A new briefing paper from Global Policy Watch (an initiative of Social Watch and Global Policy Forum) highlights the key role that the Global Financing Facility (GFF) is to expected to play as a financing vehicle for Goal #3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that of: “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Similar to the Global Fund or GAVI (the Vaccine Alliance), the GFF will specifically finance reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health. The briefing note points out that: “Important decisions about the financial support of national health strategies are taken at the sole discretion of the GFF Investors Group. But the GFF Investors Group is a self-selected, exclusive body and not subject to intergovernmental oversight and mutual accountability mechanisms.” The GFF also consolidates the role of the World Bank Group as a dominant financing institution for SDG #3 on health, which will form a core part of the post-2015 development agenda overall. This bypasses the role of the UN, which includes the World Health Organization.
June 30, 2015 | Global Policy Watch
The new Global Financing Facility – a model for financing the Sustainable Development Goals?
Find the full Global Policy Watch briefing here.
Download the Policy Brief as a pdf here.
Article by Bhumika Muchhala, Third World Network
A new Global Policy Watch brief from Global Policy Watch (an initiative of Social Watch and Global Policy Forum) highlights the key role that the Global Financing Facility (GFF) is to expected to play as a financing vehicle for Goal #3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that of: “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Similar to the Global Fund or GAVI (the Vaccine Alliance), the GFF will specifically finance reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health.
The briefing note points out that: “Important decisions about the financial support of national health strategies are taken at the sole discretion of the GFF Investors Group. But the GFF Investors Group is a self-selected, exclusive body and not subject to intergovernmental oversight and mutual accountability mechanisms.” The GFF also consolidates the role of the World Bank Group as a dominant financing institution for SDG #3 on health, which will form a core part of the post-2015 development agenda overall. This bypasses the role of the UN, which includes the World Health Organization.
In the latest Financing for Development (FfD) text of 25 June, which is also a highly controversial text that is being contested by the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries, there is a specific paragraph that makes strong reference to the GFF. The last line in Paragraph 77 of the 25 June FfD text states: “We welcome innovative approaches to catalyze additional domestic and international private and public resources for women and children, who have been disproportionately impacted by many health issues, including the expected contribution of the Global Financing Facility in support of Every Woman Every Child.”
The same lack of intergovernmental oversight and mutual accountability mechanisms that characterizes the governance of the GFF is found in the private finance chapter of the FfD text. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are embraced as the central mechanism by which infrastructure projects will be financed. However, the various drafts of the outcome text thus far do not ensure guidelines for private sector financial, social and environmental accountability. This not only endangers the ability of the State to regulate in the public interest and to promote sustainable development, it also introduces the risk that the private sector is endorsed with an open gateway into development and industrial policy, without any checks and balances or impact analyses.
Indeed, civil society organisations (CSOs) have been calling for an intergovernmental accountability mechanism for both PPPs as well as for multi-stakeholder partnerships between the UN and the private sector in the context of both FfD and the post-2015 development agenda.
CSOs outline that such an intergovernmental accountability mechanism could be aligned with the following key aspects:
(a) Such a mechanism must be rooted in the international human rights framework and in all three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, and environmental);
(b) The central objective of the mechanism would be to ensure accountability and ex ante assessment of partnerships;
(c) Clear criteria should be applied to determine whether a specific private sector actor is fit for a partnership in pursuit of the post-2015 development agenda (which includes the SDGs) and FfD;
(d) UN member states should be at the helm of formulating the framework, including the criteria, the oversight and monitoring process based on due diligence reporting, and independent third-party evaluations.
One key objective would be to eliminate potential private donors whose activities are antithetical or contradictory to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the SDG framework.
Find the full Global Policy Watch briefing here.
