Publication only available in Spanish.

This document summarises the findings of the first phase of this project to promote an innovative EU-Latin America Triangular Cooperation concept and model, which effectively helps move towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs in a globalised world which, faced with homogeneous views and formulas, requires diverse responses and a high capacity for horizontal political dialogue able to find consensus based on often divergent options. The objective of the EU-SEGIB project is to help build a technical-political consensus around an innovative definition of Triangular Cooperation, measurable and acceptable to all the actors involved, which can be used as an instrument to strengthen the EU-LAC bi-regional relationship and that offers practical TC management tools.

Publication only available in Spanish

Publication only available in Spanish

The European Union (EU) is a leading facilitating partner for triangular cooperation (TrC). The first technical cooperation initiatives that resemble triangular co-operation models and tactics date back to the late 1990s. The EU has reported its TrC initiatives to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 2017 (2016 data). The EU institutions disbursed the largest volume of TrC funding between 2016-2020, amounting to USD 131 million, followed by Germany and Canada (OECD, 2022).

The 2021–2022 Overview of WFP’s initiatives on South-South Cooperation presents an outline of WFP’s work as a broker and facilitator of knowledge exchanges.

WFP’s flagship publication in SSTC presents a glimpse of WFP’s global work as a South-South broker to support countries in the achievement of SDG 2 on Zero Hunger.

Across the countries where WFP operates, 345 million people are currently estimated to be acutely food insecure or at high risk given this unprecedented global food crisis. SSTC is one of the key avenues to bring more partners from the Global South on board to support the leap forward toward the achievement of the ambitious goals set in the 2030 Agenda.

In response to rising country demands, WFP has been stepping up its efforts to support countries tap into SSTC in 2021 and 2022, as consolidated in the overview. In 2021, WFP has been recognized among the United Nations entities that have made the most progress towards mainstreaming SSTC, reaching 1.11 million people and mobilizing US$2.7 million for SSTC field projects.

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages (SDG 3) is not only a fundamental right and a crucial development goal, but it is also front and centre of the global COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve sustainable development, ensuring health is critical, with the understanding that most of the SDGs either directly relate to health, or health indirectly contributes to their advancement. Given the current situation, reaching universal health coverage continues to be a fundamental objective for all Member States so that no one is indeed left behind on the journey towards achieving Agenda 2030 for sustainable development. We, in UNFPA, UNICEF, UNOSSC and PAHO/WHO, acknowledge the unique value and comparative advantages of South-South and triangular cooperation in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in contributing to building forward better. In view of this, documenting and sharing good practices in South-South and triangular cooperation for SDG 3 is of paramount importance. South-South and triangular cooperation strengthens ownership and ingenuity by Southern countries and creates mechanisms for sustainable horizontal partnerships. This publication seeks to highlight success stories and solutions from the global South and how, through South-South and triangular cooperation, these initiatives were shared and scaled-up, or demonstrated readiness for adaptation and replication.

This publication on “Good Practices in South-South and Triangular Cooperation in LDCs: From the Istanbul Programme of Action to Achieving Sustainable and Resilient Development” is a prime reflection of effective South-South and triangular collaboration practices that have bred innovative development solutions. It emphasizes the importance of mobilizing all types of partnerships, and resources, to support least developed countries (LDCs), and small island developing states (SIDS) in overcoming shared challenges towards a greener, more inclusive, and more sustainable future.

The year 2022 marks the fifth anniversary of the India-UN Partnership Development Fund, a landmark moment to reflect on how the vision for South-South collaboration ingrained in the ambition and design of the Fund gained reach across the Global South and became transformational for partnering countries and communities.

The Fund not only made progress in achieving its bold agenda, meaningfully contributing to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals by and in support of developing countries, but it also rose to the occasion in the face of new and intensifying challenges: a pandemic lasting over two years; the enormous socioeconomic aftermath of lockdowns and supply-chain disruptions; a rapidly worsening climate crisis; and increased frequency of extreme weather events resulting in much devastation.

