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October 2013 IF IT LOOKS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE... Civil society organizations have raised concern over the approval of a “partnership facility” and its initiatives ahead of the UN’s new development agenda. By Roberto Bissio According to the official schedule, approved at the recently concluded United Nations General Assembly in New York, negotiations on a “new development agenda" to replace the Millennium Development Goals should begin in September 2014, in order to give countries time to study the issue. This will culminate in a Development Summit in 2015 attended by heads of state and government. However, the creation of a “partnership facility”, which is one of the key points of the new agenda proposed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, is already included in the budget for next year. In the coming weeks, the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly may approve a substantial piece of the new agenda before a majority of the members having started to analyze it. The new United Nations Partnership Facility (UNPF) will have a budget of a million and a half dollars a year, 90% of which will pay five senior officials, led by an under-secretary-general. "Extra-budgetary resources" (donations not part of the official budget that is scrutinized by UN members) are estimated to provide more than $12 million a year. The new office is mandated to coordinate existing partnerships with the private sector (corporations, private foundations and civil society organizations) and encourage new ones to "significantly increase existing resources and expand the effectiveness of their use," globally and in developing countries. Many of those partnerships already exist, but only as "personal initiatives" of the UN Secretary General, without any agreed mandate. The initiatives to be formalized as part of the UNPF initiatives include "Every Woman, Every Child", "Sustainable Energy for All", "Education First" and several others. At a time when many developed countries suffer recession and have cut their official development assistance (ODA) budgets, the idea of using private philanthropy funds seems obvious and reasonable. However, in a statement issued in New York on the occasion of the UN General Assembly, an alliance of civil society networks* warned diplomats about the possibility of precisely the opposite effect: "Contrary to the perception that leveraging actually draws in private resources to available public funds, increasingly it is about using public money (ODA) to cover the risks of private investment. Losses will be socialized while profits continue to be private – and too often untaxed. Recent experience in many countries shows that these “innovative” mechanisms are often ineffective, poorly regulated, and can lead to corruption in borrowing and lending countries”. The official press releases are very optimistic. "Every Woman", “Every Child” has purportedly “delivered” $10 billion and "Sustainable Energy for All," an initiative launched just a year ago, "has seen pledges" of $50 billion. These amounts are impressive, considering that the total ODA of the richest countries is about $100 billion a year and is falling. However, what these numbers actually mean is not easy to figure out. "Education First", chaired by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced with great fanfare "commitments" worth $1.5 billion a year ago. Of these, $1 billion would be provided by Western Union, a corporation specializing in channeling remittances from migrants, and $500 million by the credit card issuer MasterCard . However, the MasterCard Foundation has a total grant making capacity for all its programmes of $100 million a year and the Western Union Foundation claims on its website to have awarded $71 million in grants since 2001. The small print of the Education First website says that MasterCard will provide scholarships for 15,000 African university students over 10 years, while Western Union will “provide up to $10,000 per day in non-governmental organization grant funding.” At that pace, it will take 274 years to reach $1 billion! In either case neither the UN itself nor developing country governments receive any grant or in any way control or supervise them. There is no demonstrated additionality to ODA and other financial commitments made in inter-governmental fora, nor is there any proof that those monies add to what the foundations would have disbursed anyhow. Neither is there any clear link with the official objective of "Education First," which is to accelerate progress in primary education in the poorest countries. However, it is very obvious that big corporations do benefit from improved public image by the use of the blue UN flag, as well as improved access to privileged information and high-level contacts. In some African countries, for example, the alliance of big pharmaceutical companies with the UN has allowed them to win lucrative contracts with the state, to the detriment of local small and medium enterprises. The UNPF deserves a more careful discussion before being approved in order to clarify who gets which benefits and from whom. – Third World Network Features. * The Civil Society Reflection Group on Sustainable Development, includes the Third World Network, the Arab NGO Network for Development, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Southern feminist network DAWN, terre des hommes, Global Policy Forum and Social Watch. -ends-
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