South-South Cooperation

A/RES/69/239View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 24b South-South cooperation for development, published in 2015.

What other versions does this mandate have?

18 versions · 2006–2025

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/80/156

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2025	A/RES/80/156	South-South cooperation	4,341	64%Compare
2024	A/RES/79/236	South-South cooperation	3,502	71%Compare
2023	A/RES/78/167	South-South cooperation	2,946	53%Compare
2022	A/RES/77/185	South-South cooperation	1,790	68%Compare
2022	A/RES/76/221	South-South cooperation	1,329	68%Compare

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

17 reports · 2009–2026

Year	Symbol	Title	Mandate resolution
2026	A/81/321	State of South-South cooperation report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/80/156
2025	A/80/256	State of South-South cooperation report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/79/236
2024	A/79/230	State of South-South cooperation report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/78/167
2023	A/78/290	State of South-South cooperation report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/77/185
2022	A/77/297	State of South-South cooperation report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/76/221

What subjects does this mandate have?

3 subjects

Economic Cooperation Among Developing Countries Funds Resources Mobilization

What’s in this document?

27 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation on its eighteenth session,³ the decisions taken at that session,⁴ in particular decision 18/1, and the decisions taken at the intersessional meeting of 4 June 2013;

³Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixty-ninth Session, Supplement No. 39 (A/69/39).

⁴Ibid., chap. I.

Also takes note of the report of the Secretary-General on the state of South-South cooperation;⁵

⁵A/69/153.

Further takes note of the report of the Joint Inspection Unit on South-South and triangular cooperation in the United Nations system,⁶ including its recommendations, and the related note by the Secretary-General;⁷

⁶A/66/717.

⁷A/66/717/Add.1.

Recognizes the importance and unique history and particularities of South-South cooperation, and reaffirms its view of South-South cooperation as a manifestation of solidarity among peoples and countries of the South that contributes to their national well-being, national and collective self-reliance and the attainment of internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, and that South-South cooperation and its agenda have to be set by countries of the South and should continue to be guided by the principles of respect for national sovereignty, national ownership and independence, equality, non-conditionality, non-interference in domestic affairs and mutual benefit;

Also recognizes that South-South cooperation is a partnership among equals based on solidarity and should not be seen as official development assistance, acknowledges in this regard the need to enhance the development effectiveness of South-South cooperation by continuing to increase its mutual accountability and transparency, as well as coordinating its initiatives with other development projects and programmes on the ground, in accordance with national development plans and priorities, and further recognizes that the impact of South-South cooperation should be assessed with a view to improving, as appropriate, its quality in a results-oriented manner;

Requests the Secretary-General to present, during the sixty-ninth session of the General Assembly, further information on the assignments and duties to be taken up by the Director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, including any potential financial and institutional implications deriving from his appointment as the Envoy of the Secretary-General on South-South Cooperation;

Encourages the funds, programmes, the specialized agencies and other entities of the United Nations system to take further concrete measures, as appropriate, to effectively mainstream support to South-South and triangular cooperation in their policy and regular programming work, and in this context requests those organizations and the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation to leverage each other’s institutional and technical capacities;

Recognizes the need to continue to mutually enrich South-South cooperation, based on the diverse experiences of and good practices from South-South cooperation, triangular cooperation and North-South cooperation, and to further explore complementarities and synergies between them;

Invites relevant Member States to share and exchange best practices in planning, implementation, data collection and information and knowledge management in order to further improve the impact of South-South and triangular cooperation initiatives on sustainable development;

Stresses that South-South cooperation is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to, North-South cooperation;

Recognizes the importance of considering South-South cooperation and triangular cooperation in the context of the elaboration of the post-2015 development agenda;

Reaffirms the mandate and the central role of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation as the focal point for promoting and facilitating South-South and triangular cooperation for development on a global and United Nations system-wide basis, recalls decision 18/1 of the High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation,Error: Reference source not found and requests the Secretary-General, noting that further deliberation by Member States on the options presented in his report on measures to further strengthen the Office for South-South Cooperation⁸ will be required before a decision is taken on the idea of separating the Office for South-South Cooperation as operationally autonomous from the United Nations Development Programme, to present, as part of his comprehensive report to the High-level Committee at its special intersessional session to be held in 2015, in consultation with Member States, the Office for South-South Cooperation and the United Nations Development Programme, a comprehensive proposal on upscaling the Office in financial, human and budgetary terms under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme, including through the appointment of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on South-South Cooperation, and at the same time recommending specific contributions of the United Nations Development Programme under such a change;

⁸SSC/18/3.

