What is South-South Cooperation?

India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) discussed South-South cooperation during an informal meeting in Pretoria chaired by Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and attended by South African Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation Lindiwe Sisulu and the Brazilian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Marcos Bezerra Abbott Galvao.

The ministers adopted and jointly released the IBSA Declaration on South-South Cooperation to contribute to greater understanding of development cooperation as a common endeavour of the global South.

The declaration calls upon the global North to honour its overseas development aid (ODA) commitments fully, scale up existing resources and commit additional resources to provide the necessary means to implement the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"IBSA reiterates the balanced emphasis on the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable development," the declaration stated. "IBSA recognises, inter-alia, capacity building, skills and technology transfer, food security and industrialisation as key to sustainable development."

The declaration further stated that the IBSA Fund, managed by the UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), has thus far partnered 19 countries from the Global South for implementing 26 projects over the last decade with a cumulative contribution of $35 million, adding that 62.4 percent of the IBSA Fund has been devoted to least developed countries (LDCs).

South-South Cooperation (SSC) is a broad framework for collaboration among developing countries based on the concept of solidarity that breaks the traditional dichotomy between donors and recipients. The formation of SSC can be traced to the Asian–African Conference that took place in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955 which is also known as the Bandung Conference.

The conference has been largely regarded as a milestone for SSC cooperation. Indonesia's president at that time, Sukarno, referred to it as "the first intercontinental conference of coloured peoples in the history of mankind." In 1978, the United Nations established the Unit for South–South Cooperation to promote South–South trade and collaboration within its agencies.

However, the idea of South–South cooperation only started to influence the field of development in the late 1990s. Due to the geographical spectrum, activities are known as South America-Africa (ASA) cooperation as well as, in the Asia-Pacific region, South–South cooperation.