G77 panel recommends South-South cooperation actions

Underlining the key role of South-South cooperation in tackling development challenges, the Fiji meeting explored ways to strengthen such collaboration and address any obstacles thereto.

by Meena Raman

GENEVA: A meeting of the “High-level Panel of Eminent Personalities of the South” was convened in Natadola, Fiji, from 7-8 May on the theme “The Future Landscape of South-South Cooperation”.

The meeting was convened by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Fiji, JV Bainimarama, as Chair of the Group of 77 and China.

Several heads of state and government took part in the two-day meeting. Besides Bainimarama, who chaired the meeting, they included Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, who was the chief guest, Anote Tong, President of Kiribati, Gordon Darcy Lilo, Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, and Moana Carcasses Kalosil, Prime Minister of Vanuatu.

Also present at the meeting were Leonel Fernandez, former President of the Dominican Republic; James Marape, the Minister of Finance of Papua New Guinea; Ambassador John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda (the incoming President of the 68th session of the UN General Assembly); Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Ambassador Li Qiangmin, China’s special envoy to the China-Pacific Islands Forum Dialogue; Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA); Ambassador Peter Thomson, Fiji’s permanent representative to the UN in New York; Martin Khor, Executive Director of the South Centre; Yiping Zhou, Director of the UN Office for South-South Cooperation in New York; and Mourad Ahmia, Executive Secretary of the G77 in New York.

There were also many other participants in the meeting, including other ministers and senior officials accompanying the heads of state and government.

The meeting saw a lively exchange of views among the panel of eminent persons. The significant themes that were brought up included the need for developing countries to obtain a higher share of the revenues from their natural resources and commodities including oil, minerals and fisheries; the problems of external debt servicing and loan conditionalities faced by developing countries; new problems caused by investment agreements and free trade agreements; and the various types of activities under South-South cooperation that are and that should in future be carried out.

The two main documents summarizing the meeting are the concluding remarks of the chair of the meeting, and the conclusions and recommendations adopted at the end of the meeting.

Platform of cooperation

At the closing on 8 May, Fijian Prime Minister Bainimarama made concluding remarks that summed up the meeting. He said that the panel members “have agreed that developing countries have accumulated degrees of development capacity that can be shared and viably used through a solid platform of South-South cooperation. South-South cooperation is a key element in the development agenda of our countries.”

He added that “it is imperative that we construct a strong platform for ourselves, harnessing political will, as we move forward. We have also emphasized that the obligation of the North to financially and technically support the South remains. Thus in the interests of global harmony, equity and development we must strengthen the development commitments of North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation. We have agreed that the current international architecture needs to be restructured in order to respond to the new realities and opportunities for development.”

“We have also agreed on the need to reinforce the coordination of developing countries in our policy and joint negotiating positions on major issues in the international agenda,” said the G77 Chair further. “Strengthening existing multilateral funding mechanisms for South-South cooperation and promoting regional, inter-regional and sub-regional sectoral cooperation in strategic fields have also been identified as important determinants in this endeavour.”

Bainimarama added that the Development Platform for the South is an invaluable tool for guiding and strengthening multilateral South-South cooperation.

(The Development Platform had been elaborated in three previous meetings of developing countries’ experts, in 2005 in Kingston, Jamaica; in 2007 in New York; and in St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda, in 2008. The Fiji meeting was the fourth in this series.)

The Platform, Bainimarama said, will provide a pathway for the South in approaching the international economic arena; it is a strategic tool for political guidance, which contains the goals and aspirations for economic growth and prosperity in the South. It will also contribute to building South-North coalitions on development and related issues of global interest such as climate change, biodiversity, natural disasters and sustainable development in global governance, and will optimize the voice and participation of developing countries in international fora.

The Fijian Prime Minister said the meeting had seen full and substantive deliberations. There was a high level of agreement that South-South cooperation can produce greater results and that the time has come to invest more efforts and resources into this cooperation.

“We call on the UN System and all development partners to make it a priority to promote South-South cooperation,” he concluded.

