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International Day for South-South Cooperation

13 September 2016

​The United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation is annually observed on September 12.

The United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation celebrates economic, social and political developments in many developing countries and commemorates the date when the United Nations General Assembly adopted a plan of action in 1978 to promote and implement technical cooperation among developing countries.

 

What is South-South Cooperation?

South-South Cooperation is a general term often used to describe the exchange of resources, technology and knowledge between developing countries (who are sometimes referred to as the global south).  So South-South Cooperation is a general term to describe political, economic, social, cultural, environmental or technical cooperation or collaboration between countries of the global south.
 
Measuring South-South Cooperation
The past two decades have seen a rapid growth in South-South cooperation, in terms of scale, geographic reach, intensity and modalities.  It is now recognized as an important complementary source not only of financing of global and regional development, but also for sharing and exchanging knowledge and experience of critical development challenges overcome in their specific countries. The speed at which South-South cooperation has risen has naturally led to a desire for accounting these significant flows of human, financial, knowledge and technological transfer between developing countries, however to do so, remains a challenge for many national governments as well as international institutions. There is currently, no universally agreed definition, or understanding of what constitutes South-South Cooperation existing among all development partners both from the North and the South. Understanding South-South Cooperation in terms of flow, scale, trend, and impact is therefore difficult.  This task is further complicated by inconsistent recording across countries often rendering the collection, analysis and compilation of data on South-South cooperation incomplete and unreliable. As a consequence, the availability of data and the quality of research on the scale and impact of South-South cooperation has not kept pace with the growing demand for information, intelligence and data. Knowledge gaps and uneven access to solutions are currently major obstacles hindering the scaling-up of South-South cooperation and the maximization of its impact on sustainable development.
 
A 'Data Age'
The lack of robust data on South-South Cooperation is problematic. The importance of evidence to inform policy and debate is increasingly recognized and valued.  The publication in 2014 by the Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development (IAEG-SDG) of the report 'A World that Counts' has highlighted, not only the need for more data to support the Agenda 2030, but better and faster data that aligns with modern policy debate.  In March 2016, United Nations Statistical Commission endorsed the selection of the IAEG-SDG in their choice of 230 indicators to measure progress towards sustainable development.  The full scope and complexity of the data required to measure progress on 169 SDG targets is only now becoming apparent and the monitoring framework required will be greater than that required for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But a simple volume count underestimates the complexity of the data required and the range of new data required.  It is becoming clear that a great deal of additional investment in national and international statistical systems and data infrastructure will be required to meet this challenge.
 
In this context, many of the countries of the global South are at a deep disadvantage where data collection, analysis and use in government policy considerations are concerned.  For many decades there have been calls for Governments to strength their data so as to be better able to monitor poverty, gains in education and health care as proxies for demonstrating that the lives of their citizens were improving.  Indeed the MDGs and the need to report, did help improve some data collection, but not nearly enough to now feed the complex needs that are being called for in Agenda 2030. Coupled with this is the need through the Addis Ababa Agenda, to know 'how' the targets are being met. Hence the need, now, to understand the contribution of South-South Cooperation to the implementation of the SDGs and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. Today, estimates for the total value of South-South Cooperation vary between UU$16 and US$19 billion. This however may be an underestimate, as definitions of development assistance vary and there are no systematic and comparable data across countries. See UNCTAD Development and Globalisation: Facts and Figures 2016 for more discussion on this topic and data: http://stats.unctad.org/Dgff2016/index.html
 
South-South Cooperation and Agenda 2030
It is clearly anticipated that South-South cooperation will make an increasingly important contribution to their implementation.  Across the full spectrum of the Sustainable Development goals (SDGs) the importance of South-South cooperation is evident. Whether the issue is sustainable agriculture (Goal 2) and fishing (Goal 14), infrastructural development (Goal 9) such as clean water and sanitation (Goal 6) or sustainable and affordable energy (Goal 7) or economic growth (Goal 8) the potential role for South-South Cooperation is clear.  Furthermore, Goal 17 calls for a strengthening of 'the means of implementation' and a revitalization of 'the global partnership for sustainable development'.  Here too, the importance of South-South cooperation is apparent across a range of issues from finance, technology, national capacity building to trade and enhanced information - all with a view to improving development management and policy coherence. For more information of these goals see UNCTAD Development and Globalisation: Facts and Figures 2016: http://stats.unctad.org/Dgff2016/index.html