[governance] WEF-UN MOU

[Norbert Bollow]

Here's a forward from another civil society mailing list.

In view of the fact that public policy processes can never fully be
separated from the institutional frameworks within which they take
place —Internet governance related public policy processes are
certainly no exception to this general reality— I wonder whether a
broad civil society consensus could be reached that certainly in regard
to Internet governance (understood broadly, in the sense of the Tunis
Agenda working definition) such overly great influence of commercial
interests on public policy processes must be opposed.

Greetings,
Norbert


Begin forwarded message:


https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/how-united-nations-quietly-being-turned-public-private-partnership/

How the United Nations is quietly being turned into a public-private
partnership / A new agreement with the World Economic Forum gives
multinational corporations influence over matters of global governance.

Harris Gleckman 

2 July 2019 

A new corporate and government marriage quietly took place last week
when the leadership of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United
Nations (UN) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to partner with
each other. While this MOU is proudly displayed on the WEF website, it
is nowhere to be found on the UN website. The only indication on the UN
website of this important new development is a picture of the pen used
to sign the agreement, and two pictures of the signing ceremony.

One reason for this difference is that the UN’s corporate-centered
Global Compact has received a good deal of bad press. Now the new
WEF-UN agreement creates a second special place for multinational
corporations inside the UN. There is no similar institutional homes in
the UN system for civil society, for academics, for religious leaders,
or for youth. It is hard to imagine a national government signing a
similar formal partnership with one of its business organizations.

At the same time, the UN is under pressure from Donald Trump who wants
to deconstruct the whole multilateral system. For Trump, dismantling
the international system built after World War II is a companion piece
to his domestic effort at deconstructing the administrative state. For
the Secretary-General of the UN, the pact with the WEF may well be his
effort to find new power actors who can support the current system,
which is now celebrating its 75th anniversary, in the face of Trump’s
onslaught.

On the other side, the WEF recently received significant public
criticism after giving Hungarian Prime Minister Orban and Brazilian
President Bolsonaro a warm welcome at its 2019 Davos gathering. This
marriage may be seen as a way for the WEF to re-establish itself as
part of the global governance center.

The timing and managing of public perceptions are not the only
interesting aspect of this arrangement. In 2009, the WEF published a
600 page report entitled the Global Redesign Initiative, which called
for a new system of global governing, one in which the decisions of
governments could be made secondary to multistakeholder led initiatives
in which corporations would play a defining role. In a sense this WEF
study recommended a sort of public-private United “Nations” – something
that has now been formalized in this MOU. The agreement announces new
multistakeholder partnerships to deliver public goods in the fields of
education, women, financing, climate change, and health.

The rather detailed MOU includes forms of cross organizational
engagement up and down the UN structure. The MOU contains commitments
that the Secretary-General himself will be invited to deliver a keynote
address at the WEF annual Davos gatherings. His senior staff and the
heads of the UN programmes, funds, and agencies will also be invited to
participate in regional level meetings hosted by the WEF. It also
contains a promise that the UN’s individual country representatives
will explore ways to work with WEF’s national Forum Hubs. Aware of the
mutual importance of public legitimacy each institution can provide for
the other, the MOU also contains an agreement to cross-publicize their
joint activities.

Besides the institutional blessing of the United Nations, what does the
WEF get from the MOU? The scope of each of the five fields for joint
attention is narrowed down from the intergovernmentally negotiated and
agreed set of goals to one with more in line with the business
interests of WEF members. So under financing, the MOU calls only for
‘build[ing] a shared understanding of sustainable investing’ but not
for reducing banking induced instabilities and tax avoidance.

Under climate change, it calls for ‘ …public commitments from the
private sector to reach carbon neutrality by 2050’, not actions that
result in carbon neutrality by 2030 . Under education, it re-defines
the Sustainable Development education goal to ‘ensure inclusive and
equitable quality education’ into one that focuses on education to meet
the ‘rapidly changing world of work.’ The MOU explicitly restricts the
WEF from making financial contributions to the UN, which might have
ameliorated the economic impact of some of Trump’s threat to the
budgets of the UN system. At the same time, it avoids any commitment to
reduce global inequality, to make energy affordable, to hold
multinational corporations accountable for human rights violations, or
even to rein in the behavior of the WEF’s firms that act inconsistently
to the re-defined goals set out in the agreement.

All this joint work might have some practical good if it were not for
three crucial elements: firstly, the agreement circumvents the
intergovernmental review process; secondly, the agreement elevates
multistakeholderism as the solution to the problems with the current
multilateral system; and thirdly the proposed multistakeholder
partnerships are not governed by any formal democratic system. Were the
Secretary-General convinced of the wisdom of a UN marriage with the
WEF, he could have submitted the draft MOU for approval by the member
states. Instead, the Secretary-General joined the WEF in declaring in
effect that multistakeholder groups without any formal
intergovernmental oversight are a better governance system than a
one-country-one-vote system.

All multistakeholder governance groups are largely composed of a
self-selected group of multinational corporations and those
organizations and individuals that they want to work with. They work
without any common internal rule book to protect the views of all who
might be impacted by the group. Participation in multistakeholder group
is a voluntary undertaking. The drop-in-drop-out arrangements are
antithetical to the UN’s efforts for 75 years to build a stable secure
global governance system with a clear understanding of obligations,
responsibilities and liabilities. 

What is surprising is that by accepting this marriage arrangement with
the WEF, the Secretary-General of the UN is marginalizing the
intergovernmental system in order to ‘save’ it.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20190720/aaa7e063/attachment.htm>