So, UNCTAD is a working conference. I’m used to going to health and development conferences, where the purpose of the meeting is to share and discuss information. It’s different being at UNCTAD, where there is an actual task they’re trying to achieve. It’s probably why this conference is so unholy long. Six days is an awful lot of conferencing.
The goal of the conference is the Doha accord, which will guide UNCTAD for the next four years. The formal debate takes place in a large auditorium, in a set of sessions called the Committee of the Whole. The real work, though, is done in small meetings. You see clumps of people all over this conference discussing draft language and which countries have agreed to what. It’s a contentious process; the wealthy countries and the developing countries have very different ideas of what the final product should look like. It’s a combination of public posturing and closed door meetings where delegates wrangle over adjective choices. Asia Times has <a href=”http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/ND24Dj03.html”>a useful description of the process</a>, and the newspaper sides firmly with the developing countries on substance.
The other thing being discussed at UNCTAD is a report from the UN Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) criticizing UNCTAD. It called UNCATD inefficient, badly run, and not providing the value for money that it used to. Developing countries and a prominent group of former UNCTAD personnel have characterized the report as a politically-motivated attack on UNCTAD’s role as a finance contrarian. The report itself is <a href=”http://www.unjiu.org/data/reports/2012/en2012_01.pdf”>available publicly for anyone to read at the JIU website</a>, so the debate isn’t about content.
Cuba was the first at the conference to bring the elephant into the room. At the opening plenary, which was meant to focus on procedure, the representative from Cuba explicitly blamed “Price Waterhouse bias” for the report’s contents. Broadly, the wealthy countries are citing the report as an accurate description of stagnation and poor management at UNCTAD and are asking for substantial change. The countries of the developing world generally view the JIU report as an attack on UNCTAD’s mandate.
So, those are the two discussions going on here. One official, one an undercurrent. UNCTAD will have to reply formally to the JIU report at some point, but not in the Doha accord, however it turns out.
Disclosure: My trip to Doha was funded by APCO, which has been contracted by the Qatari Ministry of Trade to support UNCTAD. They don’t have editorial control over my writing, and they don’t pay me to post.
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