At World Bank/IMF meeting, UN urges global commitment to broad anti-poverty fight

Meeting widely endorsed development goals will require a sustained international commitment to strengthen the global monetary, financial and trading systems, the United Nations said today in a policy statement to the meeting of the Development Committee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, in Washington D.C.

The UN called for follow-up to pledges made earlier this year at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, to improve the quantity of development assistance, and the quality of its delivery and deployment.

The global community "has not yet developed a sufficient set of international frameworks, principles or policies for the world financial system to successfully mediate a stable, effective and adequate transfer of real resources to developing countries," Oscar de Rojas, UN Executive Coordinator for Financing for Development, said in the statement to the Bretton Woods Development Committee.

Follow-up on the Monterrey Consensus on financing for development was the primary agenda item of today's annual meeting of the Development Committee. The Monterrey Conference, convened by the UN with the joint participation of the Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization, stressed the need for coordinated action on the interrelated issues of aid, trade, debt, investment, improvement of national financial environments and international monetary, trading and financial systems.