UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened a four-day international conference on financing for development in the Qatari capital Doha on Saturday, highlighting the importance to confront development emergency.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks during a news conference ahead of Saturday’s UN Conference on Financing for Development, in Doha November 28, 2008. EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso called on Friday for a ’human rescue’ plan alongside financial rescue packages, as aid agencies rapped most other major world leaders for staying away from the UN summit on aid.

In his keynote address at the plenary session of the UN-sponsored Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, Ban urged the international community to “confront a development emergency and accelerating climate change” because financial crisis is not the only crisis.

Stressing the need of a truly global stimulus plan that meets the needs of emerging economies and developing countries, the UN chief said that the international community must deal with threats and challenges the world is facing “as one.”

Ban’s call came as Western leaders as well as the heads of the IMF and World Bank stay away from the Doha meeting.

Under the scheme of “Addressing Common Concerns Through Renewed Cooperation,” the meeting was attended by world leaders and delegates of some 145 UN members. But only some 10 national leaders in addition to some 35 high-level delegates of UN members were among the participants.

Earlier on Friday, Ban hosted a “retreat” meeting for world leaders with the aim of converting intentions expressed at a Group of 20 (G20) summit in Washington this month into “concrete recommendations” ahead of the next G20 meeting in London in April.

But no conclusions announced as he was dissatisfied with the low turnout of the world leaders, especially those from the Western developed world.

On Nov. 15, world leaders at the Washington G20 summit agreed to an action plan of immediate and medium-term measures to cope with the global financial crisis.

A declaration issued at the G20 summit said “we reaffirm the importance of the Millennium Development Goals, the development assistance commitments we have made, and urge both developed and emerging economies to undertake commitments consistent with their capacities and roles in the global economy.”

“In this regard, we reaffirm the development principles agreed at the 2002 United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, which emphasized country ownership and mobilizing all sources of financing for development,” said the declaration.

However, only about two weeks later, the developed world has now seemed to forget the Washington declaration by staying away from the Doha conference summoned by the UN chief on Nov. 17 rightly after he took part in the G20 summit.

Ban on Saturday urged that the participants of the official Doha development conference can discuss in depth with concrete plans to update a 2002 Monterrey Consensus on aid to developing countries.

The Monterrey Consensus, adopted by UN members at the International Conference on Financing for Development in 2002, addresses development financing issues including domestic resource mobilization, mobilization of foreign resources, international trade, development assistance, external debt and systemic issues of global governance.

It was aimed at achieving the internationally agreed development goals adopted during the previous decade, including the Millennium Development Goals.

As the most important outcome of the 2002 Monterrey Conference, the consensus, together with the Millennium Development Goals, became one of the widely recognized reference frames for north-south development cooperation.

Observers here held that the Doha meeting marks the first step of the UN to mobilize worldwide resources to tame the on-going global financial crisis and increase rich countries’ awareness of its repercussions on the developing counties.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso spoke at the Doha meeting Saturday, calling for “global solutions” to global crises.

“A global answer requires the presence of all regions in the world, representing the voice of the rich, the emerging and the poorest,” he stressed.

The host Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani told the meeting that too great expectations are being placed on oil producing countries.

Development is a “peace umbrella” that protects all and is more helpful in peace keeping than “just piling up weapons,” he said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the sole leader from the developed countries attended the conference as France holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

Sarkozy promised to help developing countries restructure global economic governance and attain more rights in the Western-backed international financial institutions, such as the IMF.

“We believe that the G8 format that was once useful is now obsolete,” he said.

Despite low turnout of Western leaders, the World Bank’s Chief Economist Lin Yifu, who heads the World Bank delegation to Doha, issued a statement on the bank’s website.

“In the next year, developing countries could account for all of the world’s GDP growth. In this transformed world, empowering developing and emerging countries is imperative,” the statement quoted him as saying.

The IMF said in a report in early November that the global economy will increase only 2.2 percent in the coming year, down from the projected growth of 3.7 percent in 2008. Moreover, the developed countries as a whole will witness a 0.3 percent negative growth.

More pessimistic report was published on Nov. 25 by the World Bank, which put the world’s growth at only one percent and warned of an imminent negative growth in international trade.

As the cheques of dealing with the economic downturn mount, all channels of financing for development involved in the Monterrey Consensus are shrinking, including domestic resources, trade, investment, expatriate remittances, foreign loans and official development assistances.

However, in line with the historic Monterrey Consensus, many leaders and representatives recommit themselves to eradicate poverty, achieve sustainable development, envisioning a fully inclusive and equitable global order, which are expected to contribute to the final outcome document of the follow-up meeting in Doha on Dec. 2.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet