World leaders at the development finance summit may have paid lip service to women’s rights, but the Addis Ababa action agenda tells a different story
The UN development finance summit in Addis Ababa was disappointing. Member states failed to address a host of flaws in international financial policy that, tackled effectively, could have done much for human rights, especially women’s rights and gender equality.
The final agreement, known as the Addis Ababa action agenda, is almost entirely devoid of specific proposals that can be swiftly implemented, and fails to rise to the world’s multiple challenges.
The women’s working group on financing for development said the talks had damaged the integrity of the development finance agenda, retreating from commitments made on several issues at previous conferences in Monterrey and Doha.
The group added that the chance to remove global obstacles to development and set the right priorities, policies and rules for financing the sustainable development goals – as well as the full implementation of other internationally agreed development agendas, such as the Beijing platform on gender equality and the Cairo programme of action on population growth and development – had been missed.