Big foundations and nonprofits still flood to the sidelines of a diminished United Nations

NEW YORK (AP) — Even as it ponders a diminished future facing cutbacks and questions of relevance, the United Nations will still draw foundations and nonprofits to New York next week for a packed schedule of conferences, meetings, happy hours and dinners on the sidelines of its general assembly of world leaders.

But the uncertainty has already had an impact.

The Gates Foundation, which usually releases a report about progress toward global development goals before the U.N. General Assembly meets, has delayed this year’s report because it’s not yet clear how much foreign aid and global health funding countries will commit going forward. Former President Bill Clinton said the Clinton Global Initiative, which started convening its annual meeting on the U.N. sidelines in 2005, will change its format this year to ask leaders from business, politics and philanthropy to develop new programs during the two-day conference.

The changes are among the signals the U.N. General Assembly — also known as UNGA Week among attendees — will be different this year.

The U.N.’s largest funder, the United States, has frozen funding or sought to claw it back, prompting major layoffs and program reductions across U.N. agencies. Its most powerful body, the Security Council, has not acted to stop two major wars, despite its founding mandate after World War II “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The world’s uncertainty has made this year’s UNGA Week even more important, say some ready to join in the gatherings.

“It is still the only place that the whole world gets together and that alone, in my view, is enough to justify its existence,” said Kevin Sheekey, senior adviser to billionaire and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Since 2017, Bloomberg’s organization has convened a forum on the U.N. sidelines, which Sheekey said is a unique opportunity to make connections between world leaders, businesses and philanthropies. This year it will focus on global collaboration and investment opportunities in African countries, especially around sports.

The United Nations Foundation, founded by Ted Turner in 1989 to promote cooperation with the U.N., compiles a list of public events that take place on the sidelines. This year, the foundation has tracked about the same number of events as in previous years, said George Hampton, one of the foundation’s executive directors. But he said there seems to be a greater emphasis on smaller roundtables, where conversations can be more frank and substantive.

“It is clear that the space we have to solve problems is shrinking, the kind of global cooperation table is shrinking as the problems themselves grow,” Hampton said. “So it does feel there’s a new urgency, a new sense that this time matters more than those before it.”

Clinton Global Initiative CEO Gregory Milne said the changes the nonprofit plans for this year’s meeting are similar to how it responded to the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is a critical moment for the global development community,” he said. “But we also know that the CGI community and thousands of organizations that span the public and private sector have always worked to meet the unique and urgent challenges of the time.”

An early event, hosted Thursday at the Ford Foundation, was Free Future, which focuses on ending gender-based violence. Speakers, including former Liberian president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, reflected on the 30th anniversary of the U.N. conference on women in Beijing in 1995, where countries made many pledges to move toward gender equality.

She said while there’s been progress in terms of the promotion of women leaders and access to opportunity, “We have not done enough.”

The conference this year was co-hosted by Pivotal, Melinda French Gates’ organization, and highlighted the economic toll that violence takes.

“Violence has a cost,” said Monica Aleman, international program director at the Ford Foundation, adding, “that money can make a difference in bringing a solution, whether that is through cash transfers or other economic opportunities that you can offer survivors.”

The event, which convened funders, private companies, advocates and grantees, is also meant to fortify and inspire attendees in advance of what will be for many, a packed week of meetings on the U.N. sidelines.

Celiné Justice, of Pivotal Ventures, said part of what her organization will be doing is “really listening for opportunities to bring this issue into the room, so that it doesn’t get forgotten.”

She said more than ever, philanthropies need to work together and to also build partnerships beyond their normal allies.

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