LDC Watch was invited to participate in the South Asia Workshop on Financing for Development (FfD) on 7-8 June 2015 in Colombo, Sri Lanka; co-convened by Regions Refocus 2015, Women and Media Collective, Asian Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women with the support of UN Women and International Planned Parenthood Federation – South Asia Region.
The workshop was a strategic convening of government and civil society representatives from South Asia to feed into the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) scheduled on 13-16 July 2015 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The key objectives were to:
- Build regionally grounded understandings and strategies toward the FfD3 and its linkages to the Post-2015 sustainable development agenda and
- Strengthen substantive dialogue between civil society and governments to advance progressive policies, reflecting feminist, youth, and other marginalized perspectives, in national, regional, and global policy fora. Participants included a combination of government – across finance and social development ministries – and civil society, across social movements.
LDC Watch Advocacy Co-ordinator Prerna Bomzan highlighted LDC-specific issues on the non-delivery of ODA commitment of 0.15-0.20% of GNI; total and unconditional debt cancellation based on unsustainability and illegitimacy of debt; non-binding LDC package in the ongoing WTO Doha Round negotiations and the urgency of realization of social protection which has been committed in the current Istanbul Programme of Action for the LDCs (IPoA) for the Decade 2011-2020. She also placed CSO demands on International Public Finance at the Civil Society-Government Dialogue held on day two 8 June, which is a key issue at the FfD3 negotiations.
