The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) are issuing a worldwide call for nominations for the 2006 World Business Awards. Building on the success of the 2004 World Business Awards, which received nominations from 27 countries, the 2006 awards will acknowledge the role business can play in meeting the United Nations' target for halving human poverty around the world by 2015.
The spirit of the awards lies in the pursuit of innovative and productive approaches to sustainable development, targeted at the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals agreed by world leaders in the United Nations Millennium Declaration in 2000.
All nominations for the awards must be submitted by 31 December 2005.
The awards will be presented to several honourees from around the world in mid-2006. The award recipients will receive worldwide recognition for their efforts and their work will be profiled in the web sites and publications of the three sponsoring organizations.
The 2006 World Business Awards in support of the Millennium Development Goals are the first worldwide business awards to recognize the significant role business can play in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. Every business entity---including business associations, confederations and individual companies of any size from any country
---is eligible for an award. Nominations can be submitted by the business entities themselves, or by others seeking to acknowledge their contributions.
The eight Millennium Development Goals offer an integrated framework for tackling major challenges that afflict individuals, countries and the global community. They set quantitative and measurable targets to be achieved by 2015 for the reduction of poverty, hunger, disease and tangible improvement in education, healthcare, drinking water, shelter and environmental protection.
Award recipients will be acknowledged for the innovative and productive contributions towards the achievement of any one of the eight goals. The awards seek to recognize enterprises which strive to address development challenges whether through their core activities, philanthropy, or advocacy work.
The selection criteria have been agreed by UNDP, ICC, and IBLF. The nominations will be reviewed by an international selection committee, which includes business leaders, representatives of the UNDP, ICC, and IBLF and other leading non-governmental organizations and international agencies. Companies, institutions, associations and enterprises of all types, sizes and categories are invited to participate in the awards process
Nomination forms and supporting information are available at
www.iccwbo.org/awards
. Completed forms should be submitted to the selection committee by e-mail: tina.launois@iccwbo.org or to the International Selection Committee c/o ICC, 38 cours Albert 1er, Paris 75008 France.