The content of General Assembly Resolution 56/76 followed closely the discussions with Member States and non-state actors that were reflected in the Secretary-General’s report A/56/323 (UNGA 2001a). The resolution embraced most of the recommendations made by the entities that had been consulted. Among all the entities contacted, the Member States’ options were strictly observed and followed in the writings of the resolution. However, there had been great discrepancies between what the Member States intended to adopt and how the resolution has been (mis)interpreted by others after its passage.
When one looks at the history of how the initiative of collaboration with “all relevant partners” had been pushed forward towards the General Assembly’s recognition in 2001, as well as how this recognition was interpreted and used in later years, one notices at least three interesting points. First, discussions within the UN about the new collaboration with external actors have always been framed in the parameter of UN-“all relevant partner” partnerships; a UN-private sector partnership was never blatantly singled out. However, in later years, people of different trades and intentions, including scholars and practitioners alike, misinterpreted the resolution to create the impression that it was only UN-private sector partnerships that the General Assembly endorsed in 2001. The truth is, however, they were partially right. The tilt towards UN-private sector partnerships has always been present in the intentions and policy-making of the UN.
Second, General Assembly Resolution 56/76 sanctions partnerships between the United Nations and “all relevant partners, in particular the private sector,” rather than partnerships between international organizations (IOs) and “all relevant partners, in particular the private sector.” In reality, many international organizations, within or outside the UN system, joined the Resolution 56/76 bandwagon and frequently referred to it to support and justify their collaborations with non-state actors, particularly members of the business community. This enthusiasm to rush into such a partnership fever, in many cases, did not necessarily guarantee that all partnerships would serve the original goal of the General Assembly of promoting inclusive and equitable development and making sure globalization would become a positive force for all.
Third, the UN-initiated discussion and legislation about partnerships failed to emphasize the distinction between UN/IO-participating partnerships and UN/IO-brokered
partnerships. In the former, UN agencies or other IOs actively participate in the partnership; they are the public end of the deal. In the latter, UN agencies or other IOs play the role of a facilitator that brings together the public partner (usually a state entity) and the non-state partnership (usually a private, for-profit entity).
2.3.1 The Tilt Toward Business Partners
Too many people refer to Resolution 56/76 as if it was endorsing public-business
partnerships, ignoring the fact that what the General Assembly endorsed was partnerships with all types of non-state actors; private companies are just a fraction of “all relevant partners” (UNGA 2001b, fourth preambular paragraph). It is important to note that there is a distinct difference between profit-seeking corporations and non-profit NGOs. Indeed, these two types of actors maintain very different relations with their UN partners and at times have quite opposite views of each other (Tesner 2000). Certain UN agencies, such as the UNDP and UNCTAD, seem to accept both profit-seeking corporations and non- profit organizations as “private sectors”; while others, for example UNICEF, restrict their definition of “private sector” to profit-making corporations, calling non-profit NGOs “programmatic partners.” This study uses the UNICEF language and refers to only for- profit business corporations as “the private sector.”
Between these two major categories of “all relevant partners,” namely the “private sector” versus NGOs and civil societies, there has always been a tilt towards business partners. Looking at the steps that the UN took towards the final adoption of the public- private partnership scheme by the General Assembly, one notices that it was clear that Secretariat staffers aimed at involving private sectors in the programs and work of the UN for reasons stated above—limited resources at the UN’s disposal required effort to
explore new sources of funds and support. At the very beginning of 1997, Maurice Strong already offered the suggestion of mobilizing resources from private markets and other innovative financing systems in order to “tap into the development potential embodied in the private sector” (UNGA 1997a, para. 168).
However, to have the idea developed among the staff members of the UN was one thing; to sell it to the Member States and the wider audience of UN policies was another. It was reasonable to expect widely-shared bias, distrust, and resentment towards private sector involvement with the UN among many Member States and important stakeholders that mattered to the world organization. Collaborations with the private sector needed to be wrapped up in a bigger package of partnership between the UN and a variety of non- state actors in order to attract wider acceptance of the new initiative. Therefore, one can easily observe that, in general, UN staff members tried to frame their propensity towards cooperation with the private sector within the bigger advocacy of collaboration between the UN and “all relevant partners” or “all non-state actors” in the reports and draft resolutions that they produced. However, the intention was clear—to get the world’s, especially the third world countries’, formal acceptance of international public-private partnerships, through the adoption of the General Assembly resolution by all Member States of the UN, recognizing the roles of private business actors in the work of the world body and its agencies.
The inclination towards private sector partnerships was not just a recent phenomenon. Since the 1997 report on reforming the United Nations (UNGA 1997a) until the 2001 report on the comprehensive debate of partnerships prior to the adoption of Resolution 56/76 (UNGA 2001b), discussions of partnership have always focused on
those between the UN and “all relevant partners” (or “non-state actors”). Although the preference was given to business partners by frequent insertions of phrases like “in particular [partnerships with] private/business sector,” UN staff carefully avoided singling out business actors or the private, for-profit sector as the prime candidate for partnerships with the UN. It is clear that public-privatepartnership was heavily sugar- coated in the bigger category of partnerships between the UN and “relevant, non-state partners.”
