14.12.2007: UNCTAD/Trade and Development Board: Consultations of the President of TDB (afternoon)

This afternoon, the document being discussed was the PROGRESS REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS IN CLUSTER I. Most of the points discussed were not controversial, and mainly the chair was presenting its document, explaining the work done to prepare it.

Mrs. Puri noted that recommendation 5 concerns UNCTAD’s core area of competence (trying to build partnerships with other organizations in different areas...)

Portugal noted that the document still contains mistakes; the NGO list incomplete, contains some typos, some incorrect e-mail addresses, lists Albania instead of Austria…

The USA noted that they want to make sure only issues that actually fall under UNCTAD’s mandate appear in the implementation report. If an issue does not appear, they argued, then it should not be considered in UNCTAD’s mandate.
The chair responded that the members will determine UNCTAD’s mandate, not the document presented.

Argentina praised the document - mostly recommentadions 5 and especially 6; they declared a wish to expand their work with civil society.

Chair: Working with ILO, ITC, other organizations on many of these issues (non-tariff barriers), working with UNDP…

Portugal: Page 4, UNCTAD’s biofuel initiative…
Portugal argued that the lack of reference to the integrated framework (IF) is bad, seeing as UNCTAD is one of the 6 agencies responsible for the integrated framework. Financing should occur through the integrated framework rather than through extra-budgetary resources.

Chair (Mrs. Puri) – one of the main problems being focused on is brain drain and lack of skilled individuals in developing countries…

Uganda: Recommendation 18, criteria for countries’ participation?

The chair also asked for all countries to find more participation of civil society organizations… All countries were called on to look for various domestic civil society organizations.

The U.S. requested that any reference to climate change be removed from the document, as it’s already being discussed in Bali.
The chair replied that it could not be removed, as the secretary general of the UN himself had already identified climate change as the major challenge, for developing countries as well; it must NOT be removed from the agenda.

- Nathan J. Wooden