19 May 2016: South-South Cooperation (SSC) is an important source of innovation, expertise, and solutions to development challenges. This message was delivered by UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark during the 19th Session of the High-level Committee on SSC. The Committee is the main policymaking body on SSC in the UN system and a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly (UNGA).

The Committee convened from 16-19 May 2016, in New York, US.

The Committee reviewed progress made in implementing the Buenos Aires Plan of Action. The Plan recommends: strategic action on the part of SSC partnerships to address challenges of climate change, energy, health and food deficits, by using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to bridge knowledge gaps and build broad awareness of remedial policies and technologies to be shared across the South through the Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM). The Plan also recommends establishing or strengthening institutions to improve access to essential goods and services in the South through SSC coalitions, such as the New Development Bank (NDB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and similar entities, that should complement existing institutional arrangements to help meet targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Participants also deliberated on a report of the UN Secretary-General, which proposes concrete ways to enhance the role and impact of the UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), as well as measures taken to improve the coordination and coherence of UN’s support to SSC. The report recommends that UNOSSC work more closely with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and other UN organizations and agencies, Southern centres of excellence, think tanks and academic institutions to generate more evidence-based data and analysis, for enabling the High-level Committee to better provide policy guidance for the advancement of South-South knowledge-sharing, technology transfer and other exchanges for meeting the SDGs. The report also recommends that the UN Development Group’s (UNDG) SSC Task Team continue identifying good practices in SSC that are relevant to implementing the SDGs, and to jointly include them in their financial and technical cooperation interventions.

In her remarks to the Committee, Clark recalled that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) highlight SSC’s role in poverty eradication and sustainable development. She highlighted new financing mechanisms from within the South that could support the SDGs, including: the NDB and recently launched AIIB, which has 57 countries as founding members; and multi-million-dollar funds created to finance cross-border infrastructure projects in Asia, including the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and China’s Silk Road Fund. Clark said UNDP remains committed to maintaining the budget of the UNOSSC, despite the downward pressure on its core funding. Stressing that the UNOSSC is very valuable to the entire UN system, Clark asked Member States to consider providing more voluntary funding for its work, and to provide secondments of personnel to UNOSSC. [19th session of UNOSSC] [Statement of UNDP Administrator]