21 March 2019, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA – The Southern CSO Alliance on South-South Cooperation (SSC), CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) and The Reality of Aid (RoA) Network have organised an official BAPA+40 Conference side event held on March 21, 2019, from 9 to 11:30am at the El Conquistador Hotel in Buenos Aires.
Titled Putting People at the Heart of South-South Cooperation, the activity sought to promote a people-centered approach to SSC, and gather insights and gain champions and allies from state actors.
The event began with welcome remarks by Marita Gonzalez of Confederacion General del Trabajo Internacional – Argentina, as well as a backgrounder by Jennifer Malonzo of IBON International. Gonzalez is one of the CPDE Co-chairs.
Beverly Longid, also a CPDE Co-chair, talked about people-centred approach, while Reality of Aid-Africa’s Vitalice Meja discussed people-centred framework for South-South Development Cooperation (SSDC), and how it will strengthen the institutional framework for SSC.
A panel on cooperation between and among state and non-state actors on SSC closed the activity. Panelists include Artemy Izmetsiev of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Seoul Policy Center, Nancy Silva Sebastian of Agencia Peruana de Cooperación Internacional (APCI) Peru, Denis Nkala, UN Office for South-South Cooperation Asia Pacific, Camilo Molina of the CPDE Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Regional Observatorio, and Heke Warren of Pacific Islands Association of Non-Government Organisations (PIANGO), a CPDE member.
Through this event, the Southern CSO Alliance aims to promote the notion of people-centered South-South cooperation, where the people, their communities and their organisations lead the identification of development needs, setting of development objectives and targets, and designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating of development programs, policies and projects,” Malonzo explained. IBON International strongly advocates people-centered approaches to development cooperation.
For his part, Meja said, “We want a South-South cooperation that institutionalises these through frameworks, official spaces, mechanisms and resources for people-to-people cooperation and civil society organisations’ engagement.” The Reality of Aid Network is a pre-eminent Southern-led North/South Network on reforming aid policies and practices.
The BAPA+40 Conference commemorates the 40th year of the signing of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA), and explores the role of SSC and implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Meanwhile, the Southern CSO Alliance is composed of civil society organisations from Asia, Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. It was founded by CPDE and Reality of Aid during last year’s Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group in Bali Nusa Dua, Indonesia.