The Bogotá High-Level Event on South-South Cooperation and Capacity Development

Bogotá, Colombia, March 24-26 2010

More than four hundred participants, amongst ministers, vice-ministers, heads of cooperation agencies from 66 countries, delegates from 38 multilateral organisms, representatives from 39 Civil Society Organizations, 5 parliamentarians, and representatives from 15 academic institutions and think tanks, with an active involvement in cooperation architecture, attended the High Level Event on South-South Cooperation and Capacity Development, hosted by the Government of Colombia in Bogota, March 24 to 25, 2010.

 

The Bogota HLE was successful in advancing the debate about SSC as a tool for horizontal development partnerships and capacity development, which makes it a key milestone in the Road to Busan, High Level Forum, 2011.

 

Read the Blog – “Effective South-South cooperation, building horizontal partnerships – Inspirations from the Bogota HLE”

 

Agenda English Spanish

The Bogota High Level Event (HLE) was structured around three complementary components:

 

Plenary sessions

These sessions will set the context of SSC and CD debates within the aid effectiveness agenda, including sharing different approaches, experiences and regional perspectives:

 

Plenary I:  A New Development Cooperation Landscape–Framing a more Horizontal and Effective Architecture.

Plenary II: South-South Cooperation and Capacity Development: Setting the Scene

Plenary III: Reporting Back from Roundtables

Plenary IV: The Way Forward

Plenary V:  Bogota Statement

 

Roundtable sessions

Six round tables will provide space for in-depth discussion on selected topics:

 

Roundtable I: SSC Platforms and Information Management. Conclusions.

Roundtable II: Sub-regional, Regional and Interregional Perspectives on SSC and CD. Conclusions.

Roundtable III: Teaming-up for SSC and CD-Triangular Cooperation. Conclusions.

Roundtable IV: Emerging Mechanisms to Promote SSC and CD. Conclusions.

Roundtable V: South-South Contributions to Development Challenges. Conclusions.

Roundtable VI: Multi-stakeholders’ Perspectives on SSC. Conclusions.

 

Side events

DCF – ECOSOC—Advisory Group Meeting

Working Party on Aid Effectiveness—Executive Committee Meeting (closed meeting)

SEGIB Iberoamerican Dialogue on SSC

Dialogue on Latin America and Caribbean Perspectives on Aid Effectiveness

 

The Bogotá Statement

Bogota Statement - Towards Effective and Inclusive Development Partnerships (PDF)

 

The Bogota Statement is a consensus document released in the framework of the Bogotá High-Level Event. The Statement was proposed by the HLE Steering Committee to the participants based on a rigorous process of regional consultations, during meetings in Bogotá (Oct 2009), Paris (Dec. 2009), Seoul (Feb 2010) and Pretoria (March 2010). The document has especial value because it was informed by the experiences from the TT-SSC case story process as well as the round table discussions held during the HLE.

 

The Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs presented the Statement on March 25, 2010 during Plenary V, and all participants were invited to endorse the statement.

 

Preamble

We, representatives of partner countries, donors, multilateral and bilateral development organizations, parliaments and civil society, recognize that South-South cooperation (SSC) is an important instrument of effective and inclusive partnerships. We have met in Bogota, Colombia, at the High Level Event on South-South Cooperation and Capacity Development, to acknowledge its role in building capacity and advancing development, take stock of the lessons of experience and identify challenges, and outline the way forward. Our purpose was to implement the mandate of the Accra Agenda for Action and promote a greater role for, and increased effectiveness in, SSC.

With this in view, we commit ourselves to promote and implement good practices from SSC and capacity development to support countries in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and tackling emerging global development challenges, recognizing that gender equality, respect for human rights, and environmental sustainability are cornerstones for achieving enduring impacts on the lives of people, particularly poor and marginalized populations.

Full text

 

The Case Stories Process

The Bogota HLE succeeded in placing South-South Cooperation at the core of the global development agenda, and in ensuring that it will play a key role in shaping the discussions on development cooperation, particularly with a view to Busan, HLF in 2011. Its main input was a collection of evidence from around the world that showed the potential of South-South Cooperation to enrich the aid effectiveness agenda, and to strengthen national capacities in key development areas, generating low-cost and effective solutions that are highly adaptable to particular contexts.

 

Our time presents us with a moment of opportunity to make knowledge exchange a strong pillar in global and regional development policies, and to generate much more attention and support for the emergence of horizontal partnerships. It is critical to ensure that policy-making on South-South and triangular knowledge exchange can learn directly from the practice of mutual learning. However, there is still a great gap in the understanding how South-South learning works, where it doesn’t work and why.

 

The case stories are short chronicles of experiences aimed to generate practice-led evidence on South-South and triangular knowledge exchange. Coordinated by the Task Team on South-South Cooperation (TT-SSC), the case stories have proven to be a powerful tool create a bridge between policy and practice and to raise the voice of thousands of practitioners to the policy debate at the highest levels, for example at the OECD/DAC and the G20 forums. This collection of experiences, analyzed with a rigorous methodology is what we call the case stories process.

 

Practitioners from all over the world have already contributed their experiences, in the first round of 110 case stories that informed the Bogotá HLE.  The TT-SSC continues to collect new evidence to deepen the analysis. In January 2011, the TT-SSC launched a second round for call for case stories by inviting all practitioners involved in South-South and triangular knowledge exchange to share their impressions and lessons learned so that they can inform the next High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, to be held in November and December 2011 in Busan (Korea), and the ongoing discussion on knowledge sharing at the G20 level.

