UN: Future of South-South Agenda Is to Join 2030 Initiative

The president of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, said on Wednesday that the future of South-South cooperation is to join the 2030 agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development goals.

"We are coupling the new South-South cooperation agenda to the 2030 agenda, to the 17 Sustainable Development goals, but also to the current arithmetic in economic matters and to the new political actors that have emerged in recent years," she explained in an interview for teleSUR.

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She explained that this alignment with the 2030 agenda is important because it aims to combat poverty and inequalities. To also have the goal of learning from the experiences in the countries of the global South and thus "to base and establish South-South cooperation in its founding principles".

In this sense, Espinosa affirmed that "the idea is to have a document that renews the commitment with South-South cooperation, but that at the same time projects to the future", taking into account the experience of 40 years of work between the countries of the Global South.

Espinosa explained that since the foundation of South-South cooperation there was an explosion of transnational and subregional initiatives "in terms of financing, creation of regional banks and innovative ways to create funds when countries of the global South are facing emergency situations", such as natural catastrophes. In addition, there was an exchange on public health and technology transfer.

María Fernanda Espinosa highlighted that 40 years after the first South-South cooperation meeting in Buenos Aires, the successes and achievements have been evaluated, as well as the future of this project in the new geopolitical scenario and economies.

Given this analysis, she considers that the future of South-South cooperation is very promising and "will have more effect if it is directly established within the 2030 agenda, the 17 Sustainable Development goals, and if it points to the issues of food solidarity, climate change and the phenomenon of migration ".

The president of the United Nations General Assembly stressed that South-South cooperation is based on solidarity and respect for differences and sovereignty of States. "This form of cooperation made it possible to overcome the assistance and vertical forms of cooperation through much more horizontal and respectful forms of each of the priorities and models that each State sovereignly decides".