Something big is going on in China...

[Vangelovski]

Originally Posted by Risto the Great

No doubt you have seen the MoU between corporations and the UN such that we effectively have United Nations and Corporations now.

No I haven't seen it, can you post a link?

[Risto the Great]

This is part of it. (Resolution 26/9)
http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_...A/HRC/RES/26/9
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/...df?OpenElement

More has come from this since then but I don't have time to dig right now.
Surely the United Nations has enough to do with pretending to be useful to nations. I have no idea why it seeks to try and give the impression of regulating transnational corporations.

[Vangelovski]

Originally Posted by Risto the Great

This is part of it. (Resolution 26/9)
http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_...A/HRC/RES/26/9
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/...df?OpenElement

More has come from this since then but I don't have time to dig right now.
Surely the United Nations has enough to do with pretending to be useful to nations. I have no idea why it seeks to try and give the impression of regulating transnational corporations.

Thanks for the link. The UN is certainly a useless organisation that is being used for nefarious purposes.

Note who voted for and who voted against:

In favour:
Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, China, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation, South Africa, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), Viet Nam

Against:
Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Republic of Korea, Romania, Macedonia, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America

And who pretends to be neutral:
Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Gabon, Kuwait, Maldives, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, United Arab Emirates

[Vangelovski]

Originally Posted by Risto the Great

More has come from this since then but I don't have time to dig right now.

Here's the working group's website. Seems they've been busy.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-business

[Risto the Great]

Originally Posted by Vangelovski

Thanks for the link. The UN is certainly a useless organisation that is being used for nefarious purposes.

Note who voted for and who voted against:

Macedonia stuck out for me. Always heartwarming to see it doing whatever USA wants.

Much more has come of this. But the following article highlights how large corporations already meddle in the UN's interests and why the likes of USA would not want any interference with this kind of influence:


https://www.juancole.com/2015/09/cap...porations.html

Is the United Nations being captured by Transnational Corporations?

By Thalif Deen | (Inter Press Service) | – –

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 2015 (IPS) – The United Nations, which is commemorating its 70th anniversary next week punctuated by a summit meeting of world leaders, is facing charges of being politically manipulated by big business and transnational corporations (TNCs) – some openly violating labour rights and environmental standards the world body so vociferously advocates.

A new study from Global Policy Forum (GPF), released Tuesday, warns that the United Nations 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.”

“The changing funding patterns of the U.N. and its funds, programmes and specialized agencies reflect these alarming trends.”

Some of the key features, the study points out, include the growing gap between the scale of global problems and the (financial) capacity of the U.N. to solve them; the growing share of non-core contributions and earmarked trust funds in U.N. finance; increased reliance on the corporate sector; and the outsourcing of funding and decision-making to exclusive global partnerships.

The 140-page study, titled ‘Fit for Whose Purpose? Private Funding and Corporate Influence in the United Nations’, is being released ahead of the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit scheduled to take place Sep. 25-27.

Asked who should be blamed for the current state of affairs, Jens Martens, Director Global Policy Forum and co-author of the study, told IPS member States have failed to provide sufficient and reliable funding to the U.N. system.

“This situation is compounded by the insistence over many years of Western governments, led by the USA, on a doctrine of zero-growth to the U.N. assessed budget,” he said.

The result has been increasing reliance on voluntary and non-core funding, as well as a growing number of ad hoc and disparate partnerships between the U.N. and the business sector, Martens added.

The U.N. Centre on TNCs (UNCTC), which was established in 1975 primarily to monitor TNCs, was dismantled in 1992.

Some of the initiatives to hold corporations accountable to the public started in the 1970s, including discussions about a Code of Conduct for Transnational Corporations.

But this, and all subsequent efforts, met with vigorous opposition from TNCs and their lobby groups, and they ultimately failed.

At the same time, says the study, corporate actors have been very successful in implementing public relations strategies that have helped to present business enterprises as good corporate citizens seeking dialogue with governments, the U.N. and decent concerned ‘stakeholders’, and able to implement environment, social and human rights standards through voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

Martens told IPS the UN Secretary-General and U.N. heads of agencies have become energetic advocates of business sector engagement and partnerships.

