Introduction
The Third International Conference on Financing for Development has just concluded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 13 to 16 July. As previously indicated both the first (Monterrey, 2002) and second (Doha, 2008) international financing conferences were explicitly convened as precursors to the United Nations adoption of a common future global 
development agenda. As was also previously indicated the development agenda, which the first conference addressed subsequently morphed into the ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2005-15. The MDGs were, by any standard, a development breakthrough of historic proportions, which has galvanized the international development community to embark on a Post-2015 Development Agenda.
The convening of the first two conferences was explicitly dedicated towards finding the means and mechanisms for implementation of the agreed collective United Nations development agendas. In this regard the recently concluded third conference (Addis Ababa, 13 to 16 July) had the same objective. This time, however, the vision and goals are captured in an equally ambitious post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It should be observed however that, while the recent conference has been convened at a time when the global development community has recorded some considerable progress over the past decade, it is nonetheless facing serious threats and challenges on many fronts. In my view, these do not constitute the similarly intense crisis-driven atmosphere that faced the international community in either the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, when the first conference was held in 2002, or the financial and economic meltdown of the Great Recession, when the second conference was convened in 2008.
In this series of columns, I have postulated over the past two weeks that the two preceding conferences had each recorded three major advances in the field of international best practices in financing for development. To recap, the 2002 conference endorsed 1) target-setting for transfers of official development assistance (ODA) from rich to poor countries; 2) the global community’s encouragement of “innovative financing” sources, mechanisms, instruments and modalities; and 3) for the first time, in a United Nations supported summit-level global financing forum, the fundamental challenges corruption is posing to international financing for development.
The 2008 conference however had acknowledged that 1) despite the ongoing Great Recession, it would unequivocally re-endorse target-setting for ODA “in its entirety, in its integrity and holistic approach”; 2) despite the global financial and economic meltdown, financing for development should remain central, integral and indissolubly linked to the achievement of the United Nations Development Agenda; and 3) for the first time at the international financing for development conferences, the global development community acknowledged recovery of stolen public assets as a significant contributor to the financing for development. Parenthetically, it urged members to join and actively participate in both the United Nations Convention against Corruption and its joint Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative.
The Addis Ababa Conference
The Addis Ababa International Con-ference on Financing for Development was the precursor to the forthcoming (September of this year) United Nations Global Summit expected “to adopt an ambitious and transformative post-2015 development agenda, including Sustain-able Development Goals (SDGs).” This agenda, as we shall discuss more fully in later columns, is promoted by the United Nations as the agreed consensus among its members as well as the international development community’s policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and advocates. In this sense the Addis Ababa Conference sought to establish an equally ambitious and credible framework for financing and creating the enabling environment for the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Addis Ababa Confer-ence has forthrightly acknowledged the considerable global progress that had been made since the first conference in 2002 in financing flows for development. It simultaneously fulsomely acknowledged that many grave challenges remained. Regrettably, some of these challenges arose from country and institutional failures to meet previously agreed commitments. Some also arose from sluggish global growth, which has not yet reached pre-Great Recession levels in several major economies and regions. And some arose from emerging global changes that are re-ordering international priorities, such as the need for environmental financing.
Addis Ababa Accord
The Addis Ababa Conference adopted an inter-governmentally negotiated and agreed accord as its Action Agenda. This defines the central task as attaining sustainable development through its promotion in three essential dimensions. The first of these is inclusive growth, by which is meant broad-based, regular, equitable and sustained growth that provides equal and non-discriminatory opportunities for all economic actors to access resources and markets. The second dimension is environmental protection, and the third is promoting social inclusion. The latter refers to the provision of certain rights to individuals and groups in society including, as it was put in the accord, the “right to development.”
From this perspective three main tasks logically ensued for the conference. The first was to follow-up on the commitments made at the two previous international financing for development conferences (Monterrey, 2002 and Doha, 2008) while also assessing the progress made in their implementation. The second was to provide a solid framework for financing the SDGs and to determine as well the means of implementing of the post-2015 United Nations Development Agenda. The third was “to reinvigorate and strengthen the financing for development follow-up process”. In this last regard much attention was directed to timeliness, transparency and inclusivity in order to ensure that not only was there appropriate implementation but review as well.
Conclusion
Bearing in mind the hypothesis I have earlier postulated, the conference produced two major advances in international best practice in the financing for development: 1) target-setting of financing pledges and commitments; and 2) under the rubric of the Action Agenda item, domestic public resources, priority has been given to the recovery of stolen public assets, capital flight, tax evasion and corruption more generally.
Next week I continue the discussion by expanding particularly on item 2 above.
