The United Nations’ Role in the Evolution of Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, South-South Cooperation, and Triangular Cooperation: Real or Cosmetic Approaches to Development Cooperation?

On 22 May 2019, the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD), in association with the University of South Africa (Unisa) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), co-hosted a dialogue titled “Appraising the Dynamics of South-South Cooperation and Triangular Cooperation: Lessons beyond the BAPA+40 Conference”. The event reflected on the international development arena and global development agenda in the context of the United Nations (UN) Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 30 August to 12 September 1978, and the Second High-Level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation (SSC) also held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 20 to 22 March 2019, otherwise known as BAPA+40. The dialogue built on research drawn from the participation of the IGD at BAPA+40 and its engagement in a number of side events in Buenos Aires. The event brought together wide-ranging participants including scholars, academics, diplomats, government representatives, media and civil society.

South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) is not a new issue in international development cooperation. South-South Cooperation itself has a long history and has contributed to the international development half a century. Indonesia itself actively involved in SSTC since the Asian-African Conference (AAC), in 1955, this conference became the starting point of a political movement of the joint development of third world countries to carry out international cooperation. Strengthening the role of Indonesia in SSTC significantly more noticeable with the inclusion of Indonesia as a G20 member, and the change of economic status Indonesia become "Middle Income Country", the position of Indonesia today not only as a recipient country but also as a provider. This research was to find out how Indonesia's membership in G20 could effect on Indonesia's role in South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) itself. Besides this paper aims to identify obstacles and challenges in implementing SSTC in Indonesia, as well as how the prospect of Indonesia after the Single Agency established within the framework of SSTC. Hopefully, this research can be beneficial to all parties, especially for students.

The “South-South cooperation” concept is still not widely known or used, except in the framework of the United Nations. Yet, its inception goes back more than 60 years, when the idea was crystallized as a key building bloc of the national liberation and anti-colonial struggle of developing countries1. The struggle found its apogee in the UN and was marked by the Congo crisis that witnessed the deaths of Patrice Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjold. In March 2019, the United Nations will hold the 2nd High-level Conference on South-South cooperation, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to discuss the state and prospects of South-South cooperation (SSC) and chart a path for the future. The Conference will also mark the 40th anniversary of the 1978 UN Conference on Technical Co-operation among Developing Countries (TCDC), also held in Buenos Aires, which adopted the Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (thus the acronym for BAPA+40 or Buenos Aires Plan of Action + 40). BAPA+40 offers a new opportunity for the international community and, more importantly, the Global South to focus attention on South-South cooperation. This cooperation is important not only for development and national-sovereignty aspirations and needs of the developing countries and their peoples, but also for these countries’ greater role and influence in the world arena. Consequently, South-South cooperation holds a promise of the developing countries playing a key role in reforming and shaping the · When the editor of the Vestnik RUDN International Relations , published by Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), formerly Patrice Lumumba University, approached me with the suggestion to contribute an article on South-South cooperation for the journal’s special issue devoted to the 2019 UN High-level Conference on South-South Cooperation, he stressed the importance of including footnotes, and also suggested that I liven up the text with some recollections from my own academic and professional experience. I have obliged by providing ample footnotes parallel to the main body of the text, in the hope that this unorthodox, eclectic essay - partly historical, partly analytical and partly prescriptive - may serve as useful reference for those working on South- South cooperation, and also for researchers of this subject and the large student body from the Third World, especially Africa, studying at RUDN University, some of whom may in the future take part in a South-South cooperation undertaking. world order to respond to the shared needs and objectives of humankind. The essay approaches this question from a point of view widely shared in developing countries and is inspired by their decades-long collective struggle in the world arena.

In 2019, the Second High-Level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation was held, revitalizing South-South and triangular cooperation. It was intended to incorporate the principal advances in the international agenda on the effectiveness of aid, financing, and the 2030 Agenda, which is the framework of this article. From an analytical perspective, the aim is to identify the main challenges posed by the conference for the private sector in its connection with South-South and triangular cooperation in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals, which require multistakeholder approaches in a postpandemic context of international crisis. Three levels of challenges are identified: programmatic, operational, and general.

