[TLDR tooo long (apologies) didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This rather long Reader tells all about how PPPs and multistakeholder platforms breach human rights principles and norms. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
Public-private partnerships contravene the human rights-based understanding of people as claim holders and governments as duty bearers (Paul Quintos)
A trove of cleverly hidden facts
1. The fact that the corporate sector is expressing satisfaction over the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Post-2015 Development Agenda being rolled out should be enough to raise alarm bells for public interest civil society organizations and social movements to be critical of the corporate-led, free-market-centered-paradigm that has dominated development policy over the last four decades. Indeed, human rights (HR) are just one more (minimal) form of currency used by transnational corporations (TNCs) when deceivingly calling for the goal of good-governance-for-the-realization of the SDGs.
2. In the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact we read: “The UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights set out a clear framework for this approach which is, not only a social responsibility, but also a means for strengthening brand credentials, building customer loyalty and attracting investment.” (https://www.unglobalcompact.org/library/4281 )
3. Instead of showing any political will* to redistribute a significant portion of the surplus wealth millionaires have amassed (through progressive tax reforms, taxing financial speculation, reversing illicit capital flows, eliminating tax havens, arresting tax competition among countries, amending unfair trade and investment agreements, cancelling illegitimate debt, and through a myriad of other systemic reforms), governments, especially from the OECD, are putting an emphasis on enticing the private sector to ‘invest in sustainable development’.
*: Political will is usually understood as a greater resolve on the part of states. But political will is not due to the benevolence of politicians; they usually act only in response to consistent and compelling pressures. Therefore, it is not really a lack of political will, but rather the accumulation of a political will by the powerful to oppose or stall the implementation of progressive policies that address HR abuses.
4. And what a better setup to achieve this than Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) that can also take the form of agreements (…impositions?) that shift the risks associated with private investments to the public sector. Clever, no? Ponder,
PPPs usually take the form of:
–guaranteed subsidies or generous credits such as state-guaranteed loans to farmers buying new commercial miracle seed varieties, or
–payment guarantees such as in power-purchasing agreements between a private coal-fired power plant and a state-owned utility, or
–revenue guarantees, such as agreements that ensure a minimum income stream to a private toll road operator regardless of actual road usage…
5. The essential feature of PPPs is that they provide private companies with contract-based rights to flows of public money or to monopoly income streams from services on which the public relies such as roads, schools, hospitals and health services.
6. The above means that if, for some unforeseen reason, investors are not able to recoup their costs, for instance from user fees, the government has to put up the money that investors had projected, but failed to realize. In short: the proliferation of PPPs is one of the factors behind the rising liabilities quite a few middle-income countries are facing today.
7. There are then also the so-called Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships or Platforms that bring together donor agencies, non-governmental organizations, private philanthropies, private sector and other actors to address specific challenges –from vaccinations, to agricultural research, to child health, to provision of education…
8. There is little evidence to show that either PPPs or Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships benefit the most marginalized and impoverished. The World Bank Group’s own internal evaluation of PPPs it supported from 2002-2012 revealed that the main measure of success for PPPs is ‘business performance’, not public good. (World Bank Group Support to Public-Private Partnerships …openknowledge.worldbank.org )**
**: The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) assessed how effective the World Bank Group has been in helping countries use PPPs. (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22908)
9. The multi-stakeholder approach to governance relies on the voluntary commitment of coalitions-of-the-willing and thus serves as a welcome alternative to the private sector’s fear of, instead, having to abide by regulations of a legally binding framework that would impose clear obligations on them. Ultimately, PPPs and multi-stakeholder platforms end up increasing the influence of corporations over public policies and over government spending priorities; they also weaken the accountability*** of both big business and the state towards the people.
**: What would this accountability entail? Doing away with conditionalities? Naming and shaming? Firing or replacing somebody for inefficiency or corruption? Taxing culprits? Kicking out a TNC? Regulating, legislating? Bringing-in users (claim holders) to the decision-making process? Demanding participatory budgets? Preempting free trade agreements (FTAs) deleterious to HR issues? Public interest CSOs taking an active role as watch dogs? …All of the above? Pick your choice.