Conclusions and recommendations

The meeting also adopted a four-page document entitled “Conclusions and Recommendations”. The following are some of the points of this document:

l     South-South cooperation is playing a central role in helping many developing countries address multiple and complex development challenges, including the management of shared natural resources. It is crucial to strengthen South-South cooperation considering the current international economic environment.

l     The Panel emphasized that the Development Platform for the South is a vital framework for strengthening South-South cooperation by providing new approaches to policy decisions and actions of the South in the international arena in light of evolving realities, as well as imparting a political strategic direction for the South on Southern perspectives on the major global issues which must be addressed by developing countries in the context of the great challenges they face.

l     The first area where further thought is needed is on the analysis of South-South cooperation, both in the broader framework of trade, technology and other exchanges, and in the context of South-South development cooperation. A closer analysis of the economic and social indicators and statistics is needed so that the importance of the South-South role in the world economy is not overvalued but also not undervalued, so that there is a correct assessment of the situation.

l     The second area where many of the comments were focused on was the broader policy of South-South cooperation. It has been well said that South-South cooperation is a manifestation of both solidarity as well as the global level within the UN system, the inequalities and the vulnerabilities of the poorest among the developing countries, and therefore the direction and priorities of cooperation must be focused on addressing their problems.

l     Obstacles to trade, financial and technical cooperation that exist between countries of the South need to be addressed in a dynamic way.

l     The primary challenge in expanding South-South cooperation is the persistent lack of adequate resources. There is a great need for increased bilateral and multilateral funding to assist developing countries in this regard. Development partners must therefore live up to the commitments made at international conferences and summits.

l     Another great handicap is the persistent lack of adequate infrastructure and technology to achieve important development projects. There is an urgent need to invest in health, education, information and communications technology and infrastructure in order to reduce the inequalities among and within developing countries and create avenues for important development projects.

l     There is a need for effective and well-equipped institutional mechanisms as well as strategic capacity-building which can propel efforts at the national, regional, sub-regional and inter-regional levels. South-South cooperation should be explicitly incorporated into the operational programmes of all relevant bodies of the UN system and there should be regular consultations among them on the most effective way to support South-South cooperation.

l     South-South cooperation deserves its own separate and independent promotion and requires deep reflection on ways and means for the G77 to lead in a transforming process towards promoting South-South cooperation: (i) promoting the South’s need to build its own global and multilateral South-South cooperation architecture governed by the South’s own system of values and policy frameworks guided by individuals and common objectives and solidarity, respect for national sovereignty and national leadership, equal partnership, mutual benefit and free from any policy conditionality; (ii) transforming the current UN legislative body on South-South cooperation, the General Assembly High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation (GA/HLC), into an effective and more responsive standing mechanism.

l     It should be considered that the GA/HLC be transformed into a fully functioning UN Commission on South-South Cooperation; and the current UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) transformed to a level similar to UN Women.

l     The existing international financing for development system, structures, rules and regulations, accounting system, procurement, disbursement and delivery mechanisms are all built for the North-South paradigm of financing for development. These instruments have proven to be ill-suited for facilitating the various forms and sources of financing for South-South cooperation. The G77 must lead in shaping a new multilateral structure/system of financing for South-South cooperation based on the South’s own terms of engagement that is suited to accommodating various sources and forms of South-South financing through the multilateral system.

l     In this context, the panel proposed the following actions: strengthening the role of existing multilateral financial institutions including regional banks and other financial institutions in support of South-South cooperation; exploring innovative arrangements and financing facilities with a view to mobilizing new and additional resources in support of South-South cooperation; transforming the existing UN Fund for South-South Cooperation into a fully functioning voluntary trust fund; and expanding the core resources of the G77 Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation to enable it to support major strategic initiatives in addition to small-scale technical projects.

l     The panel recommended focusing attention on concrete initiatives and measures, which should be action-oriented and encompass implementable actions in the field of South-South cooperation.

l     The panel strongly called for further strengthening of the G77 Permanent Executive Secretariat, including its substantive and research capacities, so as to enable it to carry out effective follow-up actions and ensure overall coordination among its Chapters.

l     The panel mandated the Chair of the G77 to forward its conclusions and recommendations to the 37th annual meeting of the G77 foreign ministers to be held in September in New York. The panel recommended that preparations begin for the Third South Summit of the G77, which it recommends should coincide with the 50th anniversary of the G77 to be commemorated in 2014.

It is understood that the final version of the conclusions and recommendations will be finalized by the G77 Chair and secretariat in New York. (SUNS7585)          

Third World Economics, Issue No. 546, 1-15 Jun 2013, pp 3-4, 9