[asia-apec 1117] UNICEF Statement: Public, Private and Civil Society
UN-NGLS (NY Office)
ngls at undp.org
Sat May 8 03:34:22 JST 1999
Below is the text of an address to the Harvard International
Development Conference, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, on 16 April
by UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy, which we think may be of
interest to you.
_____________________________________________________________
Public, private and civil society
Statement of UNICEF Executive Director Carol
Bellamy to Harvard International Development
Conference on 'sharing responsibilities: public,
private & civil society'
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 16 April 1999
Ladies and gentlemen, the United Nations was
founded to end the scourge of war; to reaffirm faith
in fundamental human rights; and to promote social
progress and better standards of life in larger
freedom.
For more than half a century, the UN and its
agencies - including the United Nations Children's
Fund - have vigorously pursued these and related
objectives, and they have done so by working
almost exclusively with governments.
But the end of the Cold War and the growing
economic interdependence among nations have led
to a profoundly important perceptual shift.
As Secretary-General Kofi Annan put it recently,
we now know that peace and prosperity cannot be
achieved without a broad expanse of active
partnerships - partnerships that involve sharing
responsibilities not only with governments, but with
international organisations, civil society and the
business community.
There has been particular attention paid to the
necessity of a UN alliance with the private sector, a
theme that the Secretary-General addressed a few months
ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"In today's world," he told corporate leaders, "we
depend on each other. The business of the United
Nations involves the businesses of the world."
Indeed, it is abundantly clear that without
development and peace, trade and investment
cannot occur and business cannot grow.
By the same token, thriving markets can help create
the conditions necessary for development and peace
- by creating jobs, by improving standards of living, and
by making it possible for developing countries to share in
the benefits of the world economy.
Let no one doubt the urgency of this task.
In a global economy worth nearly $30 trillion, a
billion and a half people - a quarter of the human
race - are living in conditions of almost unimaginable
suffering and want. Six hundred and fifty million of them
are children - a figure more than twice the population of
the United States.
Never in history have we seen such numbers. And
never in history have we seen overall aid to the
world's neediest countries fall to such shameful levels as
they have in recent years.
Yet there has never been a time when development
assistance has been more needed - or the evidence
of its past success more compelling.
The United Nations System has been active in
promoting a variety of approaches to development
and in laying the groundwork for greater
development cooperation - including cooperation to
promote the survival, protection and full
development of the world's children.
With aid levels plummeting as the number of people
trapped in absolute poverty continues to rise, it is
clear that the mission of UNICEF - and that of the
entire UN System - is more relevant than ever.
Only the United Nations, with its universal and
comprehensive mandate, can offer a central forum to
address sustainable human development in all its
aspects - and to build the consensus needed to
achieve it
Only the United Nations has the operational
potential to address the global imperatives that must be
met - from humanitarian relief and peacekeeping to
peace-building and development cooperation.
And amid all this, the UN is working to promote
private-sector development and direct foreign
investment. It is helping countries to join the
international trading system and to enact legislation
aimed at encouraging responsible business practices. And
it is promoting micro-finance for women, small-traders and
entrepreneurs.
As the Secretary-General has said, business has a
compelling interest in the success of these efforts, for
thriving markets and human security go hand in hand. We
cannot have one without the other.
One widely talked-about rationale for the UN
working in partnership with industry and the business
community is based on the assumption that the resources of
government are not plentiful enough - and that if
development is to succeed, we must look for those
resources in the private sector and in the marketplace.
I would submit that this is a very poor rationale for
partnership.
It is poor for two reasons: first, it is based on the
mistaken idea that governments should be allowed to shirk
their responsibility as the leading players in development
- an issue that I want to return to shortly.
Second, it is a poor rationale for partnership
because it is based on a limited and almost
patronising view of what the private sector can bring to a
relationship with the UN - namely, money.
The problem is that by itself, money is a poisonous
commodity - it makes business and industry suspect
that they are being courted for their dollars, not their
capacity.
In fact, the private sector has an immense store of
knowledge and experience. It has vast numbers of
talented and insightful people.
And numerous companies have undertaken
beneficial and innovative projects in countries in
desperate need of help.
Moreover, the private sector has a major role to
play in the realisation of human rights, from such
issues as child labour practices to gender equality
and protection of the environment.
Obviously the UN System looks to the private
sector as a source of funding for multilateral
development assistance - the kind of assistance that
has always sought to address basic human needs,
beginning with poverty eradication and the needs of
the most vulnerable people - especially children.
But it is also important to see the private sector in a
more expansive context, as a source of knowledge and
expertise for multilateralism.
