We celebrate Charles Heeter of Deloitte on the occasion of his retirement.  We credit him as the leading inspiration and Founding Member of the Council for Multilateral Business Diplomacy.  We will forever remain in debt for all of the determined support he has provided over the years – and for coming up with the tongue-twister of the Council’s name, too!   And this while serving his own company as a Principal, responsible for a wide range of public affairs and international relations initiatives.  Through his leading roles at the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue, the US Council for International Business, the Washington International Business Council and Chair of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD, he was instrumental in bringing us all together in fruitful inter-sectoral programs.   We also had the privilege of Charlie’s leadership and insights in many of our Council Dialogues and set the example for presentations on strategic planning and overview of international priorities at Deloitte for our Council Member Forums.   We wish Charlie well.  We will miss his exemplary display of business acumen and gravitas mixed with good humor and modesty.

The ILO has issued a 2013 World Report on Child Labour: Economic vulnerability, social protection and the fight against child labour, the first in a series of studies leading up to 2016, which is the year targeted for eliminating the worst forms of child labor.   The report helps to set the stage for the Third Global Conference on Child Labor which will be held in Brazil in October 2013.  The report documents in a persuasive way that social protection measures, such as cash transfer schemes, social health protection and income security in old age, actually create the household conditions that keep children from being exploited.  This is another reason for extending effective access to comprehensive social protection, a goal articulated by the International Labor Conference in a policy Recommendation last year.  The ILO estimates that 5 billion people or about 75 percent of the global population do not have such access today.

From the CMBD News 13 May 2013

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At a World Trade Agenda Summit on 22 April in Doha, Qatar, the International Chamber of Commerce finalized its recommendations for “salvaging” parts of the Doha Round while also moving “beyond Doha”.   We had already heard ICC representatives describe this list of recommendations at a Geneva WTO event in March (as reported in CMBD News of 25 February 2013).  But this Summit was the official “unveiling”, as it were, of the ICC’s year-long effort to revitalize and build support for the Doha Round.  In this “return to Doha” event, there were five items from the Doha Development Agenda that were endorsed for adoption at the Ninth WTO Ministerial in Bali in December 2013.  These include, as with the Stakeholder Panel reported above, (1) concluding a trade facilitation agreement.  The business group further endorses (2) duty-free and quota-free market access for least developed countries, (3) phasing out of agricultural export subsidies, (4) renouncing food export restrictions and (5) expanding trade in IT products and encouraging growth of e-commerce worldwide.  Although the ICC recommendations go beyond the modest discussions on the Doha agenda issues in the Stakeholder Panel’s report, they too are fairly modest.  No reference to opening up agricultural trade or to “non-agricultural market access” (NAMA) or fisheries or …..  One might surmise that the politics of trade are indeed beyond Doha.

In that context, the ICC World Trade Agenda does have another set of five recommendations.  Here we have the renewed business interest in pushing for (1) a “high-standard” multilateral framework on foreign direct investment, (2) liberalizing trade in services, (3) fostering “greener” economic activity through trade in environmental goods and services, (4) reforming the WTO dispute settlement system and (5) “multilateralizing” trade liberalization under the WTO framework.  On this list, there is greater overlap with the Stakeholder Panel’s report, especially on this last point.  There is growing momentum, it seems, for strengthening WTO oversight of regional and preferential trade agreements (RTAs and PTAs) to promote what the ICC calls “compatibility and complementarity” of trade agreements.  The ICC report, however, did not delve into convergence of trade policy with other domestic policy issues or non-tariff measures affecting trade, which were featured in the Stakeholder Panel report.  See more on the ICC report here and here.

From the CMBD News 29 April 2013

The FAO Council met last week to approve two new but distinct “Strategies” for FAO’s partnerships with civil society organizations and the private sector.  They reflect the growing importance of partnerships in the common goals of eradicating hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition with a particular emphasis on the national and local levels.  While it is important to note that the two strategies recognize a role for both civil society organizations and the private sector in six main areas of collaboration (policy dialogue; normative work; technical and field programmes; advocacy and communication; joint use and mobilization of resources; and knowledge sharing) and two main levels of interaction (global level and decentralized level), the impetus for addressing these strategies separately comes from the perspective that the private sector has commercial interests that are different from the non-profit interests of civil society organizations.

By definition, the FAO Strategy for civil society organizations are MBOs, NGOs or social movements that are free from commercial interests.  However, the Strategy does seek to include groups of small farmers, fishers or forest dwellers.  Thus, food producer organizations will be considered separately on a case by case basis to determine if they “comply with the criteria for civil society organizations”.  The FAO Strategy for the private sector includes small and medium enterprises, cooperatives and most producers’ organizations, whether small and local or multinational enterprises, but some cooperatives and small-scale farmers’ organizations will be classified as civil society organizations, again on a case by case basis.  The definition does encompass any consortium, organization or foundation that is “largely funded of governed by private entities” and cooperatives where there is a “for-profit orientation”.  A perusal of the two Strategies suggests that there is more attention to risk assessments and monitoring and evaluation systems for the private sector than for civil society organizations.  The risk assessment provisions refer to controlling for conflict of interest, undue influence in standard setting or unfair advantage to specific companies.   See a news release on the FAO Council’s decision here, with access to both Strategies.