 

Learn more about the analytical work

 

Key note Speakers

Rajendar Kumar Pachauri is 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, representing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He works in the field on sustainable energy industries and is a major advisor on energy and climate change as a means to preserve life, including human life, on the planet. He has also been director general of TERI, a research and policy organization in India, and chancellor of TERI University. Mr. Pachauri will be a panelist during the High Level Event.

 

 

 

Welcome and Official Conference Opening

 

Sha Zukang is Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs since July 1, 2007. A career diplomat, Mr Zukang has served in the field of arms control, trade, intellectual property, social affairs, and telecommunications, among others. Mr. Zukang will be a panelist during the High Level Event.

 

 

 

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was the first female Minister of Finance of Nigeria. She was appointed in 2003 and while in office she reduced 60% of the African 150 million-giant external debt. Currently she is Managing Director of the World Bank and is as well first female appointed to that office. She considers help, especially that directed to African countries, is more like a human and material resources reimbursement, resources without which countries giving aid could have never been what they are. Ms. Okonjo-Iweala will be a panelist during the High Level Event.

 

 

Álvaro Uribe Vélez. Colombian President 2002-2010. Lawyer, post-graduate in a Management Program at Harvard University. During his political career has been Mayor of Medellin, Governor of Antioquia and Senator. He has been the only Colombian president reelected.

 

 

 

Plenary I: A new development cooperation landscape/framing a more horizontal and effective development architecture

 

Soraya Rodriguez is Secretary of State for International Cooperation in Spain since 2008, office in charge of assisting the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in the setting, formulation and carrying out of Spanish international cooperation for development plans. She has been a Lawyer and Director of the Centre for Women in Valladolid City Council Legal Adviser to the Local Administration and Member for the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. She was a candidate to be Mayor of Valladolid City Council for the PSOE.

 

 

Mohamed Al Orabi is Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Economic Affairs of Egypt. His diplomatic carrier at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry in Cairo started 1976. He was appointed consecutively as Ambassador, Deputy Assistant Minister and Director of the Cabinet of Ministers.

 

 

 

 

Hardeep Singh Puri: Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the UN. He has been in the Foreign Affairs service since 1974. Has have has been in different diplomatic positions in Japan, Sri Lanka, and United Kingdom. He is an expert on WTO issues

 

 

 

 

SUL Kyung-Hoon. Director General for Development Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Korea.

Plenary II.1: South-South Cooperation as a driver of Capacity Development

Mr. Eckhard Deutscher has gained extensive experience in the politics and economics of international aid. He was the German Executive Director to the World Bank from 2002 to 2008 and Dean of its Board of Executive Directors from 2006 to 2008. He has also been the Director of the Centre for Democratic Studies on Latin America, based in Costa Rica, and lectured at universities in Mexico and Peru. He was Director of the German Foundation for International Development (now INWENT) from 1991-2000. He holds PhDs in Development Studies and in Social Science and Philosophy from the University of Frankfurt.

 

 

Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan: Mr. Bhuiyan is the Secretary, Economic Relations Division (ERD), Ministry of Finance, Government of Bangladesh. He is primarily responsible for mobilization of external resources to implement the Government’s development programmes. As ERD Secretary, Mr. Bhuiyan is also Co-Chair of the Local Consultative Group (LCG) of development partners. Previously, as Secretary, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Mr. Bhuiyan provided leadership in implementing a huge sector-wide programme.

 

 

Bruno Camara: Special Adviser to the Minister of Social Development and Fight Against Hunger, Brasil.

Plenary II.2: What works and does not work in South-South Cooperation? Experiences to date

Mr. Rajat M. Nag is the Managing Director General of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). He has been with the institution for more than two decades and assumed his current position in December 2006. With broad experience across Asia, Mr. Nag plays a critical role in providing strategic and operational direction to ADB so it achieves its mission of helping its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their people. He also oversees the risk management operations of ADB.

 

 

 

Antonio Tujan is a social activist who has worked on international issues and those relating to the Philippines for forty years. One of the founders of the Philippines-based IBON Foundation thirty years ago, he is the foundation's current International Director. Mr. Tujan Jr. is a researcher, editor, educator, and writer, and he is also the Director of the Institute of Political Economy.

 

 

 

Mary-Anne Addo is Director of External Resource Mobilization, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Ghana.

 

 

Máximo Romero Jiménez is Director General for Technical and Scientific Cooperation, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Mexico.

 

Plenary II.3: An Evidence-based approach to the High Level Event

 

Manju Senapaty is Principal Planning and Policy Specialist from Asian Development Bank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diego Molano is High Presidential Counselor for Action Social and International Cooperation, Colombia.

 

 

 

 

Plenary IV.1: Who Does What? Bridging Global Platforms and Promoting Synergies between various Processes on South-South Cooperation

 

Cosmas Gitta is Chief of Policy Development, Special Unit for South - South Cooperation, UNDP.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enrique Maruri is former Director of International Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Colombia and Technical Secretary of Task Team on South - South Cooperation.

 

 

 

 

 

Nikhil Seth is Director, United Nations ECOSOC Support and Coordination, UNDESA.

 

 

 

 

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