10. Simply put, there is no real accountability where there are no repercussions for companies or states failing to fulfill their HR and environmental duties. [A binding treaty on TNCs HR responsibilities is under discussion at the UN. (https://www.foei.org/un-treaty-tncs-human-rights )]
11. And the above is not all. PPPs further:
–co-opt NGOs, the state and UN agencies;
–weaken efforts to hold TNCs accountable for their actions;
–obscure the ultimate obligations of governments in providing public goods and services and fulfilling people’s rights.
–allow corporations new ways of enhancing their public relations and making themselves look good without real accountability.****
****: Anything less than full and meaningful accountability risks rendering the SDGs a set of lofty, but empty promises rather than being the transformative agenda that public interest civil society, social movements and many of UN member states envision. It is not only about targets and indicators, but also about financing and lining up the means of implementation. And then there is the problem of accountability fatigue when accountability mechanisms are not binding on responsibilities and duties of the state. If not binding, these mechanisms only bring promises and promises are broken. Therefore, think: How can we ask for accountability when the SDGs are not binding?
12. As a consequence, the provision of public goods becomes unreliable as it increasingly becomes dependent on voluntary and ultimately unpredictable sources of financing. This adds pressure to fully privatize these schemes, thereby breaching the HR-based understanding of people-as-claim-holders and governments-as-duty-bearers –the latter compelled to account for their HR obligations under international and national HR laws.
Where does this put us then?
13. If nothing else, for all the above reasons, we need to ask the following questions regarding the post-2015 agenda already at mid-term:
–is it a people’s agenda? or
–has it been too much a vehicle for expanding and strengthening transnational corporate power?
–is it an agenda that is simply about expanding and building on the meek Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015)? or
–is it a strategy that re-legitimizes the global capitalist model and neoliberal globalization with what are spurious partnerships?
14. If the agenda that finally emerged in September 2015 (SDGs) turns out to be a rehashed version or even an expansion of the MDGs but, so far, lacks substantive action to overhaul the dominant neoliberal development framework (which is clearly the one being followed), then it is an agenda that will definitely perpetuate and deepen the impoverishment of people, the HR crises, the inequality, the environmental degradation, and the climate crisis.
We need to examine the post-2015 process, not in isolation, but in relation to wider trends and the broader context of development policies: Do partnerships matter?
15. We need to be organized. Many groups are doing their own bit in terms of promoting people’s agendas and alternatives. But what we are facing is a systemic problem concerning the entire development model. It, therefore, requires organizational linking-up of public interest civil society organizations across issues, across sectors, and at different levels –from local to national, national to regional, regional to international. These are the truly level-playing-field partnerships we so desperately need.
16. It is not just enough to come up with development goals unless one challenges the roots of the problem of underdevelopment, of poverty, of the violation of HR, and of the ecological crisis. It is thus that public interest civil society and social movements coined the concept of development-and-human-rights-justice to highlight their vision of a new development model that must counter the neoliberal assault.*****
*****: Broadly, development and HR justice comprises five transformative shifts, namely: —redistributive justice, —economic justice, —social and gender justice, —environmental justice, and —accountability to the people. (P. Quintos) (https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/reclaiming-the-right-to-development )
Businesses do not play a ‘critical role’, and calling on them to engage as equal partners in a human rights-based development process, is not called for
-Innovation is not a prerogative of the private sector.
17. More and more, we are seeing a process of outsourcing the international development agenda. The current trade and investment regimes are already favoring wealthy countries and corporations. And where has this led us? To the balance already being outrageously skewed in favor of private interests. (Look at WHO’s financing, for instance: It is about 75% financed by rich member states and corporate and associated philanthropic sector contributions provided to ‘partner’(?) with WHO.
18. At this point, I have more questions than I have answers:
- What track record do partnerships with big business really have for being part of the solution?
- What is the incentive for TNCs to exert their enormous power and influence in any way beyond maintaining the status-quo that has delivered so many benefits to them? So, who benefits from the current state of affairs?
- The colossal pharmaceutical and food and beverages industry intent on protecting their profits?
- Governments that now are increasingly elected on the back of private election finance?
- Does all this imply that the existing incentive structure to join such partnerships only operates in one direction –not the HR direction?
- Is the assumption such that we ought to have less confidence in the capabilities of the public sector to exert its duties, so that it must be pushed to avoid/leave (unequal) partnerships with the business sector, because these partnerships are based on terms that have led to the current highly inequitable, unsustainable, HR-violating patterns of development?