Beyond viewing these arrangements as a new source of funds, they are driven by the belief that engaging powerful corporations is essential to maintaining the relevance of the U.N. in addressing today’s global challenges, he pointed out.

“But they sell the U.N. at a cheap price. While the costs for the companies are remarkably low, the benefits can be comparatively high.”

He said companies benefit from a strong image transfer by associating themselves with the U.N., win greater visibility, and gain direct access to global policy makers.

“But what does this image transfer mean for the reputation and neutrality of the U.N.? Isn’t there the risk that the cooperation with controversial corporations adversely affects the image of the U.N. as a neutral broker and undermines its reputation?,” Martens asked.

When the United Nations seeks outside financial assistance either for development needs or to advocate social causes, according to one U.N. source, it invariably turns to the private sector these days.

Perhaps the most demanding is Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s appeal to private investors to help the United Nations reach its staggering 100-billion-dollar target per year in funds to battle the devastating consequences of climate change.

Ban is relying primarily on private sector funding while also appealing for funds from governments and the public sector.

The study is also critical of the U.N.’s Global Compact, described as the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative involving 8,371 companies in 162 countries – at last count.

The Global Compact has been most instrumental in opening up the United Nations to the business sector, according to the study.

“While it may have been designed to do exactly the opposite – sensitize businesses for public interests through the promotion of the ten Principles – it also serves as a platform and promoter of corporate interests in the U.N.”

This is aggravated by its dependence on private funding and its overly complex governance structure, which gives little space to Member States while limiting oversight to those making financial contributions.

“In fact, the Global Compact is one of the few U.N. entities which are predominantly dependent on private money. This may have repercussions on how its mandate is being interpreted and implemented.”

Martens said funding of all U.N. system-wide activities is around 40 billion dollars per year.

“While this may seem to be a substantial sum, in reality it is smaller than the budget of New York City, less than a quarter of the budget of the European Union, and only 2.3 per cent of the world’s military expenditures,” he pointed out.

“As the World Bank calls on the global community to move from ‘Billions’ to ‘Trillions’ to meet the investment needs of the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations still has to calculate in terms of ‘Millions’.”

Barbara Adams, co-author of the study said many Member States, particularly the large donors, pursue a dual approach of calling for greater coherence in U.N. development activities while at the same time increasing their use of earmarked funding, which furthers fragmentation.”

She added: “This pick- and- choose dynamic, together with ongoing financial constraints, has opened the space for corporate sector engagement.”

Increasingly, she noted, the U.N. is promoting market-based approaches and multi-stakeholder partnerships as the business model for solving global problems.

Driven by a belief that engaging the more economically powerful is essential to maintaining the relevance of the U.N., this practice has harmful consequences for democratic governance and general public support, as it aligns more with power centres and away from the less powerful, she declared.

The writer can be contacted at [email protected]

[Risto the Great]

Originally Posted by Vangelovski

Here's the working group's website. Seems they've been busy.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-business

Thank you. More there. Yes.
Business AND Human Rights
It instills such confidence in me when business is helping to administer human rights.

[Risto the Great]

And here is the WEF/UN Strategic Partnership:
https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/0...hip-framework/

... and opposition to it:
https://www.cognitoforms.com/Multist...Y3eLfQAFq71ujM

We the undersigned call on you to terminate the recently signed United Nations-World Economic Forum strategic partnership agreement.

We are very concerned that this WEF-UN partnership agreement will de-legitimize the United Nations and provide transnational corporations preferential and deferential access to the UN System. The UN system is already under a big threat from the US Government and those who question a democratic multilateral world. However, this corporatization of the UN poses a much deeper long-term threat, as it will reduce public support for the UN system in the South and the North.

It is our strong belief that this agreement is fundamentally at odds with the UN Charter and with intergovernmental decisions on sustainable development, the climate emergency, and the eradication of poverty and hunger. This public-private partnership will permanently associate the UN with transnational corporations, some of whose core essential activities have caused or worsened the social and environmental crises that the planet faces. This is a form of corporate capture. We know that agribusiness destroys biodiversity and sustainable and just food systems, oil and gas corporations endanger the world’s climate, Big Pharma weakens access to essential medications, extractive corporations leave lasting damage to countries’ ecologies and peoples, and arms manufacturers profit from local and regional wars as well as repression of social movements. All these sectors are significant actors within the World Economic Forum.

