Dear Focal Points,

Hot on the heels of the recent UN Global Compact Leaders Summit, I welcome you to the sixth edition of the UN-Business Focal Point newsletter!

A new partnership between UNFPA Turkey, Levi’s Turkey, MTV Turkey and the Youth for Habitat Association is fighting to inform and empower youth on sexual and reproductive health and rights; responsible and safe behavior; and to better exercise their rights...

On 13 April 2007, as a parallel event to the 21st UN-HABITAT's Governing Council, Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka launched the Business Partnership for Sustainable Urbanization (BPSU), a new platform to engage the private sector into sustainable urbanization issues...

China’s growth over the past three decades, while reducing poverty levels, has placed great pressures on the environment, both within China and globally. This is of particular concern for poor and vulnerable communities within China who are disproportionately affected by pollution, land and water degradation and the emerging implications of climate change...

Twenty underprivileged youth from throughout Malaysia now stand a chance to realise their dreams thanks in part to the UNDP-Honda Dreams Fund initiative. They form the inaugural group of successful scholars who have received non-binding scholarships to pursue higher education in the fields of their choice at local institutions of higher learning, covering both tuition fees and living expenses...

FTSE, a leading provide of index data and financial services, introduced in partnership with UNICEF the first global index series of ethical stocks, FTSE4Good...

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) signed an agreement in April with the soft drink conglomerate Coca-Cola to collaborate on projects to improve community access to water and sanitation in India and Nepal...

Some additional new partnerships with short summaries and links to further information...

On 5-6 July 2007, the second annual UN Global Compact Leaders Summit, history’s largest event on the topic of leadership and corporate citizenship, was held in Geneva...

During the Global Compact Leaders Summit, a session entitled “Increasing Impact and Innovation through UN-Business Partnerships” gave participants the opportunity to discuss innovative examples of UN-business partnerships in order to highlight the strategic relevance of collaboration - both for companies and for the UN system...

Heads of UN Agencies, Funds and Programmes along with senior-level staff from 17 other UN Organizations gathered for a breakfast meeting on the sidelines of the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit to discuss strategies, challenges and opportunities for improved collaboration with the private sector...

UNDP’s partnerships and programmatic work with the private sector have grown significantly over the last five years. In February 2007, the Bureau for Development Policy and the Partnerships Bureau decided to pool existing human and financial resources to launch the Private Sector Division...

Successful entrepreneurship tends to be associated with famous figures such as Henry Ford, the father of modern assembly lines and mass production, or wealthy real estate developer Donald Trump. Yet we wonder, what does success look like for indigenous entrepreneurs?...

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) recently partnered with the Egyptian Institute of Directors to hold the "Transparency and Disclosure Annual International Conference" on 18-19 June 2007 in Cairo, Egypt...

At the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), we ask ourselves how corporations have been improving the lives of people living in developing countries from an economic and social point of view. We also ask how benefits of corporate activities can be maximized and negative effects simultaneously minimized in the process of facilitating economic development and poverty alleviation in host developing countries. In 2004 in São Paolo, Brazil, member States gave the UNCTAD secretariat the mandate to propose answers to these questions...

How does one go about engaging business with an organization that has existed primarily on government funding for its 50 year history? How does an organization like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) begin to address this type of work? We decided to find out by talking with Scott Schirmer, the newly appointed Private Sector Liaison for the IOM...

A new partnership assessment tool, “Enhancing Partnership Value: A Tool to Assess Sustainability and Impact” was published and will assist UN agencies and their corporate partners to design effective and sustainable partnerships thereby improving the quality and developmental value of collaboration...

A new UN-HABITAT publication, “Business for Sustainable Urbanisation: Challenges and Opportunities”, provides an overview of the challenges, business opportunities and best practices in the different sectors that are part of the organization’s mandate...

In July 2007, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) published an Issue Brief on SMEs in collaboration with SNV Netherlands Development Organisation. The brief explains how governments can help alleviate poverty by focusing on SMEs and how larger corporations can help themselves by including SMEs in their value chains...

The UN Global Compact Office has released a new publication entitled “Joining Forces for Change: Demonstrating Innovation and Impact through UN-Business Partnerships” which presents a number of case studies of successful UN-Business partnership initiatives...

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has launched a set of guidelines entitled “A Guide to Promoting Good Governance in Public Private Partnerships”, a new force to direct governments and businesspeople towards better practices in developing their PPP programs...

Everyone is calling for more accountability amongst development actors. But accountability is still seen largely as a set of mechanisms to bolt on to existing development projects, designed to reduce corruption and inefficiency at the margin. AccountAbility, an international, non-profit membership organization dedicated to promoting accountability innovations that enable individuals, institutions and alliances to respond better to global challenges, has announced a new “Partnership Governance and Accountability” newsletter...

In the 2005 Gleneagles Plan of Action, the G8 +5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) agreed to launch a Global Bioenergy Partnership to support wider, cost effective, biomass and biofuels deployment, particularly in developing countries...

"The Business Guide to Partnering with NGOs and the UN" is an innovative product created in partnership between the UN Global Compact Office, Dalberg and the Financial Times...

A new issue of the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity newsletter “Business.2010” was published in May 2007. The issue focuses on business, biodiversity and climate change...