30 October 2018: The President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) appointed the permanent representatives of Canada and Ghana as co-facilitators for the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD). Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, Permanent Representative of Ghana, and Marc-Andre Blanchard, Permanent Representative of Canada, will consult with Member States on “the substantive work, including possible outcome” of the Dialogue.

UNGA President Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces announced the appointment in a letter to Member States on 30 October 2018. She noted that the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), the outcome of the Third International Conference on FfD in 2015, calls for convening a High-level Dialogue on FfD back-to-back with the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) when it convenes under the auspices of the UNGA every four years.

The UNGA-convened HLPF will take place from 24-25 September 2019, meeting for the first time since the adoption of the SDGs. The FfD dialogue has been scheduled to meet on 23 September. The Addis Ababa outcome also indicates that governments “will consider the need to hold a follow-up conference by 2019.”

In June and July 2018, Pobee facilitated a set of intergovernmental discussions to resolve scheduling conflicts due to a “proliferation” of high-level meetings mandated to convene at the beginning of the UNGA’s 74th session in September 2019. The consultations set the dates for:

• the High-level Dialogue on FfD (23 September);
• the 74th General Debate (24-28 September and 30 September);
• the HLPF under UNGA auspices (24-25 September);
• the High-level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) (26 September);
• the High-level Meeting on the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (26 September); and
• the High-level Meeting to review progress made in addressing the priorities of small island developing States (SIDS) through the implementation of the Samoa Pathway (27 September).

Adopting the agreement on these dates in September 2018, the UNGA also decided that each high-level meeting will not have any parallel meetings.