornelia Füllkrug-Weitzel, member of CCIA.

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Migration, please visit ngo-migration.org. For more information on the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, please visit rngos.wordpress.com.

[Monthly Meeting] NGO Committee on Financing for Development

Dear Colleagues,

We hope all of you are doing well. This is a reminder for the next NGO Committee on Financing for Development meeting that will take place by Zoom on March 3 from 1:00- 3:00 pm EST.

Registration for access to the Zoom link available here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0td-GspjsrHtfM9kwJmPggiJiHQMwHdCKc

Agenda includes:

Philipp Erfurth, Economic Affairs Officer, UN Financing for Sustainable Development Office will be providing a briefing on FfD matters
Briefing on the International Rescue Committee report “COVID-19 and Refugees’ Economic Opportunities, Financial Services and Digital Inclusion”
Anneleen Vos | Senior Policy Officer – Economic Programmes, International Rescue Committee and Prof Dr Hans-Martin Zademach , Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Migration, please visit ngo-migration.org.

UN Webinar on the COVID-19 Impact on Transfer Pricing

The COVID-19 outbreak is not only a health crisis, but a jobs crisis, a humanitarian crisis and a development crisis of unprecedented scale and dimension and it demands unprecedented efforts, including to finance the response and recovery.

The UN Webinar on the COVID-19 Impact on Transfer Pricing will be a 4-hour virtual learning event on the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the policy and administrative aspects of the transfer pricing analyses for developing countries in their efforts to mobilize domestic resources for response and recovery. Given the relevance of the topic to stakeholders from all regions and multiple disciplines, the event will be open to the public. The forthcoming update of the Manual on Transfer Pricing for Developing Countries, approved by UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters in its 21st Session, will be considered in light of the COVID-19-related crisis.

Register here!

The webinar is designed to:

• Give participants a better understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted business’ value chains and how the rapid changes and economic downturn have impacted the transfer pricing position of taxpayers and posed a challenge to tax administrations in assessing transfer prices under these circumstances.

• Identify some of the specific issues faced by developing countries on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the transfer pricing position of their taxpayers and suggest practical solutions to these challenges.

• Give particular attention to the issue of the lack of local comparables to undertake the transfer pricing analysis based on the arm’s length principle. It is acknowledged that this issue is not exclusive of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has been exacerbated by it.

• It is acknowledged that while many businesses have incurred losses, some may have experienced extraordinary gains. It is important for developing countries to identify these different circumstances and have a better understanding of how to deal with extraordinary losses, as undue treatment of losses can further erode the tax base.

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CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, please visit ngocsd-ny.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-Vienna, please visit ngocsdvienna.org.

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