In the very first General Assembly resolution adopted under the agenda item “Towards Global Partnerships” —Resolution 55/215 (UNGA 2000h)—the resolution requested that Member States further explore the ways and means in which the UN could cooperate with “all relevant partners” in order to realize the goals and programs of the organization (UNGA 2000h, para. 1). Although in the subsequent paragraphs, “all relevant partners” were mentioned, in the preamble, the resolution stresses “in particular the private sector.” The inclination towards the private sector participation in UN
programs was already noticeable at that time. It was fairly clear that “the General Assembly call[ed] for a particular focus on the private sector” among all the “relevant partners” (UNGA 2001a, para. 3).
The focus of the Secretary-General’s report summarizing the comprehensive debate over partnership with “all relevant partners, in particular the private sector” (UNGA 2001a) further revealed that what the UN truly sought was partnerships with members of the business community. The report acknowledged that although the topic of partnership between the UN and all relevant partners should include cooperation with various non-state actors, including “a combination of the private sector, non-
governmental organizations and civil societies in general,” the tilt toward the private sector was obvious to the point that the main emphasis of the report was on “cooperation with the business community.” Only in the very beginning and the very end of the report was there mention of a “partnership with all relevant partners, particularly the private sector.” In the main body of the report, the dialogue was centered on collaboration with the private sector.
The report justified the focus on business actors by stating that other UN documents on the topic of partnerships between the UN and NGOs/civil societies had already been issued (UNGA 2001a, para. 3), and therefore there was no need to repeat what had been discussed in the other UN documents. However, it is very important to note that the this particular report, with a sole focus on partnerships with the private sector, rather than those “other UN documents,” formed the basis and background for the discussion in the General Assembly later that year (when Resolution 56/76 would be adopted and public-private partnerships formally recognized). Excluding discussions of UN-NGOs/civil society partnerships in this report was basically excluding such
discussions in the General Assembly session. Focusing solely on partnerships with the private sector in this background report was de facto steering the discussion in the General Assembly towards the same focus.
Thus, it becomes clear that not-for-profit partners, including NGOs and other civil societies, were only collateral objectives in the whole public-private partnership
initiative; in reality, the private business sector was the intended target that the UN wanted to involve in its new scheme of partnerships. However, this is understandable, considering that the reason why public-private partnerships were brought to the
international agenda was because they were seen as a remedy and source of capital and expertise to alleviate poverty and ensure the inclusiveness and fairness of globalization. Choosing private business, especially international business, partners as the scheme’s “particular focus” was just a logical and pragmatic thing to do.
2.3.2 Bandwagoning
After the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 56/76, a variety of UN agencies all jumped on to the notion of public-private partnerships and rushed into re-branding existing collaborations and forming new “partnerships.” As Binder, Palenberg, and Witte (2007) counted, by 2007 twenty organizations within the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions had offices dedicated solely to “promot[ing] public-private partnerships.” The label “public-private partnership” has become a catch-all term for any kind of
collaboration with external actors, among business or civil societies alike. At the same time, the combination of various key UN documents on the topic of collaboration with “all relevant partners, in particular the private sector,” including General Assembly resolutions under the agenda item “Towards global partnership” and reports prepared for such Assembly sessions, have become the umbrella framework from which many
specialized programs derive their own guidelines, as well as justifications for partnerships with external actors.
For example, UNICEF clearly states that “[t]he UN-Business Partnership agenda is gaining momentum and there is a clear mandate from the former and current UN Secretaries-General and the General Assembly to mobilise all sectors, in particular business, to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. UNICEF recognises that partnerships are needed in order to realise children’s rights, and business can play a
strong role in helping to advance [such] rights” (UNICEF 2012c). In the meantime, UNESCO derives its policy framework for partnerships with the private sector from the guidelines adopted by the United Nations in 2000. UNEP, in the same vein, regards the General Assembly (thus, the “Towards global partnership” resolutions) as its main source of guidance (UNEP 2009, 1 and 4). As a result, UN agencies’ collaborations with the private sector is far more widespread and far-reaching than generally assumed, and it is fair to say that every UN organization is involved in multiple forms of partnerships with members of the private sector (Tesner 2000).
The same phenomenon exists in agencies outside of the UN system as well. For example, at least six of the 22 OECD Development Assistance Committee donors have established programs promoting public-private partnerships and other types of initiatives that are designed to leverage the resources and expertise of the private sector to address global development issues (Binder, Palenberg, and Witte 2007, 8). It is worth noting that although partnerships might seem to be quite new in the global development setting, both within and outside the UN system, they often have long historical roots, although the very label of “public-private partnership” is of recent date (Mörth 2008).