Calls upon the United Nations Development Programme to explore and undertake intensive, innovative and additional resource mobilization initiatives to attract more resources, both financial and in kind, to supplement regular resources and other funds for activities involving South-South cooperation in order to enable it to respond effectively and efficiently to the South-South cooperation needs of Member States and the United Nations system;

Acknowledges and encourages the initiatives and arrangements undertaken as part of the efforts to enhance cooperation among developing countries, including in the areas of eradication of poverty and hunger, gender equality, the empowerment of women, access to information and communications technologies, science and technology, environment, culture, health, education and human development, including through multilateral multi-stakeholder and public-private partnerships;

Requests the United Nations development system to further assess, within the scope of the comprehensive report of the Secretary-General, progress made in its support, particularly with regard to the provision of adequate resources and the mobilization of technical and financial resources for South-South cooperation, as well as in mainstreaming South-South cooperation into the work of the United Nations funds and programmes and the specialized agencies in the field;

Also requests the United Nations development system to continue improving coordination among its agencies in order to enhance its support to South-South and triangular cooperation and monitor progress at the global and regional levels and to continue evaluating the support of the United Nations development system for those activities;

Requests in this regard the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, as Chair of the United Nations Development Group, to establish a more formalized and strengthened inter-agency mechanism, coordinated by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, with a view to encouraging joint support for South-South and triangular initiatives, as well as sharing information on development activities and results achieved by various organizations through their respective business models in support of South-South and triangular cooperation, calls upon the United Nations development system to designate representational focal points to join the mechanism, and requests the Administrator to give the Office for South-South Cooperation the opportunity to be represented more regularly in strategic and coordination mechanisms of the Development Group when matters affecting South-South and triangular cooperation are being discussed;

Also requests the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, as Chair of the United Nations Development Group, to make specific recommendations on additional support that the United Nations system and its entities could provide to South-South and triangular cooperation, which could include voluntary secondment of staff and the appointment of Junior Professional Officers to the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation;

Requests the United Nations development system to accord a high priority to facilitating programmes and projects of South-South and triangular cooperation and to assist countries of the South, upon their request, in implementing them in order to ensure that sustainability is a key component of those projects;

Calls upon the United Nations Development Programme and other relevant organizations of the United Nations development system to assist developing countries in implementing projects on South-South cooperation, upon request and in a manner consistent with their mandates and strategic plans;

Recognizes the need to mobilize adequate resources for enhancing South-South and triangular cooperation, and in this context invites all countries in a position to do so to contribute, in support of such cooperation, to the United Nations Fund for South-South Cooperation and also to the Pérez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation, in accordance with its resolution 57/263 of 20 December 2002, and to support other initiatives for all developing countries, including technology transfers among developing countries;

Requests the United Nations development system to encourage the transfer of technologies for the benefit of developing countries to address poverty eradication and sustainable development;

Recognizes that South-South and triangular cooperation are mutually supportive in terms of both technical and financial assistance, emphasizes in this regard the importance of further invigorating South-South cooperation, and invites all Member States to enhance South-South and triangular cooperation, focusing on shared development priorities with the involvement of all relevant stakeholders in Governments, the private sector and civil society, including volunteer groups;

Invites the regional commissions, where relevant, to further harness the knowledge network, partnerships, technical and research capacity in support of enhanced subregional, regional and interregional South-South cooperation and to use the meetings of the regional coordination mechanism, as appropriate, as a tool for advancing system-wide cooperation and coordination in support of South-South cooperation at the regional level;

Requests all Member States and the United Nations development system to foster complementarities among North-South and South-South and triangular cooperation through greater evidence-based policy dialogue on strategic cross-cutting issues, in particular for the application of science, technology and innovation and the integration of a gender perspective into the pursuit of sustainable development;

Requests the Secretary-General, in his report to the High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation at its nineteenth session, to provide an update on concrete steps taken to further strengthen South-South cooperation within the United Nations development system;

Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its seventieth session, under the item entitled “Operational activities for development”, the sub-item entitled “South-South cooperation for development”, and requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventieth session a comprehensive report on the state of South-South cooperation within the context of the implementation of the present resolution, including an assessment of the concrete measures taken by the United Nations development system to improve its support to South-South cooperation and the implementation of the present resolution.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What other versions does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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