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Introduction
The United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development (ICFfD) meeting, held in Monterrey, Mexico on 18-22 March 2002, was convened by the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), to discuss how financial resources could be mobilized and channeled to fulfill the international commitments that were agreed to at previous United Nations conferences and summits of the 1990s, including those in the 2000 Millennium Development Goals - MDGs (see Box 1). As the conference followed on the heels of the 1997 East Asian Economic Crisis, the urgent problems of increasing the coherence of the international economic system and ensuring better representation for developing countries at key international bodies and economic institutions were also addressed.
Whereas, before, financial matters of this sort would typically be taken up at the ‘technical’ level, the Monterrey Conference brought together for the first time high- level policy makers, representatives of civil society and the business sector from all over the world. As such, it held the promise of defining new and innovative dimensions of international cooperation to meet the financial needs of the internationally agreed commitments towards gender equality, poverty eradication and women’s empowerment.
A lengthy preparation process preceded the conference, involving four UN Preparatory Committee Meetings (PrepCom) held over two years that brought together a large number of national and international players who exchanged views and ideas on financing development. These meetings were attended by heads of states, foreign ministers, finance and trade ministers along with representatives of the United Nations, the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO, as well as civil society organizations (CSOs) and the business sector. The Monterrey Consensus of the International Conference on Finance for Development1 (hereafter Monterrey Consensus) was the final resolution adopted at the end of the conference. It addressed financing issues under the following six themes:
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domestic resource mobilization,
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mobilization of foreign resources,
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international trade,
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development assistance,
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external debt
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systemic issues of global governance.
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