The India-UN Development Partnership Fund has been to help the poorest countries achieve the world organisation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to reduce poverty and raise the quality of life.
The fund will be managed by the UN Office of South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), and will focus on least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
The Fund will start with an initial contribution of $1 million for its first project, Climate Early Warning System in Pacific Island Countries (CEWSPIC).
The inaugural project, CEWSPIC, seeks to develop for Pacific island countries an early warning system for extreme weather conditions related to el Nino, the periodic warm ocean currents that seriously impact the climate system.
The project was developed jointly by India and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for seven countries — the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.
India enlarged its support to sustainable development through the multilateral system by making a supplemental contribution of one million dollars to the fund.
Managed by UNOSSC, the India-UN Development Partnership Fund will support Southern-owned and led, demand-driven, and transformational sustainable development projects across the developing world. Focusing on Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), United Nations agencies will implement the Fund’s projects in close collaboration with partnering governments.
The Government of India made an initial one million dollars contribution when the fund was created, which was allocated for the implementation of a project benefiting seven Small Island Developing States in the South Pacific.
This project was formulated by India and UNDP in consultation with the Governments of the Cook Islands, the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Nauru, the Solomon Islands and the Kingdom of Tonga.
It will increase resilience to natural disasters in these seven Pacific island countries, and as such contribute toward Sustainable Development Goal 12, Climate Action.
The United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) was established to promote, coordinate and support South-South and triangular cooperation globally and within the United Nations system.
UNOSSC, hosted by UNDP since 1974, was established by the UN General Assembly with a mandate to advocate for and coordinate South-South and triangular cooperation on a global and UN system-wide basis.
UNOSSC receives policy directives and guidance from the General Assembly and through its subsidiary body, the High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation.
UNOSSC submits its strategic planning frameworks to the UNDP, UNFPA and UNOPS Executive Board for approval and funding.
About South-South and Triangular Cooperation:
South-South cooperation is a broad framework of collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains.
Involving two or more developing countries, it can take place on a bilateral, regional, intraregional or interregional basis.
Developing countries share knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through concerted efforts.
Recent developments in South-South cooperation have taken the form of increased volume of South-South trade, South-South flows of foreign direct investment, movements towards regional integration, technology transfers, sharing of solutions and experts, and other forms of exchanges.
Triangular cooperation is collaboration in which traditional donor countries and multilateral organizations facilitate South-South initiatives through the provision of funding, training, management and technological systems as well as other forms of support.
Guiding Principles of South-South Cooperation:
South-South cooperation is a manifestation of solidarity among peoples and countries of the South that contributes to their national well-being, their national and collective self-reliance and the attainment of internationally agreed development goals, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The South-South cooperation agenda and South-South cooperation initiatives must be determined by the countries of the South, guided by the principles of respect for national sovereignty, national ownership and independence, equality, non-conditionality, non-interference in domestic affairs and mutual benefit.
Objectives of South-South Cooperation:
The basic objectives of South-South collaboration, according to the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries endorsed by the General Assembly in 1978 (resolution 33/134), are to:
-foster the self-reliance of developing countries by enhancing their creative capacity to find solutions to their development problems in keeping with their own aspirations, values and specif needs;
-promote and strengthen collective self-reliance among developing countries through the exchange of experiences; the pooling, sharing and use of their technical and other resources; and the development of their complementary capacities;
-strengthen the capacity of developing countries to identify and analyse together their main development issues and formulate the requisite strategies to address them;
-increase the quantity and enhance the quality of international development cooperation through the pooling of capacities to improve the effectiveness of the resources devoted to such cooperation;
-create and strengthen existing technological capacities in the developing countries in order to improve the effectiveness with which such capacities are used and to improve the capacity of developing countries to absorb and adapt technology and skills to meet their specific developmental needs;
-increase and improve communications among developing countries, leading to a greater awareness of common problems and wider access to available knowledge and experience as well as the creation of new knowledge in tackling development problems;
-recognize and respond to the problems and requirements of the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small island developing States and the countries most seriously affected by, for example, natural disasters and other crises; and
-enable developing countries to achieve a greater degree of participation in international economic activities and to expand international cooperation for development.