Just a few minutes ago the Outcome Document of the Doha Financing for Development Follow-up Conference was approved in the Plenary.

Yesterday evening was the main consensus at a ministerial level agreed. The US gave in to accept the UN as convener for a highlevel conference on the global financial and economic crisis and its implications on development. And also the parapgraph on finalizing the modalities for the conference by march 2009 at latest was pushed through by the EU and the G77. Although negotiations at technical level went on all night long, it can be said that the main text was agreed yesterday. In the morning the new agreed text to "consider the need for a follow-up conference in 2013"  was announced. And even though this language might not be strong, it seemed it had been a hard fight particularly against the US ( supported by CANZ (Canada, New Zealand, Australia), Russia and Japan) to get a timeframe for the Financing for Development Follow-up mechanism into the outcome document of the conference, which was of major interest of the G77.

Some voices say that the conference´s outcome document is very weak considering that the main achievement in the text is the agreement to have another conference.
Another interpretation is also possible: The Outcome Document requests a highlevel conference on international financial crisis convened by the UN. This conference will be a first test for the G192 discussing the framework of international finance. For Global financial and economic governance this can be counted as a major success.

Is the EU getting more serious? Commissar Louis Michel arrived... Further negotiations are now taking place at the political level. It's all getting more serious. Negotiations went on over night and agreements was reached on chapters 1 to 5. However, there was still no consensus on the text of the systemic issues chapter. Also any reference to the UN in the document and the FFD follow-up process is still under attack from the US side.

The second day of the conference started with the news that the G77 and other parties were considering adopting the EU proposal and signing on to the latest draft outcome document (including what was already negotiated for the first three chapters the morning before) without opening the document again. It was recognised that reopening the whole document would put the whole process into danger. The consequence would be that all chapters would be reopened for negotiations, with only three days left for negotiations before the end of the conference. There were serious concerns that this would not be enough time to get agreement on all issues. The US were still opposing the EU proposal but there was hope that over night they would be persuaded that the efforts being made by other countries to agree on a documents could be accepted. However, this was not the case… The US presented 14 amendments to the text in the morning negotiations compared to 3-4 amendments tabled by other countries. There was general frustration by EU member states and others over the US not showing any efforts to find a compromise. It seems as if tha Bush administration is setting time bombs that will explode when Obama is in charge. The US rigidly dismisses mentioning the UN in the framework of international finance and refuses to support the FFD follow-up process. These two issues are of major importance for the G77. It is very unlikely, that the G77 will agree on a document, that excludes these issues at all. It remains to be seem how the conference will proceed.

The whole day was quite busy, since over night news had spread, that there would be a completely new cleaned draft outcome document (the 8^th version), which everybody wanted to see as soon as possible. Sooner or later it showed up somewhere. This new version was the basis for the ongoing negotiations during the conference, parallel to the 2^nd plenary session in the afternoon. NGOs were allowed to follow the negotiation, which is kind of a novelty. In the end of the late evening session of the negotiations, the EU made a statement, that promised to bring some movement into the negotiations: they accepted the text as it was issued in the morning. The text has in general a stronger language than all earlier versions, and was relatively welcomed by CS although there were some issues still left with weak language. Although the EU statement could be interpreted as progress, there is still strong resistance towards some issues. Particularly the US and Australia opposed the EU proposal and also Russia and Japan requested to go on with the review of all chapters. The G77 and China have some key issues, they still want to negotiate. Norway and Switzerland seemed to sympathise with the EU proposal. For the time being, the negotiations will continue today, the second day of the conference, as planned.

Break out group sessions on each chapter of the Monterrey Consensus filled the second part of the first day of the Global Civil Society Forum, followed by an evening Plenary Session. The break out groups were held to formulate messages to the draft outcome document and to the draft civil society declaration. The conclusions of the break out group sessions were presented and discussed in the Plenary Session and will be included in the Draft Civil Society Declaration. This declaration is dealing with messages such as the need for an inclusive forum to lead the reform process of the international financial institutions, which are central to CS but did not find their way into the official Draft Outcome Document or are only present with very weak language such as the follow-up mechanism for the FFD process.

The latest draft civil society declaration, which is a compiled version with all the comments and amendments of CSOs, which is right now being translated into spanish, french, english and arabic, to be issued in the early evening. The drafting group will be occupied till very late today with finalising the statement. The final version of the Civil Society Declaration is expected for tomorrow evening.

The Doha Global Civil Society Forum started today, 26 November, ahead of the UN Financing for Development follow-up conference (FFD conference). The Plenary Session focused on engaging with the Doha UN Financing for Development Process. There was also a discussion on the status of negotiations and on expectations regarding the official Draft Outcome Document of the FFD Conference.

The Draft Outcome Document is still far from being finalised. It is clear that there will be no finalised Outcome document before the start of the conference on Saturday. This means there will be lots of negotiating still to be done during the conference. It is quite possible, that there will be no agreed Outcome document by the end of the conference, and that a political statement will be adopted instead. Such an outcome could put the whole process into danger. However, the fact that there is still substantial negotiating required on the Document during the conference presents opportunities for civil society to influence the outcome. Moreover, Representatives of Civil society, which are selected to participate in the six Roundtables, each focusing on one chapter of the 2002 Monterrey Consensus, have the special opportunity to present keys messages to influence the Draft Outcome Document itself. This is a unique situation since these Roundtables can feed into the negotiations rather than just be fora for discussion on issues on which agreement has already been reached. Therefore the strategy of lobbying, coordination and information sharing is a crucial issue throughout the events of the Doha Global Civil Society Forum and into the conference itself.