19. Since public and private incentives are currently so poorly aligned (a marriage in hell?), it is hard to imagine how public entities operating more and more along public-private partnership lines will keep up with their primary public responsibilities. Can governments, as the main duty bearer, still thus protect sustainability, inclusiveness and HR? The underlying question really is:
- At what point should we oppose/stop projects vital to human and environmental wellbeing when they are taken over by these PPPs?
20. Encouraged by years of deregulation, many businesses (of course, not all –I am not a business basher…) think of themselves as existing outside any social contract –or as able to select the parts of such a contract useful to them. (Take, for instance, corporations picking deliberate strategies that reduce their tax bills even as they are underpaying workers who then have to rely on social protection schemes paid for by general taxation). As a privileged group, big corporations are able to set their own norms, mostly related to their own survival and profitability, and further expect the public sector not to stand in their way when partnering together. Large transnational corporations have pushed this approach so far that some progressive public interest civil society organizations, social movements and some progressive UN member states have called for (and are fiercely fighting for) the above mentioned legally binding treaty to regulate TNCs so as to provide appropriate protection, justice and remedy to victims of corporate HR abuses. But if this new social contract still under negotiation keeps piling up exemptions and/or exclusions (as it is!), it is bound to become one more UN treaty with no teeth. Businesses have to understand that the new global contract will be binding, not optional; it will have to be upheld and enforced, and there can be no picking and choosing –no exceptions. (B. Adams and G. Luchsinger) (https://www.ecolex.org/fr/details/literature/climate-justice-for-a-changing-planet-a-primer-for-policy-makers-and-ngos-mon-082751/ )
There is no such a thing as a developed and underdeveloped world; there is only a single, badly developed or maldeveloped world (CETIM)
-Some like to call the current development model “an evidence-free zone”. (Steven Nissen)
21. Countries rendered poor beware! Under the SDGs –so heavily into the PPPs and multistakeholder platform ventures– more experts will be coming your way! Not soldiers and bureaucrats to run your affairs like during colonialism; now it is an army of ‘experts’. (Note that, sometimes, experts are even more dangerous than soldiers). Experts come to tell you: “You cannot. The market will be irritated. The market will be angry”. It is as if the market is an unknown, but very active and cruel God punishing us, because we are trying to commit the cardinal sin of changing reality. I ask: Is recovering dignity a cardinal sin? ****** (Eduardo Galeano)
******: Fittingly, long ago, Immanuel Kant was of the opinion that, whoever wills the end, wills also the means in his power which are indispensably necessary thereto. Are the partnerships above such means…?
The narrative of progress in development based on PPPs is no longer sustainable –unless things change (Steven Smith)
22. For decades now, the UN (and other development) agencies have pitifully little to show in the implementation of actual actionable deliverables in the realm of the HR-based framework to development. It is evident that the interventions aimed at fulfilling HR principles and standards have been ‘targeted’ top-down –when the power to do this is rather to come from those who know (or suffer) how these interventions do not work, given the prevailing unfair economic and political system. This means that efforts targeted by government policy –often influenced by partnerships (PPPs) with private operators– can only have limited effectiveness if they attempt to change notoriously weak leverage-points instead of having claim holders stake clear demands on duty bearers in the prevailing unfair system that sustains PPPs. (G. Carey)
23. Even if it has been more than twenty years since their re-emergence on the international agenda, on the ground, economic, social and cultural rights still remain a rhetorical aspiration. …Or is there some global evidence that there have been many real advances in how they are enjoyed, claimed and enforced? This is indeed a pressing question. In a way, the affirmation by UN member states in the Vienna Human Rights Declaration of 1993 that HR and development should be seen as ‘mutually reinforcing’ still has a hollow rhetorical ring 25+ years on. (Alicia Yamin) (https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/vienna.aspx)
24. On a less negative note, yes, some progress has been made on each front, particularly in the realm of discrimination, legal protection, women’s and children’s rights and judicial enforcement. Human rights are just beginning to play a more prominent role in how we think, and how we act. But the economic and social rights of millions of people across the globe are still under systematic and renewed attacks as a result of a number of current pervasive private/financial sector-dominated development trends of which PPPs and multistakeholder platforms are just one example among other. Other examples, include the imposition of regressive fiscal austerity measures and other policies fueling economic inequality; the failure to take effective action against climate change; and the consolidated grip that unbridled corporate power now has on both national and international governance. (UN CESR) On the other hand, one of the most important innovations in HR has been the increasing attention to economic policies such as the scrutiny of budgets, of taxation, and of social security systems. (Sakiko Fukuda-Parr)
We need to sharpen our participatory democracy so as to make public-public human rights-based partnerships the norm (Geoffrey Cannon)
–We live in a non-democratic world that will veto our attempts to change anything of substance.
