International Financial System and Development

A/RES/68/201View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 17bInternational financial system and development, published in 2013.

What other versions does this mandate have?

24 versions · 2003–2025

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/80/122

2025A/RES/80/122International financial system and developmentLatestCompare with previous version
2024A/RES/79/196International financial system and developmentCompare with previous version
2023A/RES/78/136International financial system and developmentCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/77/152International financial system and developmentCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/76/192International financial system and developmentCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

4 topics

Development Assistance Development Finance Financial Assistance International Monetary System

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2014.

2014A/69/188International financial system and development report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

27 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;

Recognizes the need to continue and intensify efforts to enhance the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems, and reiterates the importance of ensuring their openness, fairness and inclusiveness in order to complement national efforts to ensure sustainable development, including strong, sustained, balanced, inclusive and equitable economic growth and the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals;

Reiterates the need to act decisively to tackle the challenges confronting the global economy in order to ensure balanced, sustained, inclusive and equitable global growth with full and productive employment and quality jobs, and also reiterates the need for significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources and the effective use of financing in order to promote full and productive employment and decent work for all;

Notes the important efforts undertaken nationally, regionally and internationally to respond to the challenges posed by the financial and economic crisis, and recognizes that more needs to be done in order to promote the economic recovery, to address turbulence in global financial and commodity markets, to tackle high unemployment and indebtedness in several countries, as well as widespread fiscal strains, to reinforce the banking sector, including by increasing its transparency and accountability, to address systemic fragilities and imbalances, to reform and strengthen the international financial system and to continue and to enhance the coordination of financial and economic policies at the international level;

Also notes that the United Nations, on the basis of its universal membership and legitimacy, provides a unique and key forum for discussing international economic issues and their impact on development, and reaffirms that the United Nations is well positioned to participate in various reform processes aimed at improving and strengthening the effective functioning of the international financial system and architecture, while recognizing that the United Nations and the international financial institutions have complementary mandates that make the coordination of their actions crucial;

Recalls, in this regard, the resolve to strengthen the coordination of the United Nations system and multilateral financial, trade and development institutions so as to support economic growth, poverty eradication, job creation and sustainable development worldwide, on the basis of a clear understanding of and respect for their mandates and governance structures;

Also recalls that countries must have the flexibility necessary to implement countercyclical measures and to pursue tailored and targeted responses to the crisis, and calls for conditionalities to be streamlined to ensure that they are timely, tailored and targeted and that they support developing countries in the face of financial, economic and development challenges;

Notes, in this regard, the increase in resources and the improvement of the lending framework of the International Monetary Fund through, inter alia, streamlined conditions and flexible instruments, such as the precautionary and liquidity line, the flexible credit line and the rapid financing instrument, and the refinement of the lending framework for low-income countries, while also noting that new and ongoing programmes should not contain unwarranted procyclical conditionalities;

Urges, in this regard, the multilateral development banks to continue to move forward on flexible, concessional, fast-disbursing and front-loaded assistance that will substantially and quickly assist developing countries facing financing gaps in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, taking into consideration the individual absorptive capacities and debt sustainability of those countries;

Recognizes the role of private capital flows in mobilizing financing for development, stresses the challenges posed by excessive volatility of short-term capital flows to many developing countries, notes that the design and implementation of capital flow management measures to address those challenges, such as macroeconomic policies, macroprudential measures and various forms of capital account management, need to take into account the specific circumstances of individual countries, while also remaining fully cognizant of the potential risks involved in capital flow management;

Also recognizes the need for international financial institutions to promote, within their respective mandates, including by providing the right incentives for medium- and long-term investment and the sharing of best practices, the mobilization of capital flows in order to better channel national and international investment for sustainable development based on its three dimensions;

Reaffirms the importance of broadening and strengthening the participation of developing countries in international economic decision-making and norm-setting, notes in this regard the important steps taken in the reform of the governance structures, quotas and voting rights of the Bretton Woods institutions, which go in the direction of better reflecting current realities and enhancing the voice, the participation and the voting rights of developing countries, and recognizes the importance of continuing such reform processes in an ambitious and expeditious manner in order to deliver more effective, credible, accountable and legitimate institutions;

