Advisory / Advocacy services
DFI’s second key area of work is in providing advisory and advocacy services. Clients have included more than 40 developing and developed country governments, many of the major international organisations (including the African Development Bank, Commonwealth Secretariat, European Commission, OECD, Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, UNCTAD, UNDESA, UNDP, UNECA, UNESCO and World Bank), and many civil society coalitions and individual organisations (including Make Poverty History, Jubilee 2000 and many members of its successor campaigns, EURODAD, the UK Aid Network, ActionAid and Oxfam).
The key focus of our advocacy work has been in helping developing countries increase their voice in international negotiating forums related to financing development.
Our advisory work has provided concrete recommendations for improving the international financial architecture and institutions, global debt relief and new lending mechanisms, and global foreign investment and aid policies.
We have also advised many developing countries on how to improve their own national policies and strategies on debt issues, foreign private capital and public finance.
Latest work DFI carried out in this area:
13 May 2015 - OECD TOSSD Expert Group Meeting and OIF Meetings, Paris
DFI was invited by the OECD to participate in an OECD expert group meeting on the proposed new measure of “Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD)”, and to mobilise developing country officials to attend. The meeting reaffirmed that TOSSD should focus on tracking official non-ODA financial flows which aim to catalyse private external financing, and NOT for the time being the private flows which are catalysed, because there are very complex issues to resolve about whether the funds are additional. Read More...
11 May 2015 - Financing Global Health: What About the Taxes?, Berlin
DFI participated in a symposium organised by the Friends of the Global Fund, to examine the best ways to fund the SDGs for health, making a presentation on the key potential role of a partnership for tax revenue. Other sessions examined the need for a Global Fund for Health Systems, lessons from Rwanda and from the Ebola crisis, and use of technology to track implementation of health plans. The seminar was attended by 40 parliamentarians, officials and civil society organisations. During the visit DFI also held meetings with the German Development Ministry and Oxfam Germany about FfD and global tax reform issues.
5-7 May 2015 - EURODAD/IBIS Meeting Prepares for FfD Conference, Copenhagen
DFI attended the EURODAD/IBIS conference in Copenhagen to help facilitate a workshop on why aid must use country systems, and to liaise with European CSOs on advocacy around tax, debt and private flows for development. At the conference, the Danish Minister for Development indicated that future global tax governance structures must give equal decision-making power to developing countries. DFI also took advantage of the visit to hold meetings with the Danish Foreign Ministry on FfD and global tax reform issues.
17 April 2015 - African Development Bank Requests Debt Input
The African Development Bank has asked DFI to provide evidence to its ADF Task Force on potential debt risks for ADF borrowers during 2015-30. The Task Force meeting will be held in Abidjan on 29-30 May, after the Bank’s Annual Meetings.
16 April 2015 - Francophone LIC Finance Ministers and Experts Meet in Washington
OIF Ministers Demand Additional Action on Tax from OECD and BWIs. Washington. Chaired and convened for the first time by Senegal, the network of Francophone LIC Finance Ministers and Experts met in Washington, DC on the margins of the Spring Meetings of the IBW. Technical officials from IDA-borrowing OIF countries discussed a report on tax policy, recommending a crackdown on tax exemptions, more progressive tax structures, and changes in global tax rules. Ministers then met senior officials of the IMF, OECD and World Bank, and requested precise actions to enhance IMF policy advice and technical assistance, broaden global initiatives to reform tax rules in order to change treaties, abolish the World Bank Doing Business criterion which encourages lower tax rates, and ensure that all IFC-sponsored projects pay full tax in beneficiary countries.
14 April 2015 - Developing Country Ministers Demand Tax Justice from G20, Washington
DFI/OIF supported OIF IDA borrowing Ministers of Finance to contribute to a discussion with the G20 Development Working Group on Financing for Development. Ministers focussed on debt problems for SIDS, the need to reduce the cost of remittances, and especially on the need for G20 Finance Ministers to take political decisions to reform global tax laws and stop insisting on tax exemptions for their companies and their ODA, in order to allow developing countries to get their fair share of global tax revenues.
8-10 April 2015 - Development Cooperation to Support the SDGs, Incheon
DFI Director Matthew Martin participated as a resource person in several Financing for Development related events in a UN Development Cooperation Forum symposium in Incheon, Korea. He presented the case for closer monitoring of how private sector and blended private-public financing will contribute to reaching the SDGs, discussed lessons from DCF mutual accountability surveys for future assessment of MA, and presented a DCF policy briefing on which modalities of development cooperation can best reach the SDGs.