The High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda is currently holding its fourth meeting in Bali on the topic of global partnerships. Importantly, this meeting is building off of the Panel’s recent sessions in London and Monrovia, which focused on household poverty and the national building blocks required for development, and is delving into how the new agenda will be implemented.
The UN Foundation has a 15 year history of building partnerships in support of the UN. Our theory of change is based on the belief that to make lasting change, actors from the public and private sectors must be mobilized. Global challenges cannot be solved by governments alone. New development partners, including civil society, foundations and the private sector can bring significant knowledge and resources to bear and engage new constituents in support of an issue – whether to provide bed nets to fight the spread of malaria or power a clean energy future.
Our experiences supporting three partnership models, including the Secretary-General’s Every Woman Every Child movement, Berhane Hewan and the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, have generated five best practices that we feel are critical for the success of future global partnerships and are worthy of the Panel’s consideration in Bali:
1. Robust accountability and evaluation frameworks to monitor outcomes;
2. Firm policy basis to align partners to a common framework designed by technical experts;
3. Coordinated multi-stakeholder engagement drawing on the core competencies of each partner, recognizing that partners can bring skills, market knowledge, institutional expertise, and constituents – in addition to financial capital – to the table;
4. Thought leadership to ensure best practices are disseminated and successful models are scaled; and,
5. Country ownership to support national development strategies.
We look forward to the Panel’s deliberations in Bali and stand ready to help the UN – and global development partners – implement the post-2015 agenda. Read more about our partnership lessons learned.
Susan Myers is the Vice President for UN Relations at the UN Foundation and Elizabeth Gore is the UN Foundation’s Resident Entrepreneur.