Financing for development key to ensuring human dignity, UN panel told

The United Nations top human rights official today said financing for development was the best investment that could be made in order to ensure security and human dignity for all.

"We must pursue, both individually and collectively, strategies that aim to give everyone decent life chances and that seek to ensure realization of all human rights - civil and political, economic, social and cultural as well as the right to development," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson told a committee preparing for next year's International Conference on Financing for Development.

The Preparatory Committee, meeting for the second day at UN Headquarters in New York, also heard from Angela King, the Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, who said that formal programmes to promote savings and entrepreneurship had tended to neglect women.

According to Ms. King, that situation was largely a result of the perception that women were dependent on men, and their income was supplementary and of less importance for household survival. Contrary to that view however, studies had shown that women's income was critical for family well-being, as women tend to allocate a greater share of their income to health, education and nutrition-related expenditures.

The Conference, to be held from 18 to 22 March 2002 in Monterrey, Mexico, will seek to address broad development concerns, primarily, obstacles faced by developing countries in mobilizing the resources needed to finance their development and to fulfil the social and humanitarian goals set by global conferences of the past decade. Other key issues include cross-border investment; international trade; official development assistance; debt relief and the international financial architecture.