The UN Foundation: a billion dollars to help!

Interview with Senator Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation and Better World Fund.

By Jean Michel Jakobowicz.

What is the United Nations Foundation all about ? The UN Foundation was founded by Ted Turner to support the United Nations. Mr. Turner has long been a strong supporter of the UN. He committed a billion dollars to support UN causes and the UN itself.

What are your major activities ? Our activities fall under three main categories: children’s health, environment, and population issues. We have also a very active public affairs programme, designed mainly to help the operation of the UN within the United States and now increasingly around the world. We worked very hard to get the US debt to the UN paid off. And third we have a very active programme for developing new partnerships with businesses and individuals who want to work with the UN and don’t know how to do it. We find ourselves becoming a kind of catalyst for the UN.

Why did Mr Ted Turner create a foundation ? Why didn’t he give the billion dollars straight away to the UN ? It was a wise thing. If he had given the money right away to the UN, they would have spread it across the board, the way bureaucracies do. Everybody gets a little bit and the impact would be totally lost. That’s the way large bureaucracies work. He wanted the money to be focussed and he wanted the money to be used within the United States to solve the political problem between the US Government and the UN. He also wanted that his money be used as leverage to raise other funds for the UN.

What are your relationships with UNFIP? We have a very good relationship with the United Nations and a special relationship with the office created by the Secretary General of the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) which is headed by Amir Dosal. We work very closely with his office. All of our grants go through the UNFIP programme.

What type of projects do you finance ? We have spent, over the history of the Foundation, more than 500 million dollars and funded 389 projects. The average size project has been over a million dollars. We are now working on fewer larger projects for example on polio eradication, and very soon on measles.

What will happen when the billion dollars will have been spent ? The UN Foundation is currently scheduled to sunset in about seven or eight years. Mr Turner will not be putting more funds himself. Maybe the UN will think it was a wise initiative and will continue it by itself.

Who is on the board of the UN Foundation ? The UN Foundation has a very small and very distinguish international board: Ted Turner; Gro Harlem Brundtland, former head of WHO; Ruth Cardoso, who is the Chair of the Comunidade Solidaria, a program to combat poverty and social exclusion in Brazil; Liang Dan, Director of Investment and Technology Promotion at the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO); Graca Machel, who has been Mozambique’s Minister of Education and was the chairperson of the National Organization of Children of Mozambique, an organization that places orphans in village homes; Emma Rothschild, Director of the Centre for History and Economics – King’s College/Cambridge, United Kingdom; Nafis Sadik, Former Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); Ambassador Andrew Young, who is an ordained minister; and Muhammad Yunus, Founder, Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

Does Mr Turner participate in the funding decisions ? He is very interested and chairs the Board. He wants to see that his money is carefully well spent; that is why he has such a good Board. But he is only one among the others to make the final decisions.

Originally the billion dollars were supposed to be spent over a ten year period. Now there was a decision to spend it over 15 years. What is the reason behind that ? After spending 500 million dollars the Board considered that we were very good at raising money and decided that instead of spending 100 million dollars every year it would spend 50 million and match the difference by raising funds elsewhere. In fact, we spent the same amount of money every year but the source is diversified.

From where do you raise this money ? We have a lot of partnerships: corporations, governments and individuals. There are a number of people who want to work on UN problems and issues and who want to work with us or through us.

How does one get money from the Foundation ? All of our programmes go through the UN. Which means that you don’t just apply to the Foundation you have to go through UNFIP. If the UN and UNFIP agree that it is a priority programme then we will all work on it.

What will you be doing on 14 to 16 June in Geneva ? We will have a board meeting. We will be committing 20 or 30 million dollars of spending. We will have extensive discussions on three issues: climate change, population and infectious diseases. And we will be meeting with several UN heads of agencies in Geneva.

What is the link between the UN Foundation and the Better World Campaign ? They are sister organizations. The BWC is designed for advocacy for the UN, which the UN cannot do for itself. For example: the Better World Campaign has been working with the US Congress administration to get the debt paid off, to get peace keeping arrears paid, to work on a number of government issues which the UN and the UN Foundation can’t do within their charters.

You have been senator, worked in the White House. What brought you to the UN Foundation ? I have known Mr Turner for 20 years. When he decided to make this commitment he was looking for somebody to manage the programme and he asked me if I would do it. It was a wonderful opportunity. He is a great visionary and a wonderful person to work with. We got together. That is how the UN Foundation was created. I hope that both he and Koffi Annan are happy with the product.