From the CMBD News 29 April 2013

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The Development Committee of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, a key oversight body of finance and development ministers, adopted a Communiqué on 20 April that lays out an ambitious, long-range strategy for the World Bank Group.   As we reported in our Briefly Noted section a couple of weeks ago in the 8 April 2013 issue of CMBD News, President Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank Group had praised the success of reaching the Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty well in advance of the targeted date of 2015 in a major policy address at Georgetown University and had then gone on to propose that the next fifteen-year target from 2015 to 2030 should be to eliminate extreme poverty completely.   Dr. Kim further proposed a two-pronged approach of eliminating extreme poverty while also promoting equitable development to deliver shared prosperity to the poorest 40 percent in any country.   As we noted then, he documented how it is both feasible and equitable to do both.  See his speech and the World Bank background note here.  These recommendations were incorporated into the paper entitled >A Common Vision for the World Bank Group that was presented to the Development Committee.

The Development Committee agreed that there is “a historic opportunity to end extreme poverty within a generation…”  While the paper did not propose absolute zero but an equivalent low percentage of 3 percent, the Development Committee recognized that a “global target of reducing the extreme poverty rate – the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 a day – to 3 percent by 2030, is ambitious”.  The Communiqué continues by stating that “Achieving this goal will require strong growth across the developing world, as well as translation of growth into poverty reduction to an extent not seen before in many low income countries. It will also require overcoming institutional and governance challenges, and investing in infrastructure and in agricultural productivity”.  The Development Committee also endorsed “the WBG goal to promote shared prosperity, which will entail fostering income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population in every country”. The Communiqué recognizes that reducing inequality, including gender inequality, is necessary to achieve sustained economic growth and that shared prosperity is also integral to creating prosperity.

Finally, of note in this regard, the Development Committee Communiqué makes specific reference to welcoming “the contribution of the private sector to growth and job creation” and especially acknowledging private investment flows as growing sources of development finance.  Governments need to ensure a “proper enabling environment, adequate infrastructure, and policies that promote competition, entrepreneurship and job creation” in order for the private sector to support these goals of reducing extreme poverty and achieving shared prosperity.  See the Development Communiqué here.  We can expect these commitments to contribute to the deliberations on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and we included some reflections on these commitments in our webinar today on the thematic consultations and their implications for the Post-2015 Development Agenda process.

From the CMBD News 22 April 2013

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The World Health Organization has engaged in a lengthy consultative process for the development of a revised Global Action Plan (or “GAP”) on Non-Communicable Diseases for 2013 to 2020.  The latest “updated revised draft” action plan was posted on the WHO website here on 15 March 2013, following a series of informal consultations with NGOs, the private sector and member states, responding to their inputs as well as expressions from a prior web-based consultation.  Another web-based consultation has just been completed on 29 March 2013.  So we can expect a “final”(?) updated revised draft” action plan soon.  Our interest in this particular GAP has to do with the significant element of multi-sectoral collaboration that is needed for action on non-communicable diseases or “NCDs”.  The Council for Multilateral Business Diplomacy has hosted a continuing series of dialogues on workplace strategies for wellness, oriented to preventing and controlling the onset of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as concerns regarding mental health.  The latest version of the GAP continues to evolve in developing a multi-sectoral approach under the leadership of the WHO at the global level and health ministries at the national level.  We note that there is a proposal for a “global coordinating mechanism” to support national governments that would include “relevant” NGOs and “selected” private sector entities, as well as professional associations, academia and research institutions.  There is also a separate UN Task Force on NCDs proposed for multi-sectoral collaboration among the international organizations and intended to be presented as a similar initiative to UNAIDS before the UN Economic and Social Council.

The issue of conflict of interest continues to evolve along with these ideas regarding multi-sectoral collaboration.  As the draft GAP states, “Public health policies, strategies and multi-sectoral action for prevention and control of NCDs must be protected from influence by any form of vested interest”.  Elsewhere in the draft, there is a listing of overarching principles, including health as a human rights, international cooperation, universal health coverage, multi-sectoral conflict of interest and a life course approach to health.  And then one also finds provisions for the Secretariat to “strengthen governance, including the management of potential conflict of interest in engaging the private sector in collaborative partnerships for implementation of the action plan”.   We will be following this evolution of proposals regarding multi-sectoral collaboration and how to treat the concern about “vested interests” in the weeks ahead and will include an analysis in our Webinar series in May.

From the CMBD News 8 April 2013