And we in the United Nations, we on the multilateral
side, on the development side, must also be mindful
of something else: that in dealing with the private
sector, we cannot be uncritical.
To begin with, it is dangerous to assume that the
goals of the private sector are somehow
synonymous with those of the United Nations,
because they most emphatically are not.
Business and industry are driven by the profit motive - as
they should be and must be, both for their shareholders
and their employees.
The work of the UN, on the other hand, is driven by
a set of ethical principles that sustain its mission -
principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations,
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, and elsewhere in
the galaxy of international instruments and treaties that
have been promulgated since the UN's founding in 1945.
The founders had two things on their minds at the
end of the Second World War. One was to prevent
a third world war. The other was to avoid another
global economic depression and to ensure universal
economic and social well-being.
That vision was based on a set of universal values:
freedom, justice and the peaceful resolution of
disputes; social progress and better standards of
living; equality, tolerance and dignity.
Just as the private sector is not embarrassed by the
fact that it is driven by profits, the UN is hardly
self-conscious that its work grows out of underlying
ethical principles.
It is perfectly right and legitimate for both to be
pursuing their singular mandates - and where they
can work together as partners, so much the better.
But in coming together with the private sector, the
UN must carefully, and constantly, appraise the
relationship.
It is one thing to say that we want to work in
partnership with corporations that recognise their
responsibility for human rights, who care about
labour codes, working conditions, environmental
protection and the like. But these are generalities.
The heart of the matter is the exercise of "due
diligence." The UN must look carefully at these
companies. This does not mean putting them under a
microscope, fixing them with a degree of scrutiny
that few of us could pass. Rather, it means
identifying organisations whose behaviour, on
balance, shows evidence of a willingness to exercise
corporate responsibility. And these are the
businesses with which the UN can enter into fruitful
partnerships.
Without due diligence, one runs the risk of becoming
associated with companies whose past records
suggest that they may not be the best partners. At
UNICEF, where I will start my fifth year as
Executive Director next month, we have avoided
such situations, despite the fact that UNICEF - now
three years past the half-century mark - has the most
extensive corporate involvement of any single UN agency.
The reason is simple. We are exceedingly careful.
For instance, UNICEF attaches ethical strings to its
supply contracts, favouring companies that pledge to
avoid links with such activities as landmine
production and exploitative child labour. We do not
deal with cigarette companies or accept
contributions from manufacturers of infant formula.
And with these sorts of ground rules as a foundation, we
can enter into whatever partnerships make sense.
For example, Warner Brothers, Turner Network
Television, Time for Kids and Coinstar are all key
supporters of the Trick or Treat for UNICEF
campaign. And companies like British Airways, the
Sheraton and Westin hotel chains and American
Express are involved in UNICEF marketing efforts
linked to specific fund-raising activities.
In half a century, we have learned a few things about
private-sector partnerships. We have learned that they
should not exceed expectations. They should not be based
on unwarranted assumptions. And they should not be focused
solely on money, for that will surely sour the
relationship.
Let me turn now to another aspect of partnerships
for development, those involving non-governmental
organisations, or, as they are commonly known,
NGOs.
It is a truism that NGOs, in their numbers and
diversity, have proved themselves absolutely
indispensable in development efforts, especially
given the perpetual crisis of multilateralism - a crisis
that tends to revolve around funding and humanitarian
capacity.
But however generous and expansive their motives,
many are not immune from legitimate criticism. For
example, some humanitarian NGOs have come
under fire because their work and very existence
seems tied to catastrophe, and catastrophe alone.
And there is also criticism of the NGO community
for not being sufficiently sensitive to the fact that in
some areas of NGO work, there is a great deal of overlap
and redundancy among organisations, whether national or
international.
That said, it is also true that NGOs have not, in
many cases, been sufficiently well treated by those
who take the crisis of multilateralism seriously - and by
well treated, I am not talking so much in terms of money
as I am in terms of the recognition that NGOs deserve for
what they do, and how well they do it.
For example, NGOs have not been consulted nearly
enough about the humanitarian imperative. They
have not been part of the decision-making process
over how priorities are set in the field. They have too
few opportunities to meet with major multilateral
agencies, and to help in devising ways to pool efforts and
share operational authority.
That is why, in 2001, when UNICEF holds its next
great event for children, we intend to make it an
occasion in which NGOs will be welcomed as full
members, along with other representatives of civil
society, the private sector, governments and UN
agencies.
This event, the first major meeting of what we are
calling the Leadership Initiative for Children, will
mark the start of a collaborative effort to draw up
new global agenda for child survival, development
and protection in the 21st Century.