United Nations (UN) entities have repeatedly been asked to mainstream their\nsupport for South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC). However, there is\nhardly any systematic evidence on whether and how they have done so. This article\ncontributes to addressing this gap. The analysis focuses on organizational efforts\nover the last two decades to integrate SSTC support into institutional processes\nacross the UN development system. It centers around a scorecard of fifteen UN\nentities that maps the levels and contours of their organizational focus on SSTC.\nIn light of a highly diverse SSTC support landscape and the complex political\ndynamics behind mainstreaming efforts, the article discusses the way ahead for UN\nengagement with SSTC, including the potentials and challenges of a continued focus\non mainstreaming itself.

Triangular cooperation (TriCo) has existed as a cooperation mechanism for about 40 years. The first implicit reference was made to it in 1978 in the United Nations Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA). Reacting to the increased complexity of international development cooperation, and going beyond the North-South divide, TriCo aims to (i) foster relations between DAC donors and emerging economies, (ii) strengthen southern providers' capacity in international cooperation for development and (iii) promote international development. Since 1978, TriCo has become broader, more dynamic and flexible, has increased the number of projects and stakeholders involved, and incorporated different processes and approaches (e.g. South-South-South cooperation), including larger partnership strategies. It is now perceived of as key to the sharing of costs, responsibilities and solutions in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). TriCo was mentioned 73 times in the outcome document of the Second High-level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40), held in Buenos Aires in March 2019. No longer was it a niche topic. It was afforded significance and broadly discussed in an internationally agreed document, thereby becoming a tool for development dialogue at policy level. fOfficial, verified and comparable data on TriCo are often lacking. Yet, many studies and reports shed light on this mechanism. This Briefing Paper is based on more than 30 in-depth interviews with stakeholders, and on analysis of documents and data. It makes three recommendations on ways to advance TriCo as a cooperation mechanism for all donors, and as a support mechanism for the 2030 Agenda: (1) avoid a 'one-size-fits-all' approach; (2) integrate triangular cooperation into existing practices of development cooperation, e.g. as a component of financial and technical projects; and (3) better connect with the debate around multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs), in which stakeholders from at least three different sectors work together through an organised, and long-term engagement.

Although Türkiye’s history of getting involved in South -South cooperation dates back to 1955 when Bandung Conference was convened, its engagement in terms of international development cooperation started after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s. With its development cooperation agency- TİKA became operational since 1992, Türkiye has been in close cooperation with the Global South in the field of development cooperation and gained momentum from 2002 onwards by reaching out its friendly hands to Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. In the last ten years, backed by its unique position of being both a donor and recipient, Türkiye has been very active in sharing its experience with the other Southern donors through implementing projects in the third countries. This paper intends first of all to give readers an overall idea about South-South and Triangular Cooperation, then proceed to elaborate on Turkish experience in this regard within the context of international development cooperation with examples and analysis, and eventually present Türkiye’s persistent endeavors to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This special issue discusses, in-depth, the embedded conundrum of South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC) whose frontiers are shifted from collaboration to contention within the United Nations (UN) development system and beyond. This introductory article provides the conceptual framework—the contentioncollaboration spectrum—that guides all the contributors and serves as the collective starting point for this project. The moving frontiers of SSTC reflect the shifting historic relationships between the global South and North as well as Southern partner countries. The framework enables the six articles of this special issue to investigate the paradoxical structure of contrasting dynamics of SSTC, which has always been exposed to historical transformations at multi-levels of analysis: global governance, regional engagements, middle power perspectives, and the UN development system and beyond.

Pay dirt! human health depends on soil health

Promoting “4 Per Thousand” and “Adapting African Agriculture” by south-south cooperation: Conservation agriculture and sustainable intensification

South-South Cooperation (SSC) has attracted the attention of the development community in terms of both its ‘impact’ on traditional aid and the integration of its values into the work of multilateral institutions, making it the new ‘buzzword’ of the aid community. However, few studies have been carried out to understand the rationale of SSC and how it influences the approaches followed in its development assistance activities or ‘South-South Development Cooperation’ (SSDC). Therefore, this article explores the origins and development of the SSC concept from the perspectives of southern countries and shows how they affect the narrative related to the implementation model of SSDC. The research uses a narrative literature review focusing on southern countries’ understandings of both SSC and SSDC, thus enabling two sets of categorization: one for the conceptual elements in the definition of SSC outside its geographical component and the other for the guiding principles and approaches of SSDC.

