International Financial System and Development

A/RES/76/192View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 18bInternational financial system and development, published in 2021.

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

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What subjects does this mandate have?

7 topics

Covid-19 Developing Countries Development Banks Development Finance External Debt International Finance International Financial Institutions

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2022.

2022A/77/224International 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?

43 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, 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 that all men and women, in particular the poor and vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources and appropriate financial services, and the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Sustainable Development Goals, and encourages the international financial institutions to align their programmes and policies with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in accordance with their mandates;

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;

Recognizes the important efforts undertaken nationally, regionally and internationally to respond to the challenges posed by the latest global financial and economic crisis, and also recognizes that more needs to be done in order to promote the economic recovery, to manage the consequences of volatility in global financial and commodity markets, to tackle high unemployment and rising indebtedness in many 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;

Acknowledges that endeavours to overcome the crisis must go beyond short-term relief, and recognizes the need for continued action to support the developing countries, including middle-income countries, that are most in need, on an inclusive basis, including through enhanced cooperation between the United Nations and international financial institutions and multilateral and regional development banks, according to their respective mandates, net positive flows from the international financial institutions to developing countries, sufficient concessional finance by, inter alia, enhancing access to concessional, long-term loans and development assistance while mobilizing catalytically additional resources from the private sector and assisting developing countries in addressing debt vulnerability in the immediate term and in attaining debt sustainability in the long term, recommends the full and transparent implementation by all official bilateral creditors of the Group of 20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative along with its extension until December 2021, and the orderly, timely and effective implementation of the Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, endorsed at the leaders’ summit hosted by Saudi Arabia on COVID-19 and negotiated further under the presidency of Italy, noting the need for greater collaboration of credit rating agencies in this regard, welcomes existing liquidity support for countries with liquidity constraints, for example the International Monetary Fund Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust, which has provided 851 million United States dollars to 29 countries as of end-October 2021, also welcomes the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights allocation of the equivalent of 650 billion dollars of 23 August 2021 to meet the long-term global need to supplement reserve assets, and encourages countries with strong external positions to seek options for voluntary channelling of special drawing rights, in accordance with national laws and regulations, and to this end appreciates the Fund’s efforts to seek further viable options for the voluntary channelling of special drawing rights to countries most in need, such as the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust and the new Resilience and Sustainability Trust of the Fund, with a view to providing affordable long-term financing to developing countries in a manner that preserves their external debt sustainability, and encourages the consideration of viable options to voluntarily channel through multilateral development banks;

Stresses the critical importance of a stable, inclusive and enabling global economic environment for the advancement of sustainable development, for the reliable and effective financing of development and for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, mobilizing public and private, as well as domestic and international resources;

Notes the need for open, inclusive and transparent discussions on the modernization of official development assistance measurement and on the proposed measure of “total official support for sustainable development”, and reaffirms that any such measure will not dilute commitments already made;

Reiterates that debtors and creditors, including both public and private, must work together in a transparent manner to prevent and resolve unsustainable debt situations and that maintaining sustainable debt levels is the responsibility of the borrowing countries, acknowledging, however, that lenders also have a responsibility to lend in a way that does not undermine a country’s debt sustainability, and in this regard takes note of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development principles on responsible sovereign lending and borrowing and recognizes the applicable requirements of the International Monetary Fund debt limits policy and/or the World Bank non-concessional borrowing policy, as well as the safeguards of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in its statistical system to enhance the debt sustainability of recipient countries, and will work towards a global consensus on guidelines for debtor and creditor responsibilities in borrowing by and lending to sovereigns, building on existing initiatives;

Invites, in this regard, the President of the General Assembly and the Secretary-General to give appropriate consideration to the central role of maintaining and facilitating the financial and macroeconomic stability of developing countries, including debt sustainability, and of supporting an appropriately enabling domestic and international economic, financial and regulatory environment for the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda, including financial inclusion, and in this regard invites all major institutional stakeholders, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, to support these efforts, in accordance with their respective mandates;

