The President of the UN General Assembly’s convened the Interactive Dialogue “Elements for a Monitoring and Accountability Framework for the Post-2015 Development Agenda” that was held on May 1, 2014 in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The outcome of the event will provide an additional input into the report mandated to the Secretary-General to synthesize all inputs available by the end of 2014.

Roberto Bissio, Social Watch Coordinator, who participated in the panel highlighted that accountability is only meaningful if the powerful can be brought into account. We firmly believe that it is up to citizens to hold their own governments accountable. Corporations have to be made accountable not only to their owners and consumers but to their workers and to the people that are affected by their operations. Corporate accountability requires rules set by governments, respect for human rights and environmental due diligence as well as reporting, ensuring access by those negatively affected to an effective remedy, tax transparency; proper land appropriation rules, etc.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Staff Discussion Note Women, Work, and the Economy: Macroeconomic Gains from Gender Equity, September, 2013 (Fund Note), covers no new territory. Nor does it really connect with what the IMF does through its IMF-supported programs with developing countries. For the most part, it presents data and analysis of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, supplemented with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) analysisas well as insights and findings from an earlier IMF Working paper, Gender and Its Relevance to Macroeconomic Policy: A Survey.

Speaking at a recent United Nations financing for development meeting, human rights organizations argued human rights should inform commitments to finance the new development agenda.

The High Level Dialogue of ECOSOC with the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organization and UNCTAD is held every year and it is one of the follow up tracks for the Financing for Development Conference. This year’s edition, held on April 14-15, 2014, took place at a significant juncture. Governments are deliberating on the features of a new generation of development goals that, as part of the “post-2015 development agenda,” will replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. Commitments to financing the new goals are expected to play an important role in those negotiations. At the same time, governments are in negotiations to define when the Third International Conference on Financing for Development will be held.

Ten CSOs are conducting their activities in accordance with the International Standards for domestic election monitoring. In order to support the conduct of free and fair Iraqi Parliamentary and IKR Provincial Councils elections on April 30, 2014, ten Iraqi CSOs from ten different governorates came together to form an informal alliance acting in accordance with the “Declaration of Global Principles for Nonpartisan Election Observation and Monitoring by Citizen Organizations”.

The increased influence of corporations over the UN development agenda was highlighted by several civil society organizations last April 8 in New York. During a side-event at the Church Center, (see the video here) different worrying trends were highlighted: the redefinition of ODA that will put more public funds in the hands of corporations, the lack of accountability of the different associations between corporations and UN agencies and the privileged access that big corporate players may be getting over international norm-setting. At the General Assembly hearing on partnerships, Roberto Bissio denounced how information access is being made more restrictive under corporate pressure. Brazilian Ambassador Guilherme Patriota condemned the "outsourcing of development responsibilities" and announced his country opposition to the UN Partnership Facility proposed by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. (see the video here).