What is the Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN?

The Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN is a global network of human rights, environment and development groups working to address undue corporate influence in the United Nations, and to support UN initiatives to hold corporations accountable on issues of human rights, labor rights and the environment. CorpWatch serves as the Alliance secretariat.

The Alliance formed out of four events:

1. A 1999 campaign in which hundreds of environmental, human rights and labor groups successfully pressured the UNDP to abandon a corporate partnership program called the Global Sustainable Development Facility GSDF;

2. A informal meeting of international NGOs present in Seattle during the WTO Ministerial, at which we agreed to a general principles;

3. The creation of the Citizens Compact -- a product of the Seattle meeting -- and its launch in Davos at the counter-meetings to the World Economic Forum in January 2000;

4. A July 2000 letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan voicing our objections to the Global Compact;

5. A second meeting of NGOs during the Sept. 2000 Millennium Summit in New York, at which we agreed to formalize our coalition as the Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN.

Platform

The members of the Alliance believe in a United Nations which:

• holds commercial rules subservient to human rights, labor and environmental principles,

• avoids excessive and undue corporate influence,

• holds corporations accountable in a legal framework,

• maintains integrity of international social and environmental agreements,

• receives adequate funding from governments.

Activities

The Alliance has three main activities:

• Monitoring and exposing corporate partnerships and undue corporate influence at the UN.

• Taking action to pressure the UN to avoid such partnerships and influence.

• Promoting and supporting UN-related measures to hold corporations accountable.

Steering Committee

• CorpWatch (U.S.) - Secretariat

• Corporate Europe Observatory (the Netherlands)

• Council on International and Public Affairs (U.S.)

• Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis (Brazil)

• Focus on the Global South (Thailand)

• Institute for Policy Studies (U.S.)

• International Baby Food Action Network (Switzerland)

• International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment (India)

• Tebtebba Foundation, Inc. (The Philippines)

• Third World Institute (Uruguay)

• Third World Network (Malaysia)

• Women's Environment and Development Organization (U.S.)

• 101 Alliance for a Corporate-Free UN