“Towards Global Partnerships”: UN Private Sector Focal Points Highlight Trends, Challenges for UN-Business Partnerships
Summary
By: Kristina Thomsen, Global Public Policy Institute
The biannual report of the Secretary-General “Towards Global Partnerships”, which focuses on ways of enhancing cooperation between the UN and all relevant partners, in particular the private sector, will be presented this month to the General Assembly at its 66th session in New York.
Since many subscribers of this newsletter dedicated a portion of their time for interviews and filling out surveys, it is a perfect time to present new trends, developments and other interesting findings based on the input of the UN Private Sector Focal Points.
Few surprises, some positive developments
In an online-survey carried out among UN agencies, 70 percent rated the overall success of their partnerships with business to be either very successful or successful and 90 percent believe that the importance of partnerships with the private sector in their respective organization is likely to grow. Moreover, respondents claim that UN agencies are becoming ever more strategic when it comes to partnerships, with most agencies reporting the existence of either a formal partnership strategy already in place or an ongoing process to develop one. As part of this process, many respondents reported that they preferred a “less is more” approach, emphasizing the quality and value-added of fewer partnerships as opposed to more, average partnerships. Finally, the trend towards developing more innovative partnerships, especially those which harness the core competencies of business, continues – with many stressing this as a key priority.
Addressing persistent challenges
However, old and new challenges continue to trouble the development and implementation of successful partnerships between the UN and business. Survey respondents and interviewees identified time and staff constraints and legal uncertainties as well as a lack of coordination across the UN system as the biggest hurdles to the UN becoming a more effective partner. Similarly, some UN agencies have difficulty providing adequate resources to the development and management of their partnerships.
Many UN agencies, however, have started to address these challenges. 70 percent of the surveyed UN agencies, for example, stated that their respective organization had taken steps in the last two years towards simplifying legal processes, most importantly by developing standard legal templates. To respond to the need of a better coordination among the UN organizations, the UN Global Compact has, together with a number of interested UN organizations, launched a process for contracting a joint service provider of due diligence research to be made available system-wide. The aim is to reach a more harmonized approach within the UN with regards to screening potential private sector partners.
Transformational partnerships – the quest for impact and scale
According to interviewees and survey respondents, achieving impact and scale of UN-business partnerships is another key goal. To address this challenge, the UN Global Compact LEAD Working Group, a group of companies, which support Global Compact participants in their efforts to achieve higher levels of corporate sustainability performance, has developed a framework to help partnerships achieve greater scale and impact by becoming “transformational.” Transformational partnerships are partnerships that leverage the core competencies of all relevant stakeholders to catalyze wide-scale, lasting impact on systemic development challenges. Those partnerships can, for example, aim to change rules and systems to create a new playing field. That way, all stakeholders – and not only participants of the partnerships – can benefit from its work.
Impact assessments
It follows from the above that within the partnership community, inside and outside of the UN, there is no shortage of good ideas and concepts. What is needed though is a more open and honest handling of failures. Failures can enable learning, but only if shared with others and not swept under the rug. Closely linked to this – and even more importantly – there is a need for comprehensive and comparable impact assessments. We need to understand what role partnerships play in solving global problems. Until now there have been many assumptions, but hardly any positive proof. It may indeed be quite challenging to carry out real impact assessments, especially for partnerships that focus on advocacy and coordination. However, they are essential to ensuring long-term support for partnerships. It’s a hard nut to crack but definitely worth the effort.
For more information, please contact Kristina Thomsen or Wade Hoxtell, Global Public Policy Institute.