Encourages, in this regard, the Economic and Social Council to consider, at its annual forum on financing for development follow-up, a dedicated discussion and analysis of systemic issues and challenges, taking into account the roles of the international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, and of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in accordance with their respective mandates, pursuant to the relevant resolutions on this matter, including its resolution 69/313 on the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development and the mandate of the annual forum on financing for development follow-up set out therein;

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, with a view to supporting the implementation of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the 2030 Agenda;

Recalls that countries must have, in accordance with their specific needs and circumstances, the flexibility necessary to implement countercyclical measures and pursue tailored and targeted responses to the various types of shocks, including economic and financial crises, notes that, in the 2018 International Monetary Fund review of programme design and conditionality, it was found that the number of structural conditions included in programmes of the Fund had increased over time, and calls for the Fund to build on recent progress to further prioritize reforms and streamline conditions to ensure that they are timely, tailored and targeted, in accordance with national circumstances and priorities, and that they support developing countries in the face of financial, economic and development challenges, while also noting that new and ongoing programmes should not contain unwarranted procyclical conditionalities;

Notes, in this regard, the new strategy of the International Monetary Fund for engagement on social spending, welcomes the Fund’s recognition of the adverse impacts that fiscal adjustment could have on the vulnerable, for whom social spending is critical to achieving the commitments under the 2030 Agenda, including nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and encourages greater collaboration on social protection finance between the Fund and international development institutions;

Invites the multilateral development banks and other international development banks to continue to provide both concessional and non-concessional, stable, long-term development finance by leveraging contributions and capital and by mobilizing resources for developing countries from multiple sources, for example 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, including the Sustainable Development Goals, as appropriate;

Welcomes, in this regard, the ongoing work of the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the global development finance architecture, and encourages enhanced regional and subregional cooperation, including through regional and subregional development banks, commercial and reserve currency arrangements and other regional and subregional initiatives;

Encourages, 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, and invites shareholders of regional development banks to ensure that they are sufficiently capitalized so as to be able to meet those needs;

Also encourages the multilateral development banks, within their respective mandates, to continue to expand technical assistance, disseminate and share their knowledge and best practices and enhance the multiplier effect of their financing by leveraging more resources from more sources, including by mobilizing private investment, to provide innovative and integral solutions to multidimensional development problems, in particular in developing and emerging economies;

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 the international financial institutions and regional development banks, within their respective mandates, to review and implement policies that support national efforts to ensure that a higher proportion of resources reach women and girls, in particular in rural and remote areas, and invites multilateral and regional development banks to agree on common indicators for analysing the gender impact of their lending;

Recognizes that it is important that the International Monetary Fund continue to be adequately resourced, and supports and reiterates its commitment to further governance reform at both the Fund and the World Bank to adapt to changes in the global economy;

Notes the lack of progress on a quota increase under the fifteenth general review of quotas of the International Monetary Fund, but welcomes the political agreement reached on the review by the Board of Governors on the occasion of the fortieth meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, held in Washington, D.C., on 18 and 19 October 2019, as well as the support garnered for maintaining the Fund’s current resource envelope with a doubling of the New Arrangements to Borrow and a further temporary round of bilateral borrowing beyond 2020;

Recalls the commitment to revisiting the adequacy of quotas and continuing the process of International Monetary Fund governance reform under the sixteenth general review of quotas, including a new quota formula as a guide, with the review to be extended from 2020 to no later than 15 December 2023, and the commitment to ensuring the primary role of quotas in Fund resources, and that any adjustment in quota shares would be expected to result in increases in the quota shares of dynamic economies in line with their relative positions in the world economy and hence likely in the share of emerging market and developing countries as a whole, while protecting the voice and representation of the poorest members, and recommits itself to the broadening and strengthening of the voice and participation of developing countries, including African countries, the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small island developing States, middle-income countries and countries in conflict and post-conflict situations, in international economic decision-making, norm-setting and global economic governance;

Encourages Member States to work together to strengthen and improve a system in which different layers of the global financial safety net are closely coordinated and have clear assignments of responsibilities and to consider enhancing regional financial arrangements to help countries to weather shocks, strengthen their capacity to detect risk and create new regional arrangements where there are not sufficient institutions in place;

