Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Statement by Dmitry Chumakov, Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, at the PR Meeting of the Group of Friends of the UN Global Compact

Dear Excellencies, dear Mr. Bozkir, Ms. Baeriswyl and Ms. Ojiambo,

First of all, let me express the gratitude on behalf of the Russian delegation for Strategy draft presented for discussions and opinions sharing.

It’s all too clear, that the international agenda demands more intensive business engagement in policy making process on all levels.

The Russian delegation supports the overall Strategy vision based on 10 principals which already incorporates the proposals and concerns raised by the UNGC members during the strategic sessions. We believe that the draft Strategy will serve us as a good basis for further consultations in the process of elaborating an inclusive and comprehensive three year UNGC “Roadmap”.

Let me underline the most important elements of the Strategy that are to be specified and further developed to ensure the smooth way forward to enhancing cooperation of global private sector with UN.

  1. We must provide the UNGC with more opportunities of taking part in discussions in the different UN bodies and mechanisms. Any decision adopted by the UN members, primarily in respect of UN Sustainable Development Agenda, should take into account the voice of business.
  2. Local Networks are to be formally entitled with more rights and liabilities in the UNGC policy.  They must play a greater role in the process of admitting national companies as new UNGC members, progress reports verification. We also need to think over how to build more transparent and fair vertical structure of the UNGC membership to strengthen intermediary functions of Local Networks. That’s no less important to ensure that all members demonstrate on an ongoing basis their commitments to the UNGC goals and principles.
  3. There is a special need, as well, for more individual approach to different groups of UNGC members such as SMMEs, NPO etc. whether it relates to raising awareness of the membership modalities or to policies’ formulation including those in the context of sectorial, thematic and institutional dimensions.
  4. We also acknowledge growing necessity of stronger PPPs evolving. In this regard, UNGC could expand and diversify the forms of cooperation between the governments and UNGC.
  5. We suggest that the Strategy should pay the attention to the exchange of expertise between its participants with the leading role of UNGC in arranging and moderating such events and to the development of «mentorship» concept of interactions.

Here I would like to stop as we are running short of time and express our hope that UNGC will continue to work on the Strategy with all parties concerned to fully reflect the role and interests of international private sector community in the document.

Thank you for your attention.