An ERC (European Research Council) Starting Grant has been awarded to Prof. Gamze Erdem Türkelli's for her project ‘GENESIS’, in which she proposes to examine the place multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) – a type of collaborative partnership – occupy within international law.

Gamze Erdem Türkelli

‘Multistakeholder partnerships and human rights’

‘Whether it’s access to vaccines, clean water or quality education: providing public goods to people requires allocating significant resources. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals note that this challenge can only be tackled by working together, particularly in developing countries’, Erdem Türkelli says. ‘That is why governments join forces with companies, NGOs and even philanthropists. By combining their knowledge and resources, these partnerships – so-called multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) – promise to solve complex problems.’

According to the researcher, this governance model also raises questions, including legal questions. Prof. Erdem Türkelli: ‘My research focuses on MSPs working to promote access to clean water, food, health care and education. These are all fundamental human rights that every human being can claim. But how do you know if the public good is delivered in line with human rights standards through an MSP? Within which legal framework do these structures operate? Those are questions I hope to answer in the next few years.’