Dear drafting experts,
As many persons working in the health and food arena, I find it extremely important to clarify how to best finance initiatives meant to protect, promote and respect peoples’ human rights to food and adequate nutrition, as well as freedom from hunger. It is from this standpoint, that I am offering some constructive criticism of the draft.
While the draft Scope contains many pertinent questions, I am somewhat concerned about the overall title of the forthcoming HLPE report as well as the some of its questions. Some of my concerns are of an analytical origin, others are of a more political nature.
Correction
Let me first correct a small point. It seems to me that this is not about SDGs 17.6 & 17.7
but about 17.16 & 17.17 which state under the Heading Multi-stakeholder partnerships that those who want to work for the SDGs 2030 should:
17.16
Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries
17.17
Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships. (emphasis added)
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg17, accessed 31 January 2017
My comments are first about the fact that the Draft Scope, as currently phrased, cannot lead to an unbiased, scientifically rigorous evaluation of MSP arrangements and the MSP paradigm.
What are “multistakeholder partnerships”? – Need to clarify the object of study
When the partnership paradigm came up, and when the term multi-stakeholder initiatives and public-private partnerships were still used as synonyms, some researchers, including myself, have investigated the question.
An UNRISD Report found in 2003 that this word was primarily a buzzword, and that the word was used primarily for close, rather than arms-length relationships (Zammit 2003)
There have been recommendation to clearly distinguish between
- the partnership paradigm (the
- And specific PPPs/MSIs categories and individual PPPs/MSIs. (Zammit 2003 & Richter, various publications)
There are still many questions concerning the stated benefits of both, the paradigm and specific PPPs/MSIs. And there are increasing concerns about the reshaping of our global health and nutrition governance architecture along the plans of the World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative into what is called global “multi-stakeholder governance.”
Problematic is that many UN documents and assessments do not seem to not take such critiques into account. In other words, there seems to be, a non-evidence based, overly positive assessment.
An implicit value statement has slipped, for example, into the draft’s opening sentence:
“Multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) combine resources and expertise of different actors, which has made them attractive as a way to address complex issues that cannot be easily solved by a single actor.”
It would need to be replaced by a discussion how MSPs and stakeholders are actually defined. Concretely, the questions to be answered are:
What is the current official UN definition of MSPs?
What is the current UN definition of stakeholder?
That of the former UN SG Kofi Annan who defined stakeholders in 2000 as "those individuals and groups that have an interest, or take an interest, in the behaviour of a company... and who therefore establish what the social responsibility of a company entails."
Of that of a Novartis-funded publication, which in 2002, during the run-up to the Rio + 10 Conference on the Environment and Sustainable Development, redefined the term stakeholder, as "those who have an interest in a particular decision, either as individuals or as representatives of a group.” (more cf. Richter 2003, pp. 19 ff)
There is no time for further discussion of the problems of the terminology. I would recommend, to replace MSPs by multi-actor initiatives, and “partners” and “stakeholders” by actors or more specific terms to permit a more neutral assessment of the various types of initiatives currently lumped together under the term MSPs.
This could be complemented by a note that stakeholders in the original sense have meanwhile been replaced officially be the term human rights holders.
There is also a need
- to review all questions for potentially implicit positive bias
e.g. question No 1 only refers to “how to attract and retain” partners. In WHO debates and policies the question was often: how to have, and actually implement, a “sunset clause” for PPPs and MSIs that do not work (see e.g. my consultancy for the former WHO DG).
This and similar questions would to be added.
- rethink questions which risk to end up giving TNCs and venture philanthropies more influence in processes where they do not belong:
e.g. “how to ensure to all stakeholders a “fair” representation….”
There is a need to review the controversies related to the appropriate/legitimate role of TNCs and rich funders/funding agencies in public and scientific decision making processes.
- Collect not only success stories but also accounts of failures and summarise the broader concerns over the ‘stakeholderization’ of health and nutrition governance and programmmes. In other words, the report should not only identify “conditions of success” of MAIs – but also investigate, where the stakeholder discourse and arrangements have created problems and make summarise some of the suggestion to prevent this from happening.
Entirely missing in the draft is reference to Conflict of interest issues
Yet, the ICN2 FFA, refers to them under “Recommended actions to create anenabling environment for effective action,….
Recommendation 3:
Strengthen and establish, as appropriate, national cross
-government, inter-sector, multi-stakeholder mechanisms for food security and nutrition to oversee implementation of policies, strategies, programmes and other investments in nutrition. Such platforms may be needed at various levels, with robust safeguards against abuse and conflicts of interest.” (emphasis added) http://www.fao.org/3/a-mm215e.pdf
Thus the experts would need to investigate, e.g.:
Which are the “robust safeguards against abuse and conflicts of interest”? which are mentioned as a precondition of MSIs to not undermine public policy making?
What are the CoI issues and other concerns related to MSPs?
In particular, what CoI issues are related to the notion of funding public agencies and programmes with private funding? What has been done to prevent that private funders get influence in return?
This would include the question how to prevent that the SUN Reference Note and Learning Exercise, which developed a very problematic CoI concept, risk to undermine national CoI policies where they exist.
It would also entail whether institutional CoI might be better examined as issues of institutional corruption/corrosion as done in the work of Jonathan Marks.
Thank you for considering these suggestions. Wishing you much stamina for giving justice to the relevant issues.
Judith Richter PhD
For further references, see e.g.my publications under http://www.ibme.uzh.ch/de/ethik/team/affiliiert/judithrichter.html
(The 2016 slide show on conflicts of interest contains further references on CoI in the food and nutrition arena in its annotation.)
Judith Richter