General Assembly General Assembly

Statement by Ambassador Asoke K Mukerji, Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations at the 18th Session of the High Level Committee on South South Cooperation ( 19 May 2014, CR- 3, CB )

 

Let me begin Mr. President by felicitating you on your election and please allow me also to compliment all of us in this Assembly here, for our sagacity in having chosen someone with the experience that you bring to this high table. In you we see a great friend of the South, and I am very glad that you will be guiding our deliberations at this session and thereafter.

 

My felicitations also to the other members of the Bureau on their election. As our representatives to this highest body on South South cooperation in the United Nations, please rest assured of our fullest and steadfast support in each of your endeavours.

 

Mr. President,

Let me start by saying that we align ourselves with the statement delivered by the distinguished Permanent Representative of  Bolivia on behalf of the G 77 & China.

 

As a country that has actively championed the cause of the global South ever since our independence, we have consistently practiced way beyond what has been traditionally preached for the benefit of the global South.  The Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme, which has been India’s way of sharing her developmental experience with other developing countries, initiated in 1964, will mark its 50th anniversary in September this year.

Our recent contribution just in Africa includes 22,000 scholarships to students from Africa over the last three years, along with an additional US$5 billion of lines of credit to Africa announced at the India Africa Forum Summit in Ethiopia in May 2011. We have established an India-Africa Virtual University, with another 10,000 new scholarships.

 

While many of our partners hesitate to even discuss how to use technology for development as part of the post-2015 Development Agenda, the India-African Union Pan African e-Network project has already demonstrated in practical terms how the 53 member states of the  African Union and India are connected through a satellite and fibre optic network to India and to each other, enabling access to and sharing of expertise between India and the African nations in the areas of tele-education,telemedicine,Voice over Internet Protocol, infotainment, resource mapping, meteorological services, e-governance and e-commerce services. This is the practical way in which India has sought to bridge the ‘digital divide’ between Africa and the rest of the world.

 

Moreover, India has the largest programme of socio-economic cooperation with all the 48 Least Developed Countries in Asia, Africa and across the GRULAC region. These programmes of cooperation span the entire spectrum of human activity such as agriculture development, information technology, irrigation, aquaculture, disaster management, remote sensing, telemedicine, textile engineering, accounting, finance, clean technologies, rural development, and SMEs.

 

Mr President,

I highlight these facts on the ground today only for one simple reason.

The narrative and landscape of South South cooperation, which is presently driven primarily, largely by members of the South, has evolved and grown at a pace that it has assumed a life and character of its own.

 

As the world's premier multilateral organization mandated to craft the biggest project for 2015 - i.e. the post 2015 development agenda, the United Nations must be seen to be actively responding to the needs and expectations of the South, rather than ride upon them, in an attempt to dilute the responsibility of the North.

 

The starting premise has to be therefore the single most important acknowledgement, which has been consistently established in every UN document and Resolution on South South Cooperation: that South-South cooperation can supplement North-South Cooperation but cannot substitute or dilute the obligation and quantum of North-South aid flows.

 

Mr President,

 

The other basic tenet that needs to be observed is that, through the actual implementation of South South cooperation, the actual manner in which such cooperation takes place are clearly known, defined and well established. Any attempt therefore by outside commentators and bodies to shackle the agenda of South South cooperation through guidelines, mapping frameworks and imposing accountability in the name of ‘aid effectiveness’ are simply not acceptable to the South.

 

This is because the Nairobi Outcome Document of December 2009, which has been agreed upon by all of us, clearly establishes that South South cooperation between fellow developing countries is premised on the principles of voluntary partnership, anchored in  national ownership, and is in line with national priorities, so that developing countries have the requisite policy space they need. South South cooperation is not supposed to be straight-jacketed in terms of rigid rules and regulations or policy prescriptions, and never comes with 'strings attached'. Flexibility and adaptability is the key to the success of South-South Cooperation, which must not be compromised.

 

Mr President,

 

Since this High Level Session comes at an important juncture, when we are all engaged in crafting the post 2015 development agenda, allow me to flag a few issues of concern that the High Level Committee (HLC) may like to reflect upon.

 

First, right from the 17th Session of the HLC two years back, it was clearly established, that as the only entity in the entire UN System mandated to look after South South Cooperation, we needed to strengthen the ‘Special Unit for South South Cooperation’ as it was called then.  In the last two years, in pursuit of that chimerical strengthening of the Office, what we have achieved is merely a change in name to ‘UN Office for South South Cooperation’! 

 

Mr. President,

Our understanding was that a credible and serious effort to strengthen this office would have entailed three basic and simple steps. It could have been achieved either by giving it more financial resources or more human resources or by upgrading the status of the office within the UN Development System.

 

All these three approaches were recognised as the way out both in 2011 and 2012, through the HLC-commissioned JIU report, which gave 12 recommendations. Recommendation 9 of the JIU report, called upon governing bodies of UN organisations to apportion not less than 0.5 per cent of core budget resources for the promotion of South South Cooperation (SSC), in consultation with programme countries. Incidentally, UNDP's own Evaluation of its contribution to SSC also came up with a similar recommendation in Para 95 of DP/2013/31, and called upon UNDP to consider increasing funding and resource allocation to support SSC.

 

My delegation was therefore eagerly looking forward to the Secretary General's Report on measures to strengthen the UN office for South South cooperation. But when we read the report, it is evidently clear that, that all it recommends is the continuation of the existing status quo (without any commitment to increasing even a dollar or even a single human resource), as a way to strengthen the office, which is simply inexplicable!

 

Against this background, Mr President, my delegation would propose that the 18th HLC being presided over by you should focus single-mindedly on how to redress this situation.

 

Developments over the last half a century have amply demonstrated that the agenda and narrative of South South cooperation will continue vibrantly and strongly, irrespective of the UN Development System. If the UN Development System still chooses to continue to ask what the South will do for it, rather than the other way around, it will only contribute to making the UN system irrelevant at a time we are supposed to be discussing the outlines of the post-2015 Development Agenda. This has been rightly emphasized by the G77 statement today. 

 

As the largest development arm of the UN, UNDP should now consider ways and means where it is seen to be operationally assisting developing countries in pursuing projects of South South cooperation, and begin in right earnest by giving the Office the basic resources it needs to pursue its mandate. The world has changed and the UN needs to reflect and respond to contemporary realities. The rise in cooperation among developing countries is not a transient phenomenon. It is here to stay and its paradigms need to be accepted and acted upon.  

 

I thank you Mr. President.