Política Internacional No. 133-2023 / ISSN 2788-6921 Artículos 35
with the private sector in order to achieve the development goals (UN,
1997). This would be reected later in his Davos speech in January 1998
5
,
and
some months later this idea originated the UN Global Compact, launched
in 2000. This initiative was supported by other relevant UN ocials, such
as John Ruggie, Maurice Strong, Georg Kell, Mark Malloch, and Gro Harlem
Brundtland (Bull, Bøås, & McNeill, 2004, p. 485). All of them were involved
in the establishment of the Global Compact and in the conception of the
Millennium Goals.
However, not all UN entities shared this favorable view of the private sector.
The ECOSOC Commission on Human Rights, for example, considered in 1998
that “these companies are frequently, if not always, behind massive human
rights violations” (ECOSOC, 1998, p. 4). Thus, the ECOSOC reassumed
the discussions on the elaboration of a code of conduct for MNC, already
settled in 1993
6
. This was a similar position shared by many medium-level
bureaucrats and in certain specialized agencies (Tesner & Kell, 2001, as cited
in Bull, Bøås, & McNeill, 2004, p. 491). For example, the WHO identied in
2000 that certain tobacco companies had managed to enter and inuence
their own organization (WHO, 2000, as cited in Utting, 2000, p. 9).
2.1.1 The New Century
In 2005, UN Secretary General Ko Annan pointed out that “[public-private]
partnerships are an integral part of the work of much of the United Nations
system” (UN, 2005). Indeed, a large number, if not most, of the UN system
agencies have signicantly increased their links with dierent non-state
partners including the private sector (Martens, 2007, p. 20). Entities such as
the FAO; United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO); WHO; United Nations Industrial Development Organization
(UNIDO); United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA); among others, have projects and cooperation agreements with
the business sector, especially MNC. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies
have cooperation projects or agreements with a member of the UN System,
mainly through partnership mechanisms. Among the most active companies
in this scheme, we can nd companies such as British Petroleum, Coca Cola,
Daimler Chrysler, Microsoft, McDonald's, Nike, Novartis, Shell, Starbucks,
to mention just a few (Martens, 2007, p. 20).
In this regard, the relationship between the UN and the business sector
would have changed, mostly in two dimensions. First, in a qualitative
dimension: this relationship has transitioned from a hostile perception bias
to MNC in the seventies and part of the eighties (Bull, Bøås, & McNeill, 2004,
p. 481), to a renewed, positive, conception of the private sector considered
the business of
doinG business
with the
united nations
el neGocio de haceR
neGocios con las
naciones unidas