UNCTAD 14 adopts Nairobi Azimio and Nairobi Maafikiano

UNCTAD 14 concluded after adopting a political declaration and a negotiated consensus outcome document which framed the agenda for UNCTAD’s work over the next four years.

by Kanaga Raja

NAIROBI: The closing plenary of the 14th session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 14) on 22 July adopted both the Nairobi Azimio (political declaration) and the Nairobi Maafikiano (consensus outcome) that sets out the work of UNCTAD for the next four years.

The closing plenary was followed by a closing ceremony that brought to a close the six-day event that began on 17 July.

“I’m delighted that our 194 member states have been able to reach this consensus, giving a central role to UNCTAD in delivering the sustainable development goals,” UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi said.

“With this document, we can get on with the business of cutting edge analysis, building political consensus, and providing the necessary technical assistance that will make globalization and trade work for billions of people in the global South.”

Earlier, on 22 July morning, the UNCTAD 14 Committee of the Whole (COW) had adopted the consensus outcome after holding a long session over the previous night and into the morning to try and finalize the document. This resulted in the closing plenary being delayed by about five hours.

At a media briefing following the COW session and before the closing plenary, Amina Mohamed, Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary and president of the UNCTAD 14 conference, said that two documents had been adopted (in the COW). The first was the Nairobi Azimio (or political declaration) that was done under the responsibility of the Kenyan government, hosts of the conference. The second document was the negotiated outcome, which had been given a Kenyan name as well – the Nairobi Maafikiano, which basically means the Nairobi Consensus – and which was adopted ad referendum (in the COW), she said.

“We are really, really happy that we have been able to get a deal done” amongst the 194 member states of UNCTAD, said Mohamed, who called it “a good day for Kenya, a good day for UNCTAD, a good day for the international community, a big win for multilateralism”.

Commitments secured

Speaking to the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) following the end of the COW session, Ambassador Wayne McCook of Jamaica, chair of the developing-country Group of 77 and China, said that “the G77 and China have focussed on finding ways to ensure that the commitment to strengthening UNCTAD was achieved.”

“We wanted to do so both in terms of the traditional mandate of UNCTAD for trade and development and also with respect to the role that UNCTAD needs to play in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.

“The themes and sub-themes that guided us in preparation of the outcome and the mandate were very clear and the work that we did was focussed on seeking to give effect to those themes and commitments.

“I think you will see that we have looked at strengthening the intergovernmental machinery, which of course has been one of the pillars of UNCTAD that has not really been given its full potential, and we’ve addressed a number of key areas,” McCook said.

The G77 and China chair said that “we were able to secure commitments to work in the areas of debt and taxation in ways that were possible given, as you know, the context in which we now have to approach these questions in UNCTAD.”

“But I think by and large, when you look at the principles that we have secured, I think we have restored to the document all the key principles, one of which we had lost – policy space – and had to be made [the] focus of a particular commitment.

“And then of course to ensure that in all areas of the mandate, we secured continued commitments within the mandate, and in some areas, as we did in tax, we, in a rather limited but important way, … have brought it into the picture,” said McCook.

Also speaking to SUNS, Ambassador Christopher Onyanga Aparr of Uganda said that “my impression is that at least we have done something” that, when properly utilized and implemented, should be useful for developing countries. “It has been hard but I am happy we were able to work through.”

Asked about UNCTAD’s mandate, he said, “I think it has been whittled down a little bit. I would have loved it to increase but I think the mandate has been whittled down a bit.”

He said that the positive aspect of the outcome document was in accommodating “our feelings about how the developed world is going to interrelate with us as developing countries.”

The issue of policy space, while not well articulated, was also imbued (in the outcome document), he said.

One conference source, who spoke to SUNS on condition of anonymity, said that among the positives in the outcome document were on illicit trade flows, structural transformation of African economies and their integration into the world economy being undertaken by the African countries themselves, the issue of taxation, and the issue of coherence (national, regional and multilateral policies).

Speaking on the outcome document, other conference sources said that UNCTAD’s mandate had been preserved or maintained rather than enhanced, and that it had been a tough fight to preserve the mandate.

Another source told SUNS on condition of anonymity that the Group B (developed countries), despite strong protests by civil society, had gone back on the outcomes of the International Conference on Financing for Development held in Addis Ababa last year. The European Union, in particular, was negotiating from a position of weakness, the source said.

Yet another source told SUNS that the EU’s disengagement in Geneva had delayed the process. (SUNS8289)           

Third World Economics, Issue No. 621/622, 16 July – 15 August 2016, pp3-4