Philanthrolateralism: Private Funding and Corporate Influence in the United Nations
| Author | Karolin Seitz,Jens Martens |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12448 |
Philanthrolateralism: Private Funding and
Corporate Influence in the United Nations
Karolin Seitz and Jens Martens
Global Policy Forum
Abstract
The United Nations (UN) is embarking on a new era of selective multilateralism, shaped by intergovernmental policy impasses
and a growing reliance on corporate-led solutions to global problems. Multiple partnerships between corporations, philan-
thropic foundations and the UN have been established in recent years. Private funding from corporations and philanthropic
foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for UN activities has increased steadily. The changes in funding prac-
tices have deep implications for global governance. Private funding runs the risk of turning UN agencies, funds and pro-
grammes into contractors for bilateral or public-private projects, eroding the multilateral character of the system and
undermining democratic global governance.
Policy Implications
•In order to reverse the current trend governments should take the following steps: they have to close the gap between
the scale of the global problems and the (financial) capacity of the UN to solve them.
•They have to overcome ‘minilateralism’by reducing the share of non-core contributions and earmarked trust funds in UN
finance.
•They have to reconsider the often unconditioned opening of the UN to the business sector and corporate philanthropy.
•They have to reverse the trend of outsourcing funding and decision-making to global partnerships outside the UN system.
Growing trend towards corporate funding and the
opening of the UN to corporations and
philanthropy
The past 20 years have witnessed significant changes in the
engagement between the UN system and the corporate sec-
tor. The related financing arrangements are predominantly
extra-budgetary, not subject to the same oversight and scru-
tiny as assessments and core contributions; thus tracking
the total volume of private contributions to the UN Secre-
tariat and the UN system is difficult and cumbersome. In
2013, specified voluntary contributions from foundations,
corporations and civil society to the UN system amounted
to about US$3.3 billion, or 14 per cent of all specified volun-
tary contributions to the UN system (United Nations, 2014a).
Private funding of UN activities takes a variety of forms,
including contributions to UN Trust Funds, country-level pro-
grammes, and support for specific initiatives and activities.
Some funding is contributed directly and some through phi-
lanthropic foundations, such as the UN Foundation. If not
yet significant in aggregate terms, such funding can repre-
sent a dominant share of support for specific programmes
and at the country level. This is particularly evident in the
health sector, which is now largely influenced by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.
Today, there are hundreds of different funding arrange-
ments between UN entities and corporate actors.
Disaggregated system-wide information on the quality and
quantity of funding from the corporate sector is not avail-
able. Several UN funds and agencies, among them the Uni-
ted Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), list the
amounts received from individual corporate donors, and all
of them have published best practice examples for their
partnering with the private sector.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for
example, has received US$13 million from the Coca-Cola
Company since 2006 (on average US$1.5 million per year) in
support of their joint initiative ‘Every Drop Matters’. This ini-
tiative provided grants for local groups, mainly in Eastern
Europe and Central Asia, to undertake projects that improve
access to water, water quality, and water management.
UNESCO signed a cooperation agreement with the French
beauty product firm L’Or
eal in 2005 to roll out an HIV/AIDS
prevention campaign that would be supported by hair-
dressers all over the world. Launched under the title ‘Hair-
dressers Against AIDS’in 2007, this campaign has provided
information to more than 1.5 million hairdressers in 36
countries, by introducing prevention modules as part of
their professional training courses (L’Or
eal, 2011).
Another example is Coca-Cola’s funding for UN Women
programmes in Egypt, Brazil and South Africa. The company
has collaborated with UN Women since 2011 in training pro-
grammes for women entrepreneurs running small
©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2017) 8:Suppl.5 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12448
Global Policy Volume 8 . Supplement 5 . August 2017
46
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