Theme:

"Responding to global crises: New Development Paths"

The confluence of the global crises have been discussed extensively over the last year and continues to remain at the centre of world concerns due to the effects on the global economy and significant slowdowns in economic growth particularly in the case of developing and emerging economies.

UNCTAD's 2nd Public Symposium will debate "Responding to Global Crises: New Development Paths". It will examine policy ideas emanating from the economic and financial crises and go beyond to look at more inclusive and sustainable sets of polices at the national and international levels as a response mechanism.

In our efforts to broaden the debate and better reflect the ideas and opinions of all development stakeholders, we are hereby launching a call for papers/ inputs. The overall aim of the call for papers is to gather your views and feedback on your position(s) with regard to the main issues to be addressed at the symposium.

Symposium sub-topics for the proposal of papers:

1. Rethinking global economic governance: towards trade and financial reforms for enhancing development
   • International policy challenges for sustainable recovery (example: new debt crisis, cutbacks on Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)
   • The systemic obstacles to national recovery strategies
   • New financial architectures
   • Recurrent boom and bust cycles
   • Support to new development paths (policy coherence and coordination, innovative finance, policy space and democratizing economic governance


2. Sustainable development strategies
   • Inter related challenges facing developing countries to bring about more environmentally sustainable and inclusive growth (example: green growth/ green development, food and energy security, role of commodities, more employment-intensive growth, a better balance between export-led and domestic consumption-led growth, new approaches to investment strategies, better balance between financial and productive sectors, reduced income equality)
   • Implications for new approaches to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Guidelines for submission:

Contributions to be submitted should comply with the following criteria:

• Address the overall theme of the symposium "Responding to global crises: New Development Paths" and/ or focus on one of the sub-topic(s);
• Propose practical suggestions and concrete recommendations for the way forward;
• Preferably be written in English or French;
• Not exceed 5 A4 pages (12 point font, margins 2.5 cm); and
• Should have as the subject line: Inputs to UNCTAD Public Symposium 2010.

On the first page:

• The title of the paper (Times New Roman 18)
• The name(s) of the author(s) and institution(s) (Times New Roman 14)
• Contact details including email, phone and fax (Times New Roman 12)
• Short abstract (Times New Roman 12)

Submitted contributions of publishable quality will be disseminated to a wider audience including networks of civil society organizations, private sector, parliamentarians, member States and academia.

Deadline for submission:

Papers/inputs should reach the UNCTAD secretariat as soon as possible and no later than Friday,

30 April 2010, by:

E-mail:  publicsymposium@unctad.org
Fax:      +41 22 917 0056
Tel:       +41 22 917 5048
              +41 22 917 1848
              +41 22 917 2475
Post:   UNCTAD Public Symposium
            Civil Society Outreach Unit,
            Communications, Information and Outreach,
            UNCTAD, Palais des Nations,
            Avenue de la Paix, Geneva, Switzerland