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UN Development Conference Set to Launch in Ethiopia


FILE - The logo of the United Nations is seen on the outside of its headquarters in New York, Sept. 15, 2013.
FILE - The logo of the United Nations is seen on the outside of its headquarters in New York, Sept. 15, 2013.

Heads of state and government plan to meet this week at the third international U.N. financing for development conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

In an interview with VOA, Ambassador Bisa Williams, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs spoke about Washington’s perspective about the upcoming conference.

She says the conference should be an opportunity for discussions about the changes in the development financial landscape.

“We think that there really is around the world a recognition of the need to mobilize different streams of financing [or] capital in order to really have sustainable development,” Williams said.

“We have good experience to share and we hope to share information, best practice, but also to give examples of how additional capital can be mobilized. So, we hope to be a voice for and conduit for a collective commitment to mobilize diverse financial resources.”

She says with the private and public partnership and assistance from the international community, developing countries could use their domestic resources to improve the lives of their people.

Williams says there is a global recognition about the importance of the benefits of Public Private Partnership (PPP), which she says could help maximize how far resources of developing countries could go in achieving their development goals.

“I think there would be a lot of talk about PPP. The whole point is for everybody to take a very serious look at all of the possibilities in having different streams of capital coming in and how to really leverage them so ... that the right kinds of assistance could be targeted to the neediest communities, and then that assistance could be complemented your attraction of up front capital,” Williams said.

She outlined some of the expectations at the conference.

“What we are going to do here as an international community, is coming to look at how we can work together to create the right kind of policy, to create the right kind of connection between and among sectors, and to share real time experiences about what has worked and what hasn’t worked,” Williams said.

“Our drive would really be to talk about how to build sustainable and inclusive societies, we would be talking about good governance, and we are going to be talking about what we can do as communities to support, to encourage and to help build economies and governments that are accountable and that are able to deliver on the promise of sustainable development to their citizens,” she added.

The conference which is scheduled for July 13-16, seeks to find a negotiated and agreed outcome, which should constitute an important contribution to and support the implementation of the post-2015 development agenda, according to officials organizing the summit.

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