Interview: Addis Ababa conference crucial for major UN events later this year: official

A UN development financing conference, to be held in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa next week, will be crucial for success of the UN development summit in September and the climate change conference in December, a senior UN official told Xinhua.

Wu Hongbo, the UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, said in a recent interview with Xinhua that the Addis Ababa event, also known as the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, will be the first of three major global events taking place this year and it is, in essence, very important to global sustainable development in the next 15 years.

The conference, scheduled for July 13-16 in Ethiopia, will be held before convocation of the development summit at UN Headquarters in New York in September, at which world leaders are expected to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals, and the Paris conference in December, which is expected to result in an ambitious agreement by all UN member states to address the issue of climate change.

"All UN member states have attached great importance to the upcoming conference because they all know clearly that a successful conference in Addis Ababa next week can directly contribute to success of the September summit and the Paris conference," said Wu, who is also secretary-general of the development financing conference.

"Therefore, every and each member state is very active in taking part in the discussions and consultations" in connection with the Addis Ababa conference, he said.

"The development financing conference is closely associated with sustainable development," Wu said. "The United Nations and all of its member states are very clear that any development plan can not succeed without financial support."

"That's why we also discuss the issues of financing for development when we are hammering out the post-2015 development agenda," Wu said. "This is a very timely and necessary manner."

"The upcoming conference will not discuss how to solve the issue of financing for development in a specific country, it will, instead, produce a framework for all 193 UN member states to finance global development and produce a package of policy recommendations, so each country can implement them in accordance with its national conditions," he said.

Meanwhile, Wu also voiced hope the conference can lead to specific outcomes on helping people out of poverty, infrastructure construction, social security, sustainable agricultural development and the efforts to promote development of medium-and small-sized enterprises.

"I hope the conference will result in the establishment of a mechanism to monitor the implementation of all recommendations and proposals put forward at the conference, and encourage the exchange of views and experiences on success and failure stories in a bid to promote better implementation," he said. "I hope this mechanism will be powerful and effective in the monitoring efforts. "

The Third International Conference on Financing for Development will gather high-level political representatives, including heads of state and government, and ministers of finance, foreign affairs and development cooperation, as well as all relevant institutional stakeholders, non-governmental organizations and business sector entities.

The conference will result in an intergovernmentally negotiated and agreed outcome, which should constitute an important contribution to and support implementation of the post-2015 development agenda.

"As a Chinese citizen who assumes the post of secretary-general of the conference, I will do my best to contribute to international sustainable development," he said. "With the support of every country, I am very confident that the conference can achieve our expectations." Endite