It will also stand as the culmination of the process
that began in 1990 with the World Summit for
Children, where a handful of NGOs were granted
token representative status by governments - to the
Earth Summit, where NGOs were directly involved
for the first time in preparatory talks as well as the
Summit, and on through to the Social Development Summit in
Copenhagen, the Beijing Women's Conference, and the
Habitat Conference in Nairobi - all of them events where
NGOs moved closer and closer to full partnership.
Now let me turn, in conclusion, to the central issue
of sharing responsibility: the matter of partnerships with
the public sector - namely, the governments.
There has been considerable discussion in recent
years of the potential for ending the crisis of
development assistance through the natural workings
of the global market economy. The chief evidence
cited is the fact that private-sector funding and
investment in developing countries has been rising
dramatically.
This is certainly true. Even as development overall
aid has dropped, private capital flows have
increased five-fold, and now represent close to 80
per cent of the total resources that go to developing
countries each year - nearly twice what it was in 1990.
But private capital seldom gravitates to the very
neediest countries - in 1995, for example, all but 20 per
cent of total private flows went to just 12 developing
countries, while the 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
received only 5 per cent.
Moreover, in those countries that it does reach,
private capital often does little for the poor. It is true
that in some places, transnational corporations do provide
income opportunities for many people, including some of
the literate poor. But for the most part, private capital
is used to finance hard infrastructure, like roads,
bridges and communications. Only rarely do we find it
supporting the development of such essential social
services as primary health care, or basic education.
More to the point, private capital will not find its
way to countries that lack an adequate social and
economic infrastructure - which is precisely what
multilateral aid is aimed at helping poor countries to
build.
Investors are well aware that there will be no return on
their investment unless a society has the capacity to put
its resources to effective use.
This is why it is so important to help countries to
improve health care services; to be able to offer
basic quality education for all, especially girls; to have
clean water and adequate sanitation; to practice good
governance - and to use communication and information
technology to promote knowledge and greater understanding
among peoples and cultures.
All of this is not only smart social policy - it is smart
business.
Multilateralism has always sought to address basic
human needs. And it is now particularly consumed
by questions of poverty eradication - the result of
the mandates from the continuum of United Nations
conferences on various aspects of development in
the first half of this decade.
The pledges made by governments at these
conferences were reaffirmations of their fundamental
commitment to provide an agreed-upon minimum
level of development assistance to poor countries.
The centrepiece was the 1969 pledge by the
industrialised countries to earmark at least 0.7 per
cent of their Gross National Product (GNP) for
Official Development Assistance (ODA).
Yet at a time when even modest increases in aid to
the world's poorest countries could save the lives of
millions of children and women, Official Development
Assistance is in a state of virtual free-fall.
The collective ODA of the 29-nation donor group
known as the OECD - which includes the United
States - has fallen to a record low of 0.22 per cent
of GNP - less than one-third of the 0.7 per cent
target. And since 1992, the G-7 nations'
contribution to the general ODA fund has
plummeted about $15 billion - a reduction of almost
30 per cent in real terms.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us call this situation by its
proper name: it is a scandal. The developed world, which
is benefiting so vastly from globalisation, cannot be
allowed to be deficient in its obligations to the
developing world - which are not merely compassionate and
generous but also a recognition that only by building an
adequate human and developmental infrastructure in the
developing world can you have a world economy that is one
day stable and vibrant.
For all the importance of NGOs and other
representatives of civil society, for all the potential
value of development partnerships with business and the
private sector, we must never lose sight of the fact that
it is governments that remain the primary actors in this
fundamental relationship for development.
It is the governments that have thought long and hard
about the development imperatives; it is they who have set
the targets and made the commitments. It is governments
that sit on the executive boards of multilateral agencies.
It is governments that think about development as a matter
of social policy, who have development ministries and
foreign ministries that fashion the world's humanitarian
and political agendas.
For practical, legal, and moral reasons, governments
must be held to their commitments. No one should
pretend that simply getting more money from the
private sector will compensate for the failures of the
public sector.
The phenomenon of globalisation has opened the
possibility of untold riches. But it has also shown its
power to trigger the progressive impoverishment of large
societies, such as Indonesia, where tens of thousands of
families have fallen into abject poverty in the last two
years.
There is a belief among many people that
globalisation is an ineluctable process, as irresistible
and beyond human control as the tides.
In fact, it is the product of deliberate, day-to-day
policy choices. And that is why, ladies and
gentlemen, we must not let governments off the
hook.
Thank you.
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