International Program Advisory Committee (IPAC) Meeting
19-20 April 2009, Bali, Indonesia

Statement by
Mr. Jyoti Shankar Singh
Permanent Observer at UN

South-South Cooperation:
Current Developments and Future Trends

When nine developing countries launched the Partners in Population and Development (PPD), at the Cairo Conference in 1994, as the first major intergovernmental initiative in South-South cooperation, they all had high hopes and expectations of what the initiative would be able to achieve. Five years later (1999), the twenty-first special session of the UN General Assembly on ICPD+5 reiterated the unequivocal support of the international community to South-South cooperation and gave specific recognition to PPD as a major South-South initiative.

In 2009, as we commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of both the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Partners in Population and Development (PPD), it is fair to ask if those hopes and expectations have been fulfilled.

South-South cooperation has indeed received increasing political support in international declarations, and PPD can point to a number of successes in the areas of policy dialogues, training and research, exchange of information,
reproductive health commodity security and building up of national support for South-South cooperation. However, we cannot say today that PPD has as yet fulfilled all the hopes and expectations its founders had when they established the organization.

The Partners has provided an on-going forum for policy dialogues among ministers of health and population as well as senior officials major policy and programme issues relating to the implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); and based on the consensus reached, they have actively participated in advocacy campaigns or negotiations at international and regional meetings and conferences. For example, at the international forum organized in the context of the annual Board meeting in Kampala, Uganda last November, ministers, policy makers and representatives of international organizations from 25 countries discussed and formulated the Kampala Declaration which proposes many specific recommendations on how to accelerate the implementation of ICPD goals and objectives within the framework of MDGs by 2015. The Declaration highlights, in particular, the need to refocus public attention to the unmet need in family planning and to undertake energetic efforts to raise substantially the volume of international assistance to reproductive health, including family planning and population.

In the areas of training and research, PPD has 1) trained more than 10,000 fellows through a series of international training programmes, 2) facilitates fellowships every year for students from both member and non-member countries at training institutions in countries such as Bangladesh, China, Egypt and Morocco and 3) has been successful in building a network of 17 major training and research institutions based in developed countries. The network has established three regional or sub-regional networks- for 1) Asia, 2) Anglophone Africa and the Arab World and 3) Francophone Africa. Each one of these regional networks is undertaking joint projects on further development of generic modules for training courses and is scheduled to meet this year to review progress and to prepare future plans. UNFPA has provided, through PPD, some assistance for these meetings and hopefully their meetings will become annual events.

Now, the question is how can these and other training institutions play a more active role in promoting further course development and in assisting institutions in other countries, through expert advice and technical assistance.

During the first regular session for 2009 of the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board, the Executive Director of UNFPA indicated that UNFPA was planning to make much greater use of expertise from developing countries to help other developing countries. Most of this expertise is of course located at their training and research institutions. In the first instance, the experts to be hired will be accompanied by international staff or consultants provided by UNFPA; but the idea is to eventually establish arrangements through which experts from selected institutions could be sent to assist other countries, without involving international consultants. PPD should be happy and willing to work with UNFPA regional and technical divisions to work out further details and to help implement the idea as soon as possible. Going further, I would say that UNFPA should assist further capacity development at major institutions on a systematic basis by providing on a regular basis fellowships, secondment of experts and researchers, and compilation, translation and dissemination of teaching material.

PPD is planning to produce, again with UNFPA support, a directory of products and services available in PPD member countries for promotion and strengthening of South-South cooperation, and if the first such directory is well-received, PPD should think of updating the directory on an annual basis.

In the area of exchange of information, PPD is providing interactive information tools on the web for the training and research institutions as also for the PCCS. In Africa, PPD has also been able to provide basic computers for this purpose. These schemes have to be expanded, and some of the member countries which have both technical expertise and technology companies could help in this regard. Also, regular compilation and dissemination of best practices and lessons learned is urgently needed.

China has provided reproductive health equipment and commodities as also training to several African countries through PPD in the recent years, and I believe it plans to continue doing so. There are several other member countries which could become active in this area.

Building up of national support for South-South cooperation is a more recent enterprise for PPD. It has, in the last two years, sponsored and supported a dozen national events which brought together representatives of governmental ministries and departments, parliamentarians, NGOs, and training institutions to review what is being done to promote South-South cooperation at the country level and to establish national task forces to initiate and follow up on further activities. There is a PPD document which provides further information on national support structures. Many of us have very high hopes that that these national support structures will prove successful in deepening national support for South-South cooperation in future.

PPD should be in a position to obtain further support in the South itself for expanding and strengthening South-South cooperation in population and Development. As an intergovernmental organization, such support will be vital for the success of its own programme. Hopefully, PPD will also gather much greater support from the international community (including UNFPA, bilateral donors and private foundations) than it has had so far, to enable it to play an increasingly important role in implementing ICPD goals and MDGs, within the framework of South-South cooperation.

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