After three very intense days of a paramount global encounter in which a significant number of partners involved in the south-south opportunity participated, Busan came to a rather positive close last Thursday. Many big shots (among which Ban Ki-moon, Hillary Clinton, Angel Gurria, Paul Kagame, Queen Rania of Jordan, Lee Myung-bak, Brian Atwood and the directors and presidents of most national cooperation agencies) converged from all over the world in the port city to define the terms of a New Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation.

Slow start

To be honest, it was all a little worrying at first. The Chinese had announced two days before the event that they were not going to endorse the outcome document, thus ignoring the OECD’s efforts to considerably tone down its level of commitment as a move to convince them to join. Brazil and India also expressed substantial reservations, and were considering not signing either. That situation threatened to weaken the partnership and mark a failure for the OECD. The BRICs seemed determined to have it their way and not let an OECD-led initiative establish rules that could constrain their own views and practices of cooperation. So, on Tuesday night, we were all a little worried. If the partnership was going to be weak, so could be the recognition of south-south cooperation as a fully-fledged tool for development effectiveness.

The sherpas worked late that night. Negotiations were tough. To our surprise, we heard that one of the disagreement points was south-south cooperation, which for China and Brazil can sometimes mean more than just knowledge exchange and horizontal partnerships. In their view it also includes capital flows and investment, which brought up interesting comments on the definition of south-south cooperation, especially by John Glennie during the wrap-up of the thematic session on south-south which took place on Tuesday afternoon. Other reasons explain their reluctance, as pointed out by Nils in his last post.

South-south voices heard 

By Wednesday afternoon, things got much better. We were all boosted by the very positive impact of Tuesday’s thematic session on SSC (500 people assisted!) and by the great number of countries and organisations who had confirmed their membership to the Building Block. During its presentation on Wednesday afternoon, the list of members could hardly fit in one single power point slide, and more were expressing their interest every hour! The hard work of the Task Team and the strength of the south-south initiative were showing great results. South-south cooperation was definitely being called to play a strong part in the post-Busan landscape.

On Thursday, shortly before the mini debate on south-south, we received the good news that the BRICs had endorsed the Busan outcome document. The disagreement as to how south-south cooperation should be treated finally found a way out, inspired apparently by the language used in the 2010 Bogotá Statement! But above all, south-south cooperation was now all the way up to paragraph 2 of the Busan Outcome Document, making it a key concept of the new global partnership and, as Han Freaters puts it, a center-front part of the global development landscape!

That only gave us more energy to stage a beautiful finish with our mini-debate which, in spite of the complicated time slot at which it was programmed (12.00 to 1.00 PM, simultaneous to the closing plenary), was the most attended of them all according to an OECD representative: full room! We divided up the audience into 4 break-out groups (thus provoking a little “southern” disorder in the well polished Korean logistics…) and had a great variety of participants in all 4 of them. The diversity and dynamism of south-south cooperation was fully reflected thanks to all the friends of the south-south opportunity from the global south present in Busan who were standing strong and coordinating the 4 groups: cooperation agencies and other government representatives, CSOs, practitioners, multilaterals and academia.

Each group voiced out 4 key messages, and a call from the academia, practitioners and CSOs was produced at the end, inviting all the members of the building block to closely work with south-south networks to support informed policy-making. The final version of this call will be published soon.

Job done!

Dear friends, as you have now understood, the south-south voices were heard in Busan even more than we expected them to be! As Enrique rightly pointed out at the beginning of the mini-debate, we are now left with a series of assets that we have to keep alive: a vibrant network of passionate friends from the global south, a considerable amount of evidence, great international visibility, and a strong mandate expressed in the building block that will define its next steps in the coming months. It is a responsibility for each and every one of us to commit to the task. Judging by the amount of interest and passion I have seen in Busan, I am very optimistic!

This long note could not be complete without a huge THANK YOU and CONGRATULATIONS to the leaders of the Task Team on south-south cooperation. Enrique, Nils, Liliana: you have done an absolutely outstanding, selfless and visionary job that achieved way more than was ever expected. We will all be ever grateful for that. Thanks also to all the closest collaborators of the Task Team, who I will not name for fear of missing some, but I know they will recognize themselves. Thanks finally to the organizations that financed our trip to Busan. It was a great privilege and honour to be able to attend.

What’s next?

Various members of the southern academia involved in the process met in Busan to discuss our post-Busan agenda. As proposed in Bogotá, a southern academia workshop will be organised in South Africa during the first semester of 2012, in order to consolidate the network and jointly define a work agenda and methodology that will help us to contribute to the implementation of the building block. A steering committee was formed to work on the proposal. We will share a proposal of dates and agenda in the coming weeks.

As far as the building block is concerned, the details of its development are yet to be defined. We should expect further information in the coming weeks, and the Task Team will certainly give us more information soon.