1. Consolidating South-South platform
While we
note the increasing need and potential for South-South cooperation and
significant progress in a number of areas, we are fully cognizant of
problems, gaps and challenges and that exist. We also recognize the
enormous potentialities, both unrealized and untapped, in many domains
that need to be harnessed. The gap between the set objectives and agreed
actions and the actual implementation should be effectively bridged.
The situation has evolved over the last
two decades, and new challenges, issues and conditions have emerged.
A realistic, objective assessment of the Group's plans and programmes
of action, and the status of their implementation, should be undertaken
with a view to consolidating them into an updated platform to be submitted
for consideration and action by the High Level Conference on South-South
Cooperation, to be held in 2003 in accordance with the Havana Summit
decision. To this end, all necessary measures should be taken to provide
the member States of the Group of 77 with a strategic overview of the
new global environment and its interlinkages as well as of changes in
developing countries that are of relevance to South-South cooperation
today, including the new areas where such cooperation can be fruitfully
undertaken.
2. Building stronger South institutions
at the global level
The coordination
of policy and joint negotiating positions on major issues on the international
agenda are essential, and require adequate intellectual and technical
support, internal coordination and a commensurate preparatory process.
The Group of 77, drawing on its recent successes in major international
processes, should undertake to pursue the legitimate concerns and demands
of the South equally vigorously at the Doha, Monterey and Johannesburg
Conferences, all of which will address vital issues for all countries
and peoples of the South. The Group should continue to consolidate its
new sense of assertiveness as a major credible and potent negotiating
force.
South-South cooperation at the global
level requires adequate and structured institutional support. Immediate
steps should be taken to expand and strengthen the Secretariat of the
Group of 77 in New York in order to provide greater support to the activities
of the Group. The process of institution-building should be pursued
in earnest as one of the principal building blocs of more effective
South-South cooperation in the global arena. First and foremost, this
requires the South to mobilize adequate financial and skilled human
resources to support its own institutions.
3. Bridging the knowledge and information
gap
Easily accessible
empirical data and a global overview of South-South cooperation are
lacking. This information and knowledge gap needs to be closed urgently,
which calls, as a matter of priority, for the creation of a collective
capacity, inter alia, through the launching of a "South Report"
on the state of South-South cooperation as the basic reference and major
policy and analytical tool for South-South cooperation.
4. Building broad-based partnerships
South-South
cooperation is a common endeavour of peoples and countries of the South,
based on their common objectives and solidarity. It should be broadly
based, involving not only Governments but also the private sector, academic
institutions, civil society organizations, various innovative arrangements,
including those in the domain of arts and culture, indeed the common
citizens and the people at large, as well as South institutions, groupings
and other organizations that work within and between developing countries.
New forms and partnerships for assuring such mobilization and broad
participation should be encouraged and practiced, drawing as much as
possible on new information and communication technologies.
5. Mobilizing global support for
South-South cooperation
South-South
cooperation has suffered from benign neglect by the international community.
The overall policy has been fragmented, with limited financial resources
allocated in support of such cooperation. For an effective, meaningful
support, the international community, including the United Nations system
and other major international institutions as well as the donor community,
is urged to reexamine their approach and policy, and provide vigorous
catalytic support, including requisite financial resources to all forms
of South-South cooperation. In this context, the role of the United
Nations Development Programme in supporting South-South cooperation
and in advocating a more inclusive globalization should be reaffirmed.
Active support for various institutions of the South, including research
institutions, is equally important towards expanding the Group's institutional
and negotiating capacity.
Public opinion needs to be more aware
of the purposes and value of South-South cooperation. It is proposed
that an International Decade on South-South Cooperation and a United
Nations day for South-South Cooperation should be launched in order
to contribute to increased awareness and to generate political dynamism
and visibility that accompany "other decades" in the international
arena.