-Our societies are only allegedly permeated by a ‘what-can-I-do?’ attitude. For example, people passively and permissively accept corruption and skewed PPPs and do nothing to stop this. (Z. Bauman)
25. We are talking here about a participatory democracy in which citizens have power in meeting life’s essentials, a democracy lived as an ongoing process of realizing human dignity, justice (particularly social justice) and HR. Reasonably so, these values are to be understood as intrinsic to democracy but, as we all know, many PPPs consider ‘democracy’ as merely a means for domination. Democracy today is reduced to anti-democratic forms of government held captive by spurious PPPs that hide or repress today’s courageous uprisings worldwide. It is private money heavily drives political decision-making. This is why participatory democracy needs to be recognized and fostered; an apt shorthand for its aim is ‘dignity for all’. New protocols are needed for bringing the people affected by public top-down choices into direct participation wherever and whenever public policies are decided. (Frances Moore Lappe)
26. So, what about the role of street protests in system change? Did not the Occupy Wall Street Movement and Chile’s October 2019 uprisings kick the discussion of inequality and HR into high gear, just as the earlier Seattle and many other anti-WTO/anti-IMF protests put the critique of globalization on the map? Yes, there is no question that loud and media-genic protests can bring issues to the forefront. But in order to have lasting impact, street protests do need to be coupled with democratic political leadership that can clearly articulate the central arguments and can come up with compelling alternatives capable of bringing an inclusive group of interests together into an effective power base. (It is not only about denouncing; it must also be about announcing). Beyond all the shouting of slogans, what ultimately counts is real accomplishments that make a difference to people on the ground. Only then will we see system change. Nothing short of building up a people’s movement for systemic change and HR, as well as against PPPs and multistakeholders platforms as the backbone of the SDGs will do. It is about people reclaiming the decision-making process, replacing the system, and overturning the operating worldview that is holding us in a chokehold will rid us of the grip of plutocracies in so many countries. (Deborah Rogers) The smiles of victory have to change sides!
27. As we have seen in PPPs, democracy can be crushed, not using tanks, but using banks. Banks are not really only interested in getting their money back; they instead insist on democracy’s and sovereignty’s surrender. Together with many a TNC, they try to do something that cannot be done, namely to de-politicize partnerships they enter-into with governments. But when these are de-politicized, democracy dies. And when democracy dies, prosperity is confined to the very few. To counter this dystopia the people must believe again that democracy and HR are not a luxury. (Yannis Varoufakis)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
- We are simply acting as the folk wisdom that says: “If we do not change direction, we are going to get where we are going.” And this is equivalent to Yogi Bear in his cartoon saying: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
- Henri Bergson used to say: The future is not what ‘is coming’, but rather what we will be capable of doing and achieving. It makes no sense to wish ourselves a Happy 2022 if, like donkeys, we are going to continue accepting what is being imposed on us by a corrupt and out-of-reputation political class; wishing ourselves a Good Year of Struggles, that yes! (Politika)
- And then, there is Henry Miller in his 1933 Tropic of Cancer saying: This crazy civilization looks like a crater. And the crater is obscene. But more obscene than anything is inertia, is paralysis. Ideas have now to be wedded to action; ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of the mind. To fathom the new reality, it is first necessary to dismantle the gangrened ducts of the system responsible for all the garbage we see and experience. My world has overstepped its human bounds; what it is to be human is left to moralities and codes disregarded by those in power. Underneath this fake morality all is dead, no feelings. The system is selfish to the core. Its beneficiaries think of nothing but money, money, money. And they look so goddammed respectable, so bourgeois. That is what drives me nuts. We have got our faults, but we have got integrity and enthusiasm. It is better to make mistakes than not to do anything.
- A nation that surrenders to moral conformism and to a way-too-outdated political system is, in fact, selling its sovereignty for a mere plate of lentils. (Maria Dueñas)
- We cannot live in an eternal present, accepting things as they appear (i.e., unmovable) and not as they really are (changeable). (Pablo Simonetti)