UN-Business Partnerships since 2000

Project context

United Nations Agencies, Funds and Programmes rely on a diverse set of programs and alliances to implement their missions and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Partnerships and cooperation with the private sector can contribute to this agenda as businesses provide direct financial and non-financial support to the United Nations, as the two actors jointly develop innovative approaches for achieving the MDGs and as the United Nations is working with companies to improve the way they operate. 

Direct cooperation between the private sector and the United Nations emerged as a significant phenomenon in the late 1990s. Since then, the ways in which United Nations Agencies, Funds and Programmes work with the private sector have evolved significantly and continue to develop. The United Nations has implemented a range of institutional changes to create a more partnership-friendly environment and a number of new actors have emerged that push this agenda forward, including the UN Global Compact, the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships and the UN Foundation. The relationship between the United Nations and the private sector has matured as the United Nations and its partners have discovered increasingly effective ways to leverage their combined influence and contributions towards the MDGs.

There continue, however, to be vast differences between individual United Nations agencies while newcomers from both the business world and United Nations keep entering the field. It is therefore important to take stock of the main evolutions in UN-Business partnerships, as well as to identify current key trends and emerging evidence on the most effective ways in which the United Nations and the private sector can utilize the strengths of one another for achieving the MDGs.

Project objectives

This project aims both to summarize the evolution of UN-Business partnerships over the last ten years while also drawing out key trends shaping the partnership agenda. The project has three specific aims:  

• To take stock of UN-Business partnership developments since the late 1990s and identify key trends with a focus on how the UN leverages the capacity of the private sector to contribute to the MDGs.
• To analyze these major trends in greater detail by collecting existing evidence and conducting new research on partnerships of a specific type or thematic focus. As a part of this analysis, we will identify and analyse necessary conditions and enabling factors for successful partnerships, restraining factors and hurdles, as well as potential impact and possibilities for scaling up. For this analysis, we will draw on examples across the three main categories of partnerships: advocacy and awareness raising, social investment and philanthropy and core business partnerships.
• To present key recommendations to United Nations organizations relating to trends they should embrace to ensure a maximum contribution of businesses to the MDGs, as well as steps that need to be taken to implement them.