The provisions of the strategic partnership effectively provide that corporate leaders will become ‘whisper advisors’ to the heads of UN system departments, using their private access to advocate market-based profit-making ‘solutions’ to global problems while undermining real solutions embedded in public interest and transparent democratic procedures. The WEF agreement with the UN, and all other forms of corporate capture, seriously undermines the mandate of the UN as well as the independence, impartiality and effectiveness of this multilateral body, particularly in relation to the protection and promotion of human rights. For example, in the current discussions on a Treaty to regulate business activities, corporate capture of the UN – or undue interference by corporations on the UN – is weakening and compromising its ability as a multilateral body of government to hold businesses to account. Similarly, companies are increasingly making financial threats on governments and the UN when mandates are working on corporate accountability, the OHCHR mandate of the UN database on business in/with Israeli settlements is one example.

The UN’s acceptance of this partnership agreement moves the world toward WEF’s aspirations for multistakeholderism becoming the effective replacement of multilateralism. WEF in their 2010 The Global Redesign Initiative argued that the first step toward their global governance vision is ‘to redefine the international system as constituting a wider, multifaceted system of global cooperation in which intergovernmental legal frameworks and institutions are embedded as a core, but not the sole and sometimes not the most crucial, component.” The goal was to weaken the role of states in global decision-making and to elevate the role of a new set of ‘stakeholders’, turning our multilateral system into a multistakeholder system, in which companies are part of the governing mechanisms. This would bring transnational corporations, selected civil society representatives, states and other non-state actors together to make global decisions, discarding or ignoring critical concerns around conflicts of interest, accountability and democracy.

We call instead for strengthening peoples’ sovereignty, deepening democratic multilateralism and countering the further expansion of multistakeholderism. Public interest civil society organizations and social movements have played crucial roles in upholding human rights and environmental agreement and in the development of intergovernmental positions on a wide range of global crises over the past 75 years. To strengthen public support for the UN system for its next 75 years, we believe that your office as well the executive offices of the specialized agencies should host public consultations on the future institutional role and engagement mechanism with the most affected communities and organizations of the people, including among others women, workers, peasants, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ , human rights defenders, educators, youth, and scholars. These communities which are human rights holders and are committed to preserving the common wellbeing of people and the environment; as well as to building a stronger, independent, and democratic international governance system must be treated differently from “stakeholders” who only have profit at stake.

UN should adopt effective mechanisms that can prevent cases of conflict of interest consistently throughout the entire system. Any policy in this regard should bear in mind the different roles of private interest and of rights-holders that look after common goods and benefits. Those private interests whose activities are in conflict with UN goals and objectives should not be involved with intergovernmental bodies or the Secretariat, whose focus should be always be on protecting common goods and providing global public benefits.

Mr Secretary-General, electing to build an alliance between the Secretariat and transnational corporations to save the UN system from those hostile to multilateralism and decreasing public funding, will destroy the UN system, not save it.

Copied to President of the General Assembly, the President of the Security Council and the Chair of the G77 with a request that this letter be circulated to all Governments as an official document

[Vangelovski]

Originally Posted by Risto the Great

Macedonia stuck out for me. Always heartwarming to see it doing whatever USA wants.

That aside, I'm wondering why the current and former communist block voted in favour of this. Are they simply taking the piss knowing the West (even though it opposed it) will actually implement it once it passes through whatever process?

[Vangelovski]

Originally Posted by Risto the Great

Thank you. More there. Yes.
Business AND Human Rights
It instills such confidence in me when business is helping to administer human rights.

Sounds more like business will be hit with another tax directly by the UN. That whole organisation is out of control and wil be a monster if it gets its own funding outside of the (semi) democratic control of representative governments.

[kompir]

The only way the UN becomes the "world government" is if the military industrial complex comes up with an even bigger scam than the pandemic to scare the people of the world witless.