The InterDependent

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight held a hearing on July 27 on achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals through public-private partnerships. The witnesses described ways in which public-private partnerships have been used to increase funding and successfully support US projects for many years.

The witnesses said that all eight goals (eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, providing universal primary education, empowering women through gender equality, reducing infant mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, promoting environmental sustainability, and building a global partnership for development) would benefit from the additional funding, publicity, and support that accompanies public-private partnerships. The first three witnesses expressed hope that the United States can use these affiliations to help meet the 2015 deadline that was adopted by UN member countries when the Millennium Development Goals were created in 2000.

Chairman Russ Carnahan (D–MO) opened the hearing with a statement on the positive accomplishments of MDG partnerships thus far. He spoke about successful public-private partnership efforts that demonstrate the importance of forming alliances and noted the global advances made toward providing education to all children and eliminating HIV/AIDS across the globe. Carnahan also noted that the number of people who are without food has increased over the last few years. He said that partnerships could help overcome this issue and told the committee that, “The private sector is in the unique position to contribute their expertise, resources, and innovative techniques toward this global effort [the MDGs].” In addition to calling for public-private partnerships, Carnahan also endorsed Obama’s commitment to meeting the goals.

Kathy Calvin, chief executive of the United Nations Foundation, was the first witness before the committee. She recounted success stories of the foundation working in partnerships and told the group that joint efforts are the only way to achieve overall success in carrying out the goals. She said, “No one sector can achieve them alone.”

Calvin said that Americans are in favor of working towards the eight goals and demonstrated this finding by offering survey statistics concerning Americans views of companies that support the goals. The April 2010 survey, commissioned by the UN Foundation and the Better World Campaign, “found that 87 percent of Americans support the elements continued in the Millennium Development Goals – and believe the US should help achieve them. A majority of Americans said they would have a more favorable opinion of major US companies if they were providing financial or other support to programs that would help achieve the MDGs by 2015.”

Calvin summarized five critical guidelines for successful partnerships. She said that all partners need to work closely together from the very beginning of a partnership. In addition, Calvin said that every expectation, whether monetary or in the field, needs to be understood by all parties involved before the partnership begins. She said that goals and objectives needed to be established to reflect the interests of all groups involved. She told the subcommittee that the more the US and the UN engage in public-private partnerships, the stronger the partnerships will become and the more the US will be able to gain from their existence. Lastly, Calvin said that the US Agency for International Development and the State Department needed to make sure that the partnerships they participated in were using the money for their intended purposes.

John W. McArthur, chief executive for the Millennium Promise Alliance, also spoke in support of partnerships. McArthur told the committee about the Millennium Promise, the first organization “explicitly committed to supporting the achievement of the Goals” and comprised of influential nongovernmental leaders. The Millennium Villages that the group created (communities receiving assistance to promote multiple goals) served as McArthur’s key example for the achievement of public-private collaborations. McArthur's plan for US success in the quest to achieve the goals included using reliable technologies and country-driven strategies created by the developing nation and evaluating national plans through technical reviews.

The third witness was Scott C. Ratzan, vice president of global health, government affairs and policy at Johnson & Johnson. Ratzan also promoted the idea of meeting the goals through partnerships and reinforced the concept of innovation through collaboration. He discussed many of the successful projects that Johnson & Johnson has conducted with the help of affiliates. One of the best projects, the TB Alliance, was created through a partnership with the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development and helps to develop drugs to prevent and counter tuberculosis in the 21st century. Another project was started with the help of the Task Force for Global Health. This project, Children Without Worms, is the first and only program that works to prevent and treat intestinal worms.

Ratzan challenged the committee to help ensure that the goals are met through public-private partnerships. He said: “Global health and development are too important to relegate to any one group. Congress has an important opportunity to support and encourage more public-private partnerships in health literacy, maternal and child health and other related areas that can help address the MDGs.”

The last witness was James M. Roberts, research fellow for economic freedom and growth in the Center for International Trade and Economics at the Heritage Foundation. Roberts criticized public-private partnerships in support of the goals and expressed his opposition to US government official development assistance. He highlighted an indirect link between providing aid to civilians and putting money into the hands of corrupt rulers.

Roberts told the committee that by endorsing the goals, the government “downplays extensive evidence that growth, not aid, provides the exit from the poverty trap.” He told the subcommittee that culture and traditional institutions in aid-receiving countries need to be altered before the necessary programs can take hold and make a difference. Roberts recommended that the US eliminate its financial support for the goals and redirecting the funds into stabilizing the economic situation in the US. Only then, he said, can we help support development efforts in other parts of the world.

A discussion session followed, beginning with Carnahan asking about how the goals can be achieved in the next five years. Calvin and Ratzan said that global health needed to be the main focus while McArthur emphasized agriculture and Roberts said that the US needed to concentrate on combating its own financial situation.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R–CA), senior Republican on the subcommittee, asked, “How much should we spend [on US funded PPPs]?” McArthur said that the US currently contributes about 0.7 percent of the federal government’s budget to foreign affairs and development projects but said that efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals would truly benefit from an increased budget. At this point, Rohrabacher expressed concerns about whether or not the US federal government funds would be abused through public-private partnerships. Calvin, McArthur, and Ratzan all reassured the subcommittee that, to their knowledge, the money was well spent.

Carnahan asked the witnesses to identify the goals that should receive the most focus in the last five years. Each of the first three witnesses agreed that the goals were interrelated and needed to be addressed as a group but they all mentioned different areas that should be the primary focus of public-private partnerships to achieve overall success by 2015. Calvin said that vaccine intervention, a focus on women and girls and new technology were the critical areas. McArthur said agricultural sustainability, dependable health systems for mothers and young children and education for teenage girls were the keys to success. Ratzan said that it was vital to focus equally on all eight goals.

The hearing ended with Rohrabacher's asking the witnesses if, post-2015, they thought that the issues being addressed by the goals would resurface? Calvin assured the group that the issue of sustainability is being addressed through individual national plans created by each country affected by the goals. McArthur noted that the future is unpredictable and said that the only way to have true success in achieving the goals was to do as much as we can to meet them before the 2015 deadline.

For more information on the MDGs, please visit: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.