Meanwhile, the UN development paradigm became more market-
friendly. Faced with steady criticisms from developed countries, the
UN gradually abandoned its old “anti-business prejudice,”^69 a turn
reinforced by Bill Gates and Ted Turner’s generous support for UN
activities. The change was particularly remarkable within the Secre-
tariat and at the UNDP. InA Better World for All, for example,
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed that Third World countries
had “to lower their tariffs and other trade barriers and streamline
their systems for the flow of imports, exports and finance,” a position
traditionally defended by the IMF.^70 In Doha, Annan went still fur-
ther, and stated that opening markets was “even more important for
developing countries and transition economies than for the rest of the
world.”^71 The willingness of the UN Secretariat to accept market
forces was best demonstrated by the Global Compact launched in
- The Compact created a multistakeholder network that in 2006
involved over 2,500 businesses from ninety countries, along with
labor organizations, NGOs, and the UN. Its objective was to induce
the private sector to adopt good practices, based on ten internationally
approved principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environ-
ment, and the prevention of corruption.^72 Sometimes caricatured as a
pact between the UN and the devil, the Global Compact was rooted
in the notion that the promotion of corporate social responsibility
through voluntary measures constituted one of the best ways to correct
the downsides of globalization.
The UNDP also worked hard after 2000 to build a more business-
oriented organizational culture.^73 Shifting to new forms of results-
based management, the UN agency endeavored to make its services
(^69) Sidney Dell,The United Nations and International Business, Durham and
70 London, Duke University Press and UNITAR, 1990, p. ix.
71 IMF, OECD, UN, and World Bank,A Better World for All, p. 22.
Kofi A. Annan, “Message of the UN Secretary-General of the United Nations at
72 the Doha Ministerial Conference of the WTO,” November 9, 2001, p. 1.
Jean-Philippe The ́rien and Vincent Pouliot, “The Global Compact: Shifting the
Politics of International Development?,”Global Governance, vol. 12, no. 1,
73 2006, 55–75.
See Craig N. Murphy,The United Nations Development Programme: A Better
Way?, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 299–308; Kemal Dervis,
“Statement by the Administrator of the UNDP at the Executive Board of the
UNDP/UNFPA,” New York, January 24, 2006, p. 17 (http://content.undp.org/
go/newsroom/january-2006/statement-dervis-undp-unfpa-20060124.en?
categoryID=349463).
Twenty-first-century rapprochement 185