Notes, in this regard, the decisions taken by the World Bank Group on voice and participation and further institutional reforms to meet new challenges and the addition of the twenty-fifth Chair to the Boards of Executive Directors of the World Bank Group, and looks forward to progress in its institutional reforms;

Calls for the swift implementation of the 2010 quota and governance reform of the International Monetary Fund, notes the progress made by the Fund on the review of the quota formula in January 2013, and emphasizes the importance of continued discussions to reach agreement on the quota formula by January 2014, in parallel to the fifteenth general review of the quotas and as part of ongoing reform processes, in order to ensure the Fund’s capability to address the challenges encountered by today’s international monetary and financial system;

Recognizes the importance of an open, transparent and merit-based process for selecting the heads of the international financial institutions, including the Bretton Woods institutions;

Emphasizes the need for more effective government involvement in order to ensure an appropriate regulation of the market which promotes the public interest, and recognizes in this regard the need to better regulate financial markets to promote economic stability and sustained, equitable and inclusive growth;

Also emphasizes the need for continued coordination at the international, regional and national levels on regulatory frameworks for the financial markets and some of their products, notes that while it is still too early to estimate the full effects of Basel III, there is a concern that it may negatively impact some developing countries, and recognizes in this regard the need for continued efforts to ensure regulation and oversight of financial markets in fields such as shadow banking, derivatives and banks that are “too big to fail”, with a view to promoting economic stability and equitable and inclusive growth;

Recognizes the role of special drawing rights as an international reserve asset, acknowledges that special drawing rights allocations helped to supplement international reserves in response to the world financial and economic crisis, thus contributing to the stability of the international financial system and global economic resilience, and also recognizes the need to continue regular reviews of the role of special drawing rights, including with reference to their potential role in the international reserve system;

Reiterates that effective, inclusive multilateral surveillance should be at the centre of crisis prevention efforts, stresses the need to continue strengthening surveillance of the financial policies of countries, and in this regard takes note of the new surveillance approach of the International Monetary Fund to better integrate bilateral and multilateral surveillance, along with cross-border and cross-sectoral linkages with macroeconomic and macroprudential policies, while paying closer attention to the spillover effects from national economic and financial policies onto the global economy;

Stresses, in this regard, the need to strengthen intergovernmental and independent surveillance of national financial policies and their impact on international interest rates, exchange rates and capital flows;

Invites the international financial and banking institutions to continue to enhance the transparency of risk-rating mechanisms, noting that sovereign risk assessments made by the private sector should maximize the use of strict, objective and transparent parameters, which can be facilitated by high-quality data and analysis, and encourages relevant institutions, including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, to continue their work on the issue, including its potential impact on the development prospects of developing countries;

Calls upon the multilateral, regional and subregional development banks and development funds to continue to play a vital role in serving the development needs of developing countries and countries with economies in transition, including through coordinated action, as appropriate, stresses that strengthened regional development banks and subregional financial institutions can add flexible financial support to national and regional development efforts, thus enhancing their ownership and overall efficiency, and can promote regional integration, increasing resilience to economic shocks, welcomes in this regard recent capital increases at multilateral and regional development banks, and, in addition, encourages efforts to ensure that subregional development banks are adequately funded;

Encourages enhanced regional and subregional cooperation, including through regional and subregional development banks, commercial and reserve currency arrangements and other regional and subregional initiatives;

Stresses the need to continuously improve standards of corporate and public sector governance, including those related to accounting, auditing and measures to ensure transparency, noting the disruptive effects of inadequate policies;

Recognizes the need for international financial institutions, as appropriate, to promote gender mainstreaming in their policies and programmes, including macroeconomic, job creation and structural reform policies and programmes, in accordance with relevant national priorities and strategies;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth session a report on the implementation of the present resolution, to be prepared in cooperation with the Bretton Woods institutions and other relevant stakeholders;

Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its sixty-ninth session, under the item entitled “Macroeconomic policy questions”, the sub-item entitled “International financial system and development”.

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