However, some worry that these agencies might have gone into this partnership fever in a “somewhat naïve way, assuming virtually any relationship constitutes a
partnership and that almost any company can be a worthy partner” (Utting 2000a, 10–11). An interesting phenomenon appeared in which as the idea of partnership gained more and more momentum, many previous “beneficiaries,” “technical assistance providers,”
“donors,” and “sponsors” all suddenly and fashionably became “partners.” It seems that agencies overstretched the partnerships that the General Assembly originally had in mind,
which had the strong, direct emphasis on advancing development and making sure “globalization becomes a positive force for all.” When agencies started labeling all collaborations as “partnerships” and all collaborators “partners,” it became easy to overlook that in development discourse, partnerships would involve not only different actors and institutions coming together to pursue a common goal, but also mutual respect, transparency, balanced power relations, and the equitable distribution of benefits,
responsibilities and risks (Folwer 2000; Utting 2000a). At the same time, it also
overlooked the fact that in order to form voluntary, mutually beneficial, and innovative partnerships in development, the participants would need to adhere to certain standards of responsibility and accountability; however, not all “partners” of all of these UN agencies could pass such tests (Nelson and Zadek 2000; Utting 2000a).
Particularly, the problem of exclusiveness—that is, ruling out stakeholders that are actually affected by such policies—exists with many partnership deals brokered by the Bretton Woods institutions. In many cases, excluding such stakeholders from the formation and execution of partnerships have often led to abuses, such as the inequitable distribution of benefits, loose safeguards against irresponsibility, and unaccountability on both public and private ends. The case of Ghana’s water sector’s public-private
partnership will demonstrate this in later chapters.
2.3.3 IOs as Participants vs. as Brokers
For many, the terms “corporation with private sector,” “private sector participation,” or “public-private partnership” convey little but a vague impression of some sort of cooperation between a public entity and a private partner. This confusion also exists in the UN’s rhetoric of such topic. Too many definitions of such “cooperation,”
“collaboration,” and “partnership” have been given by various organizations and agencies inside and outside of the UN proper. Among all the differences, one distinction should be clearly pointed out. That is that international organizations (IOs), especially institutions and agencies in the UN system, can play two distinct roles when it comes to partnerships with the private sector. First, IOs could participate in the partnership as the public
partner. Second, IOs, as a third-party broker, could facilitate a partnership. In other words, there is an important division between UN/IO-participating partnerships and UN/IO-brokered partnerships. In the former, UN agencies or other IOs actively participate in the partnership; they are the public end of the deal. In the latter, UN agencies or other IOs play the role of a facilitator that brings together the public partner (usually a state entity) and the private partner (usually a private for-profit entity) to a partnership.
Unfortunately, in most, if not all UN papers, documents, guidelines, and even resolutions, such distinction is not clearly spelled out. In numerous cases, discussions about public-private partnerships inside the UN focus on the first type of partnerships, in which UN agencies or other international organizations act as the public partner.
However, such discussions do not rule out implicit references to the second role that UN agencies could play in a partnership—acting as the broker. For example, if one compares the first two resolutions under the agenda item “Towards global partnership”—
Resolutions 55/215 and 56/76 (UNGA 2000h, 2001b)—one would notice that a new preambular paragraph is inserted into the latter one—“Reaffirming its [the General Assembly’s] resolve to create an environment, at the national and global levels alike, that is conducive to development and the elimination of poverty” (UNGA 2001b, third
preambular paragraph). This paragraph steers the discussion from the international level to the national stage, adding a new dimension to the envisaged partnerships and providing justification and legitimacy for any activities on the national level. The crucial point that deserves attention is that on the national level, IOs often retreat from the more active role of participating in partnerships as the public end; rather, agencies in the UN system (especially the Bretton Woods institutions) and other international agencies often take a step back and play the role of a broker that brings the public and the private sectors together.
In the latter part of Resolution 56/76, the same idea is reflected in the ninth preambular paragraph:
[e]mphasizing that all relevant partners, in particular the private sector, can contribute in several ways to addressing the obstacles confronted by developing countries in mobilizing the resources needed to finance their sustainable development, and to the realization of the development goals of the United Nations through, inter alia, financial resources, access to technology, management expertise, and support for programmes,
including through the reduced pricing of drugs, where appropriate, for the prevention, care and treatment of the human immunodeficiency
virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and other diseases.
This paragraph gives a sort of vague statement from which one could draw an interpretation that the partnerships discussed and endorsed by the General Assembly could possibly implicitly include partnerships brokered by UN agencies. Since the
examples given in the paragraph, such as access to technology, management expertise, and the reduced priced of drugs are clearly needs of national governments and
populations (usually in developing countries), it is reasonable to conclude that this paragraph actually refers to UN-brokered partnerships, rather than UN-participating partnerships. The “contributions” that “all relevant partners, in particular the private sector” could make in the above-mentioned aspects directly go to the benefit of the local institutions and populations on the national level, only channeled through, instead of being provided by, UN agencies or other international stakeholders.
Other UN reports or documents on the topic of partnership also implicitly suggest the same idea that partnerships involving the UN or other international organizations do not necessarily require these international stakeholders to be the public partner; instead, this role could just be played by a national government or a public development
institution on the national level. For example, as early as 1997, Maurice Strong already suggested that Member States, especially developing countries, should tap into the development potential (in particular resources from capital markets) embodied in the private sector, and the UN and its agencies should facilitate the effort to attract investments to the poorest countries (UNGA 1997a, para. 168).
In addition, the Secretary-General’s report covering the results of the
comprehensive debate on partnerships with “all relevant partners, in particular the private