3 March 2015
ECOSOC Discusses Partnerships for Post-2015 Development Agenda
story highlights

The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) hosted a special event on the role of partnerships in the next development agenda.

'Multi-stakeholder partnerships: Making them work for the Post-2015 Development Agenda' welcomed outside stakeholders into the UN to discuss how diverse partnerships can be mobilized to achieve the priorities of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

ECOSOC27 February 2015: The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has hosted a special event on the role of partnerships in the next development agenda. The event focused on the theme ‘Multi-stakeholder partnerships: Making them work for the Post-2015 Development Agenda,’ and welcomed outside stakeholders into the UN to discuss how diverse partnerships can be mobilized to achieve the priorities of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Opening the event on 27 February 2015, at UN Headquarters in New York, US, ECOSOC President Martin Sajdik (Austria) said partnerships have increased in variety and importance over the last two decades. Most are formed voluntarily, he said, with differing forms of review mechanisms and oversight. He committed ECOSOC to mobilizing more partnerships in the future, saying, “We must continue to expand this important collaboration as we transition to a new set of development goals.”

In a dialogue on ‘Aligning partnerships with the Post-2015 Development Agenda: how should it be done and where could they be reviewed?,’ panelists shared experiences with partnership review mechanisms that could be applied to the future development context. Michael Shank, Climate Nexus, outlined different types of partnerships, including those formed for service provision and implementation, knowledge sharing, or standard-setting. Klaus Leisinger, Global Values Alliance Foundation, said partnerships enhance the scale and complementary capacities and reduce the transaction costs of the activities of separate groups, and stressed that the most important investment is ensuring adequate time at the beginning to get the partnership right.

Charles Badenoch, World Vision, focused on the need for partnerships to reach and aid the most vulnerable in society, calling for enhanced partnerships at the national level with investments in impact assessments, evaluations, and data. Hesphina Rukato, Centre for African Development Solutions, presented lessons learned from implementing partnerships in Africa, which she said often resulted in little long-term commitment and business as usual. Rukato stressed the need for a focus on implementation beyond 2015 in order to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of partnerships.

In a panel on ‘Partnership models that work: monitoring and review in action,’ Raj Kumar, Devex, called partnerships a “critical modality” for the next 15 years, and proposed creating an architecture to align different partners around new incentives. Martin Hiller, Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), said his partnership has benefited from having a strategic goal and purpose clarified from the outset, and from measuring impact on the ground, rather than in partner activities and meetings.

Kathy Calvin, UN Foundation, said a lesson learned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was that countries cannot make enough progress on their own, and need an “all hands on deck” approach. She said the private sector’s greatest strengths are in areas of the public sector’s greatest needs, and stressed that accountability for the private sector is as important as for the public. Kandeh Yumkella, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and CEO, Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All), noted that SE4All has registered 2,000 partnerships. He highlighted lessons learned, including to: create a clear, common narrative; focus on core benefits for partners; give all partners something to do; and measure results.

Gary J. Lawrence, AECOM Technology Corporation, said that while the discussion of partnerships has been the same for the past 20 years, this time all actors are converging around the common priorities of the SDGs. Michael McGovern, Rotary Foundation, spoke of his experience with the partnership to eradicate polio, and said all partners must have a clearly defined role in order to get things done. He stressed the need for local, regional, national, and global levels to work together.

Member States posed questions to the panelists on: accountability and conflicts of interest in partnerships; the role of Member States in partnerships; the importance of official development assistance (ODA); publicly-available knowledge; the inclusion of the most marginalized; and where the accountability of partnerships will take place.

Sajdik said the discussions will be compiled into an informal summary for the Council, and he highlighted the upcoming ECOSOC Partnerships Forum, in May 2015. [UN Press Release] [Event Agenda] [IISD RS Sources] [2015 ECOSOC Partnerships Forum]


related events


related posts