International Financial System and Development

A/RES/70/188No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 18bInternational financial system and development, published in 2016.

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?

5 topics

Development Finance Economic Growth International Monetary System International Trade Sustainable Development

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2016.

2016A/71/312International 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?

39 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 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;

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 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, address turbulence in global financial and commodity markets, tackle high unemployment and unsustainable debt in several countries, as well as widespread fiscal strains, reinforce the banking sector, including by increasing its transparency and accountability, address systemic fragilities and imbalances, reform and strengthen the international financial system and continue and 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;

Resolves to strengthen the coherence and consistency of multilateral financial, investment, trade and development policy and environment institutions and platforms and to increase cooperation between major international institutions, while respecting mandates and governance structures, and commits itself to taking better advantage of relevant United Nations forums for promoting universal and holistic coherence and international commitments to sustainable development, building on the vision of the Monterrey Consensus;2

Recalls that countries must have the flexibility necessary to implement countercyclical measures and pursue tailored and targeted responses to the various types of shocks, including economic and financial crises, 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 Sustainable Development Goals, taking into consideration the individual absorptive capacities and debt sustainability of those countries;

Invites the multilateral development banks and other international development banks to continue providing both concessional and non-concessional stable, long-term development finance by leveraging contributions and capital and by mobilizing resources from capital markets, and stresses that development banks should make optimal use of their resources and balance sheets, consistent with maintaining their financial integrity, and should update and develop their policies in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals;

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;

Notes that regulatory gaps and misaligned incentives continue to pose risks to financial stability, including risks of spillover effects of financial crises to developing countries, which suggests a need to pursue further reforms of the international financial and monetary system and continued strengthening of international coordination and policy coherence to enhance global financial and macroeconomic stability, emphasizes the need to work to prevent and reduce the risk and impact of financial crises, acknowledging that national policy decisions can have systemic and far-ranging effects well beyond national borders, including on developing countries, highlights the importance of pursuing sound macroeconomic policies that contribute to global stability, equitable and sustainable growth and sustainable development, while strengthening financial systems and economic institutions, and notes that, when dealing with risks from large and volatile capital flows, necessary macroeconomic policy adjustment could be supported by macroprudential and, as appropriate, capital flow management measures;

Recognizes the need for the international financial institutions to promote, within their respective mandates, including by providing the right incentives for medium-term 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;

Emphasizes the relevance of inclusion in the international financial system at all levels and the importance of considering financial inclusion as a policy objective in financial regulation, in accordance with national priorities and legislation;

Recommits to the broadening and strengthening of the voice and participation of developing countries in international economic decision-making and norm-setting and in global economic governance, recognizes the importance of overcoming obstacles to planned resource increases and governance reforms at the International Monetary Fund, notes that the implementation of the 2010 reforms of the Fund remains the highest priority, strongly urges the earliest ratification of those reforms, and reiterates its commitment to further governance reform at both the Fund and the World Bank to adapt to changes in the global economy;

Acknowledges the importance of the international financial institutions supporting, in line with their mandates, the policy space of each country, in particular developing countries, and recommits to the broadening and strengthening of the voice and participation of developing countries, including African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small island developing States and middle-income countries, in international economic decision-making, norm-setting and global economic governance;

Notes the 2015 Shareholding Review of the World Bank, including the agreed principles that guide shareholding reviews and the road map for its implementation, and looks forward to the implementation of the road map, including the agreement on a dynamic formula;

Recommits to a redoubling of its efforts to substantially reduce illicit financial flows by 2030, with a view to eventually eliminating them, including by combating tax evasion and corruption through strengthened national regulation and increased international cooperation, to reducing opportunities for tax avoidance and considering inserting anti-abuse clauses in all tax treaties, to enhancing disclosure practices and transparency in both source and destination countries, including by seeking to ensure transparency in all financial transactions between Governments and companies to relevant tax authorities, and to making sure that all companies, including multinationals, pay taxes to the Governments of the countries where economic activity occurs and value is created, in accordance with national and international laws and policies;

