International Day for South-South Cooperation 2015
Over the past years, a number of initiatives have pioneered South-South cooperation. By pooling knowledge, research, and analysis, these early collaborations have enabled a rethinking of issues, methods, and approaches, and the systematic dissemination of knowledge to relevant actors. Areas of successful collaboration include agriculture, trade, and healthcare. Similar cooperation has been evident after recent major disasters, when South-South assistance played an important role in disaster response, reconstruction, emergency preparedness, and longer-term risk reduction. Multilateral institutions, regional organizations, and bilateral donors can provide strategically oriented and carefully targeted financial and technical support to catalyse or facilitate inter-country cooperation. Experience shows that this can be accomplished without creating a permanent role or long-term dependence among developing country partners.
What to do
The United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation aims to raise people's awareness of the UN's efforts to work on technical cooperation among developing countries. It also celebrates the economic, social and political developments made in recent years by regions and countries in the south. It is a time for individuals and organizations to agree on the importance of South-South cooperation, in complementing North-South cooperation, to support low-income countries in achieving development goals.
On this day political leaders from different countries reaffirm their goals in working with UN leaders to reinforce or strengthen ties on their commitment to South-South cooperation in developing countries. This can be done through speeches, action plans, special seminars or conferences, or press announcements. Educators in the area of social or political sciences may highlight the day through classroom activities that bring forth an awareness of issues centered on the event.
Background
In 1978 the UN General Assembly established the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation to promote, coordinate and support South-South and triangular cooperation on a global level. Two regional service centers, one in Asia and one in Africa, support South-South cooperation by pooling resources and by offering different types of services.
In 2003, the General Assembly declared December 19 to be observed as the UN Day for South-South Cooperation. But in 2011, the Assembly moved the date to September 12, to mark the date when it adopted the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries.
The assembly urged all UN organizations and other institutions to enhance their efforts to mainstream the use of South-South cooperation in designing, formulating, and implementing their regular programs.
These organizations were also asked to consider increasing various resource allocations to support South-South cooperation initiatives. Recent initiatives have been tied with the Tsunami relief projects. In recent times a silent revolution has taken place among fast-track performers such as Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, South Africa, and Thailand.