Acknowledges the importance of the international financial institutions supporting, in line with their mandates, the policy space of each country, while remaining consistent with relevant international rules and commitments, in particular developing countries;

Reaffirms that cohesive, nationally owned sustainable development strategies, supported by integrated national financing frameworks, will be at the heart of efforts, reiterates that each country has primary responsibility for its own economic and social development and that the role of national policies and development strategies cannot be overemphasized, expresses respect for each country’s policy space and leadership to implement policies for the eradication of poverty in all its forms and dimensions and for sustainable development, while remaining consistent with relevant international rules and commitments, at the same time recognizes that national development efforts need to be supported by an enabling international economic environment, including coherent and mutually supporting world trade, monetary and financial systems and strengthened and enhanced global economic governance, and that processes to develop and facilitate the availability of appropriate knowledge and technologies globally, as well as capacity-building, are also critical, and commits to pursuing policy coherence and an enabling environment for sustainable development at all levels and by all actors, and to reinvigorating the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development;

Recommits itself 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;

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 supports the continued examination of the broader use of special drawing rights as a way to enhance the resilience of the international monetary system, including with reference to their potential role in the international reserve system;

Notes the rapid development of cryptoassets and the potential systemic implications of these private assets on the functioning of the international monetary system, the ability of regulators to protect consumers and promote financial stability and the ability of central banks to effectively use monetary policy to pursue domestic economic objectives, encourages promoters of such assets to work with regulators on financial regulations in markets where their assets are used, and urges regulators to carefully consider the potential implications for the international and domestic financial system when formulating the appropriate regulatory treatment for cryptoassets in their jurisdictions;

Looks forward to the results of the ongoing work by the Financial Stability Board and the Financial Action Task Force on global stablecoins, underlining the need to appropriately address the risks associated with them and other similar arrangements with potential systemic footprints before these projects can commence operation;

Notes the work by the Financial Stability Board on financial market reform, commits itself to sustaining or strengthening frameworks for macroprudential regulation and countercyclical buffers, reaffirms the commitment to hastening the completion of the reform agenda on financial market regulation, including assessing and if necessary reducing the systemic risks associated with non-bank financial intermediation, markets for derivatives, securities lending and repurchase agreements, and also reaffirms the commitment to addressing the risk created by “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions and to addressing cross-border elements in the effective resolution of troubled, systemically important financial institutions;

Also notes that there are growing risks outside the regulatory framework, including through non-bank financial institutions and financial technology, and calls upon financial regulators to increasingly shift towards examining the underlying risks associated with financial activity rather than the type of financial institution;

Calls upon financial regulators to encourage financial institutions to explore new opportunities to improve their ability to better manage risks, including through anti-money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism measures, as well as through the greater use of technology to help to address the costs and risks of operating correspondent banking relationships;

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;

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 notes the current efforts to update the 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 on to the global economy;

Notes the potential for source countries of capital flows to use appropriate combinations of macroeconomic, macroprudential and regulatory policies that avoid excessive leverage and large international spillovers in the form of capital flow volatility, while still meeting domestic macroeconomic objectives, encourages source countries to consider such policies, and calls for greater macroeconomic coordination among systemically important economies, which can also help to address global financial market volatility;

Invites the international financial and banking institutions, in consultation with national Governments, to develop tailored guidelines on how countries can attract long-term international investments, guided by the 2030 Agenda, in line with national plans and policies, and with a view to minimizing the adverse effects of capital market volatility;

Reiterates the need to resolve to reduce mechanistic reliance on credit-rating agency assessments, including in regulations, and to promote increased competition as well as measures to avoid conflict of interest in the provision of credit ratings;

Invites the international financial and banking institutions to continue to enhance the transparency and analytical rigour of risk-rating mechanisms, noting that sovereign risk assessments should maximize the use of 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 the potential impact of the role played by private credit rating agencies on the development prospects of developing countries, in accordance with their mandates;

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

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;

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, in this regard, the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session an action-oriented report on the implementation of the present resolution with a particular focus on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the international financial system and development;

Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its seventy-seventh session, under the item entitled “Macroeconomic policy questions”, the sub-item entitled “International financial system and development”, unless otherwise agreed.

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