Multi-Actor Global Funds: New Tools to Address Urgent Global Problems

Abstract

Multi-actor global funds (MGFs), as identified in this study, are emerging as an increasingly popular and important mechanism for the mobilization and distribution of international financial resources. Several such funds already have annual disbursements that exceed the core budgets of major UN agencies, and new funds with even broader mandates are currently being proposed. At first glance, these powerful instruments for globally co-ordinated action represent a departure from traditional forms of multilateral governance because non-state actors share decision-making powers and financing responsibilities with national governments, as in other forms of ‘networked’, multi-actor governance that are developing at the global level. Yet comparatively little is known about the way these funds operate, whether they are desirable as instruments for financing major international initiatives, and what implications they might have more broadly for global governance. This last question seems especially important, considering that, even though a key principle behind these funds is that they are ‘additional’ to existing sources of finance, the proliferation of MGFs may come at the expense of established international organizations — both in terms of resource flows and of their prestige in the international system.