This chapter reviews the origins of South-South Cooperation (SSC) and briefly explains why Chinese, Indian, and Korean SSC partnerships represent a risky opportunity for African development when compared to TICAD. It then examines the importance of Japan’s International Cooperation Agency SSC (JICA) and Triangular Cooperation (TrC) projects in TICAD, focusing on two major projects in Mozambique: the ProSavana agriculture model and the Nacala Economic Development Corridor. It concludes that like Southern partnerships’ SSCs, JICA also has its own failures.

The United Nations refers to South-South cooperation as a broad framework of collaboration between developing countries in the Global South. It can take place on a bilateral, regional, or interregional basis. Its main purpose is to share knowledge, skills, resources and successful initiatives to meet development goals through concerted partnerships. Triangular cooperation implies the presence of traditional donor countries and organizations which facilitate South-South initiatives. Both forms of cooperation carry distinct benefits and differ from the more traditional North-South partnerships. This presentation will describe how, under the umbrella and support of ICMART, regional and interregional ART registries in the developing South, specifically the Latin American registry (REDLARA) and the African registry (ANARA), are contributing to the development, sustainability and cohesion in ART monitoring among the many countries they represent. With an innovative and standardized ART registry as a backbone, 35 countries in these two continents are now organized in regional reproductive networks increasing their recognition, visibility and impact, We shall demonstrate that this south-south and triangular cooperation, built upon a spirit of community and regional belonging is a strong facilitator of ART monitoring and transfer of technology to the developing South, and its ongoing expansion and reach. In Latin America, where REDLARA was established 30 years ago, local and expedited channels of communication have furthermore underpinned the training of embryologists, clinicians and other health care professionals through regional networks of professionals and certified training centers. This has resulted in enhanced ART self-reliance including the capability to implement new ART technologies and also monitor their availability, utilization, effectiveness and safety. Similar initiatives, strongly supported by REDLARA and ICMART, are starting to be implemented among African institutions via ANARA. Lastly, we shall demonstrate that our regional as well as global ART registries, together with other international organizations, have contributed to the dissemination of knowledge and serve as monitors and external quality controls now for 35 countries and almost 300 institutions in Latin America and Africa. Furthermore, given that both continents are progressively implementing the same cycle-based reporting system, new knowledge will be gained by examining regional and country similarities and differences.

South-South Cooperation was first conceived at the 1955 Bandung Conference, which led to the foundation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 and other important initiatives within the UN system, such as creating the G77 and elaborating the Buenos Aires Plan of Action. Since the beginning of the century, this cooperation modality has re-emerged and is now considered a catalyst for sustainable development. Given this context, this paper aims to analyze its ideological and political origins, definitions, and evolution, highlighting its importance as an instrument of foreign policy and development cooperation. In addition, a comparison between South-South and North-South Cooperation is made through five dimensions: ideas, institutions/political systems, interests, organizations, and vectors/schemes. Through this comparative approach, the author seeks to present consensual aspects of what is understood as South-South Cooperation and portray the diversity of strategies implemented by countries in the Global South.Keywords: South-South Cooperation; North-South Cooperation; Global South; sustainable developmen; BRICS

This chapter discusses the arrival of new aid modalities and instruments that have led to the presence of new participants, including some from the private sector (firms, individuals, and foundations). Of note are the more recent aspects of international development finance: South–South Cooperation (SSC), and corporate social responsibility (CSR), both of which affect the mobilization of resources, aid, and international financing to a certain degree. SSC is becoming the new fashionable subject in discussions around reform of the international development cooperation system, which should be expanded and strengthened through the exchange of experiences, through the creation of funds to cover the incremental costs of cooperation, and through the involvement of developed countries in SSC via triangular cooperation. CSR and socially responsible investment, meanwhile, combine commercial and economic interests with altruistic and social benefit criteria.