WEF, UN ink pact to promote development

The United Nations has teamed up with the World Economic Forum in a bid to mobilise partnership between the public and private sectors and boost business contribution to sustain development and fight poverty.

The influential, Swiss-based non-profit WEF, which sponsors the annual gathering in Davos of political and corporate leaders from around the world, formalised its relationship with the UN by signing a Memorandum of Understanding in New York on Monday.

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The initiative seeks to bring together all stakeholders to help the UN promote new or improved policy responses to the main development challenges identified by the International Conference on Financing for Development, held two years ago in Monterrey, Mexico.

The year-long project will take advantage of the public-private synergies that were a distinguishing characteristic of that conference.

Oscar de Rojas, head of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Financing for Development Office, told a press briefing that beginning in June, a series of multi-stakeholder workshops would gather experts and representatives of private, public and not-for-profit organisations, who would issue recommendations on specific issues identified at Monterrey.

The informal meetings would address important issues such as the effectiveness of public-private partnerships and improving the climate for private investment in developing countries.

Rojas expressed confidence that cooperation with the World Economic Forum would assure productive involvement of the private sector and other stakeholders.

Stressing the importance of the initiative, Richard Samans, the WEF's managing director for Partnership and Governance, said the Forum claimed nearly 1,000 of the world's leading companies as its members, and had a diverse array of constituencies.