Takes note of the report of the High-level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, invites other regions to carry out similar exercises, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations to assist both source and destination countries to help to combat illicit flows and appropriate international institutions and regional organizations to publish estimates of the volume and composition of illicit financial flows, calls upon States to identify, assess and act on money-laundering risks, including through effective implementation of the Financial Action Task Force standards on anti-money-laundering/counter-terrorism financing, and encourages information-sharing among financial institutions to mitigate the potential impact of the anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing standards on access to financial services;

Urges all countries that have not yet done so to ratify and accede to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, and encourages parties to review its implementation, commits to making the Convention an effective instrument to deter, detect, prevent and counter corruption and bribery, prosecute those involved in corrupt activities and recover and return stolen assets to their country of origin, while encouraging the international community to develop good practices on asset return and supporting the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative of the United Nations and the World Bank and other international initiatives that support the recovery of stolen assets, urges that regional conventions against corruption be updated and ratified, and reiterates the need to strive to eliminate safe havens that create incentives for transfer abroad of stolen assets and illicit financial flows and to work to strengthen regulatory frameworks at all levels to further increase transparency and accountability of financial institutions and the corporate sector, as well as public administrations, while strengthening international cooperation and national institutions to combat money-laundering and financing of terrorism;

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 reaching agreement on the quota formula, 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;

Reaffirms its commitment to an open and transparent, gender-balanced and merit-based process for selecting the heads of the international financial institutions, including the Bretton Woods institutions, and to enhance diversity of staff;

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 economic growth;

Also emphasizes that the 2008 world financial and economic crisis underscored the need for sound regulation of financial markets to strengthen financial and economic stability, as well as the imperative of a global financial safety net, welcomes the important steps taken since the International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, particularly following the crisis in 2008, to build resilience, reduce vulnerability to international financial disruption and reduce spillover effects of global financial crises, including to developing countries, in a reform agenda whose completion remains a high priority, and notes that the membership of the International Monetary Fund bolstered the Fund’s lending capacity, that multilateral and national development banks played important countercyclical roles during the crisis and that the world’s principal financial centres worked together to reduce systemic risks and financial volatility through stronger national financial regulation, including Basel III and the broader financial reform agenda;

Takes note of the work by the Financial Stability Board on financial market reform, commits to sustaining or strengthening frameworks for macroprudential regulation and countercyclical buffers, reiterates the need to hasten the completion of the reform agenda on financial market regulation, including assessing and if necessary reducing the systemic risks associated with shadow banking, markets for derivatives, securities lending and repurchase agreements, and recommits to addressing the risk created by “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions and to addressing cross-border elements in effective resolution of troubled, systemically important financial institutions;

Reiterates the need to resolve to reduce mechanistic reliance on credit-rating agency assessments, including in regulations, while promoting competition as well as measures to avoid conflict of interest in the provision of credit ratings, so as to improve the quality of ratings, acknowledges the efforts of the Financial Stability Board and others in this area, supports the building of greater transparency requirements for evaluation standards of credit-rating agencies, and requests that ongoing work on these issues be continued, including at the United Nations;

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 to strengthen 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 encourages efforts to ensure that subregional development banks are adequately funded;

Welcomes efforts by new development banks to develop safeguard systems in open consultation with stakeholders on the basis of established international standards, and encourages all development banks to establish or maintain social and environmental safeguard systems, including on human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment, that are transparent, effective, efficient and time-sensitive;

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 the 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;

Urges multilateral donors, and invites international financial institutions, within their respective mandates, and regional development banks to review and implement policies that support national efforts to ensure that a higher proportion of resources reaches women and girls, in particular in rural and remote areas;

Recommits itself to enabling women’s full and equal participation in the economy and their equal access to decision-making processes and leadership;

Reiterates that States are strongly urged to refrain from promulgating and applying any unilateral economic, financial or trade measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impede the full achievement of economic and social development, particularly in developing countries;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventy-first session a report on the implementation of the present resolution, to be prepared in cooperation with the Bretton Woods institutions and other relevant stakeholders, and decides to include, under the item entitled “Macroeconomic policy questions”, the sub-item entitled “International financial system and development” in the provisional agenda of its seventy-first session, unless otherwise agreed in the discussions on the revitalization of the Second Committee.

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