12 September 2013

Delivered by Ms.

Rebecca Grynspan, Associate Administrator

of the UN

Development Programme

This year's observance of the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation

comes amid intensifying international efforts to accelerate progress on the

achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by the end of 2015, the

internationally agreed deadline. Concurrently, the South has assumed a greater

role in the global development landscape.  In many developing countries incomes

are up, poverty is declining and hope is rising.  The goal of reducing extreme

poverty by half has been achieved. Equity in primary education -- attendance by

girls and boys -- has been reached. Infant mortality has seen tremendous

decreases, with five of nine developing regions reducing the under-five

mortality rate by half. More than 2 billion people have gained access to clean

drinking water. These and other economic achievements of the global South have

given rise to a rapidly expanding middle class adding a strong voice to demands

for more liberties, equity, decent jobs and a wide range of goods and services

that are critical to genuine human progress.

Despite these positive trends, 1.2 billion people are still trapped in

conditions of extreme poverty. Wide-ranging global discussions are under way to

define a Post-2015 development agenda that will galvanize development efforts at

all levels in the years and decades ahead.  As that agenda takes shape, the

international community is already united around the idea that South-South

cooperation should remain an integral part of the global partnership for

development.

Developing countries are turning to each other for lessons on innovative

policies and schemes to address pressing development challenges. The Brazilian

Bolsa Familia Programme, a cash transfer model, has helped improve childhood

nutrition and education in Brazil, and the system has been successfully

transplanted to Africa. India's National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme

entitles each rural Indian household by law to one hundred days of unskilled

work per year on public works programmes. China's emphasis on infrastructure

development in other developing countries has resulted in improvements in

electricity supply, an increase in railway connections and reduced prices for

telecommunications services. More solutions are available across the global

South which, if adequately harnessed, could make meaningful contributions across

a range of urgent concerns, from hunger and health to education and sustainable

energy. 

South-South cooperation offers real, concrete solutions to common development

challenges. Sharing best practices, funding pilot projects in far-flung locales,

providing the capital to scale-up successful projects, supplying regional public

goods, developing and adapting appropriate technologies —these are the

opportunities that the international community needs to better leverage.  On

this United Nations Day for South-South cooperation, I call on all partners to

redouble their efforts to harness the wealth of knowledge, expertise and

development thinking in the Global South.