Part VI Relationships of International Organizations with Other Actors, Ch.34 Relations with the Private Sector

Subject(s):

NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) — Membership of international organizations — International organizations, practice and procedure — Resolutions of international organizations

This chapter maps out the broad developments that have shaped UN-private sector relations. Political and market-led changes have greatly influenced the UN-private sector relationships from the founding of the UN in 1945. The conviction that peace and prosperity, on the one hand, and trade and investment, on the other, are mutually supportive, and can only be built on the foundations of rule-based interdependence, were soon overshadowed by Cold War ideological battles and statist views on growth and development. But following the launch of the UN Global Compact in 2000, cooperation with the private sector became politically acceptable and institutionally supported. Although the UN was initially ill-prepared to work with the private sector, lacking skills and required operational infrastructure, a decade of experimentation and learning by doing has brought about numerous changes at the intergovernmental, institutional, and operational levels.