Following feminist collaborative campaigns, UN Women has finally ended its partnership with trillion dollar asset management firm, BlackRock.
On 25 May 2022, UN Women announced a partnership with BlackRock, Inc “to cooperate in promoting the growth of gender lens investing”. BlackRock is the world’s largest investment firm, with deep ties to the fossil fuel and military industries. This announcement gravely highlights the corporate capture of the UN as well as the closed door process of drafting and signing these agreements, without transparency, public consultation, or the oversight of the feminist movements that UN Women should center and prioritize.
The collaboration between the two entities led to public outcry and feminist campaigning against the partnership. Over 500 women’s rights organizations, feminist activists and allies came together and signed an open letter urging UN Women to ‘immediately rescind and repudiate’ its partnership with BlackRock. The letter details BlackRock’s investments in industries that contribute to climate change and social instability, as well as the firm’s obstruction of measures to promote labor rights, corporate accountability for sexual harassment, and close gender pay gaps where it has shareholdings. The letter also points out that BlackRock also holds large amounts of external private debt in the Global South countries where it has resisted government requests to restructure or suspend repayments to accommodate national crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which affect public budgets to support women. A press release was issued regarding the same.
As a follow up action to the public letter, feminists organized the #BlockBlackRock virtual public online event on Tuesday 16 August to highlight why UN Women needs to rescind the partnership BlackRock and set standards for its private sector partnerships. Interpretation was available in French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The 1.5 hour conversation included speakers from Mijente and the No Tech for ICE Campaign, SOMO, and Public Services International, as well as AWID and WEDO, and was moderated by feminist activist-intellectual Sanam Amin. The video is available below. Read UN Women’s statement and the feminist responses here.
On 23 August 2022, the feminists behind #BlockBlackRock met with UN Women representatives to express concerns about the announced partnership and with the broader approach to corporate partnerships. During this meeting, Lopa Banerjee, Director of the Civil Society Division at UN Women, and other UN Women representatives stated that they heard the concerns and have terminated the partnership with BlackRock.
While we are relieved that the cross movement reaction and initiative has resulted in the end of the partnership between UN Women and BlackRock, the fight to challenging UN partnerships is not over.
