Nutrition at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development

July 21, 2015 - Last update: February 10, 2023

From 13th – 16th July 2015, the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Conference was the first of three crucial events this year with the potential to set the world on a path towards a prosperous and sustainable future. It’s outcome has provided a strong foundation for countries to finance and adopt the proposed sustainable development agenda in New York in September, and to reach a binding agreement at the UN climate negotiations in Paris in December that will reduce global carbon emissions.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda agreement was reached by the 193 UN Member States attending the Conference following negotiations under the leadership of Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. It is a series of bold measures to overhaul global finance practices and generate investments for tackling a range of economic, social and environmental challenges. It’s adoption, after months of negotiation between countries, is seen by many as a landmark in forging enhanced global partnership that will cultivate universal, inclusive economic prosperity and improve people’s well-being, while protecting the environment.

The agreement is “a critical step forward in building a sustainable future for all. It provides a global framework for financing sustainable development,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “The results here in Addis Ababa give us the foundation of a revitalized global partnership for sustainable development that will leave no one behind.”

Domestic resource mobilisation is central to the Agenda. In the outcome document, countries agreed to an array of measures aimed at widening the revenue base, improving tax collection, and combatting tax evasion and illicit financial flows. Countries also reaffirmed their commitment to official development assistance, particularly for the least developed countries, and pledged to increase South-South cooperation.

“This historic agreement marks a turning point in international cooperation that will result in the necessary investments for the new and transformative sustainable development agenda that will improve the lives of people everywhere.” – Wu Hongbo, Secretary-General of the Third International Financing for Development Conference

Download the Addis Ababa Action Agenda

Learn more: Third International Financing for Development Conference

In the media: Addis Standard | The Ethiopian Herald | UN Sustainable Development Blog

Other news from the Third International Conference on Financing for Development:

Two key paragraphs which highlight the importance of nutrition in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda

13. Scaling up efforts to end hunger and malnutrition. It is unacceptable that close to 800 million people are chronically undernourished and do not have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. With the majority of the poor living in rural areas, we emphasize the need to revitalize the agricultural sector, promote rural development, and ensure food security, notably in developing countries, in a sustainable manner, which will lead to rich payoffs across the sustainable development goals. We will support sustainable agriculture, including forestry, fisheries and pastoralism. We will also take action to fight malnutrition and hunger among the urban poor. Recognizing the enormous investment needs in these areas, we encourage increased public and private investments. In this regard, we recognize the Committee on World Food Security’s voluntary Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests. We recognize the efforts of the International Fund for Agricultural Development in mobilizing investment to enable rural people living in poverty to improve their food security and nutrition, raise their incomes, and strengthen their resilience. We value the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) the World Food Programme, and the World Bank and other multilateral development banks. We also recognize the complementary role of social safety nets in ensuring food security and nutrition. In this regard, we welcome the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action, which can provide policy options and strategies aimed at ensuring food security and nutrition for all. We also commit to increasing public investment, which plays a strategic role in financing research, infrastructure and pro-poor initiatives. We will strengthen our efforts to enhance food security and nutrition and focus our efforts on smallholders and women farmers, as well as on agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ networks. We call on relevant agencies to further coordinate and collaborate in this regard, in accordance with their respective mandates. These efforts must be supported by improving access to markets, enabling domestic and international environments, and strengthened collaboration across the many initiatives in this area, including regional initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme. We will also work to significantly reduce post-harvest food loss and waste.
108. We are concerned about excessive volatility of commodity prices, including for food and agriculture and its consequences for global food security and improved nutrition outcomes. We will adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and call for relevant regulatory bodies to adopt measures to facilitate timely, accurate and transparent access to market information in an effort to ensure that commodity markets appropriately reflect underlying demand and supply changes and to help limit excess volatility of commodity prices. In this regard, we also take note of the Agricultural Market Information System hosted by FAO. We will also provide access for small-scale artisanal fishers to marine resources and markets, consistent with sustainable management practices as well as initiatives that add value to outputs from small-scale fishers.

Background about the International Conference on Financing for Development

The International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) gathers high-level political representatives to negotiate and agree on outcomes which contribute to the development of member states. The first FfD held in Monterrey, Mexico, 18-22 March 2002 was the first United Nations-sponsored summit-level meeting to address key financial and related issues pertaining to global development. The Monterrey Consensus reflects a landmark global agreement between developed and developing countries, in which both recognize their responsibilities in key areas such as trade, aid, debt relief and institution building. A follow up FfD was held in Doha, Qatar, 29 November–2 December, 2008, where the Doha Declaration recognized that mobilizing financial resources for development and the effective use of all those resources were central to the global partnership for sustainable development. The United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development was held in New York, United States, 24-30 June 2009. It provided an inclusive forum to identify emergency and long-term responses to mitigate the impact of the crisis and initiate a dialogue on the transformation of the international financial architecture.

The scope of the Third International Financing for Development Conference (Ffd3) was set out in United Nations General Assembly resolutions 68/204 and 68/279, and focused on:

Assessing the progress made in the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus and the Doha Declaration and identifying obstacles and constraints encountered in the achievement of the goals and objectives agreed therein, as well as actions and initiatives to overcome these constraints
Addressing new and emerging issues, including in the context of the recent multilateral efforts to promote international development cooperation; the current evolving development cooperation landscape; the interrelationship of all sources of development finance; the synergies between financing objectives across the three dimensions of sustainable development; and the need to support the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015
Reinvigorating and strengthening the financing for development follow-up process

The intergovernmental preparatory process of FfD3 was launched on 17 October 2014 and included a series of substantive informal sessions and informal interactive hearings with civil society and the business sector, as well as drafting sessions on the outcome document throughout 2015.

Post-2015 agenda related links

The latest news and developments on the Post-2015 process can be found at the Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform
Access the SUN Civil Society Network Post-2015 Advocacy Tool Kit English | Français | Español
View the UNSCN Post-2015 Nutrition Indicator Technical Paper (English | Français | Español) and Policy Note (English | Français | Español)