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Brazil has a long history of public policies to eradicate hunger, reduce poverty, promote research and innovation in agriculture and strengthen the institutional framework for rural and urban development. The Brazil-FAO International Cooperation Programme has been one of the most successful initiatives in this regard, allowing the exchange of experiences, the improvement of public policies, and technical and financial support to promote sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The BAPA+40 Outcome Document was a milestone for triangular co-operation (TrC). The GPI has identified 53 recommendations related to the modality. Among those, four dimensions stand out: (i) triangular co-operation system, (ii) working methods and cross-cutting issues, (iii) partnerships, and (iv) sectoral focus.
The GPI Spotlight series are short, and informative, publications. It is an analytical exercise to identify how its members are using triangular co-operation to implement the BAPA+40 recommendations.

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Unprecedented challenges have arisen in the first years of the Decade of Action for the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030: the Covid-19 pandemic, climate crises and war in the Ukraine are among other hardships threatening progress. In these crucial times, South-South and triangular cooperation can be fundamental for ensuring we continue to move ahead in recovering losses and furthering the global commitment of leaving no one behind.

At the core of South-South and triangular cooperation is the understanding that exchanging knowledge, skills, experiences and lessons learned between and among countries of the global South serves as a powerful catalyst for development. These exchanges complement and may even improve traditional North-South cooperation and are a fundamental tool for inclusive global partnerships towards sustainable development.

Fulfilling its mandate and the commitments expressed in the BAPA+40 Outcome Document, the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation works to record, systematize and facilitate access to development knowledge from and for the global South. The Good Practices in South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development publication series is the culmination of that mission and documents the incredible work that is currently happening in the global South.

ADELANTE's good practice is described in page 270.

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Triangular co-operation is on the rise in Africa. At the time of finalising this paper (February 2022), one third of the 921 triangular co-operation projects in the OECD online triangular co-operation project repository involve countries on the African continent, in comparison to 21% in 2016 (OECD, 2017[1]). African countries participate widely in triangular partnerships with the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the Americas – both as beneficiaries and pivotal partners sharing their experiences and innovations. These partnerships are unique because they enable intra-Africa exchanges, as more countries are building ecosystems to engage in South-South and triangular co-operation.

With their shared mandate of ensuring food security for all people, the United Nations Rome-based Agencies (RBAs) – the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) – have joined forces to support one of the most impactful evidence-based interventions to positively transform global food systems: national Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes.

In line with the UN Food Systems Summit outcome and the Global School Meals Coalition, the RBAs will work together to strengthen country capacities to design and implement national HGSF programmes by facilitating South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC). These efforts build on a long-standing collaboration in SSTC between the RBAs which was consolidated in the Joint RBA Roadmap Towards BAPA+40. By leveraging each agency’s comparative advantage, RBA-facilitated SSTC can play a pivotal role in enabling countries of the Global South to share their knowledge and experience to strengthen national food systems to reach the most vulnerable individuals and groups.

The WFP policy on South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) issued in 2015, has been evaluated in the sixth year of implementation, in line with the WFP Evaluation Policy 2016-2021.

The evaluation assessed the relevance, effectiveness, coherence and sustainability of the Policy and its implementation from 2015 to 2020. The WFP Strategic Plan (2014-2017) highlighted the role of SSTC as a tool to strengthen local capacity especially in relation to social safety nets and school feeding.  The Policy provides a brief overview of SSTC in the WFP programme of work at the time of policy development and describes several examples of WFP-supported South-South cooperation, including the work of the Centre of Excellence in Brazil.

The evaluation findings are largely positive with regard to the quality of the SSTC policy, the results of its implementation and WFP's management of internal and external factors influencing support for SSTC during the review period of 2015‒2020.

This publication attests to the innovative ways different models of international cooperation can support SIDS to overcome shared challenges and accelerate progress towards sustainable development, including recovery from COVID-19. This publication showcases some effective South-South and triangular practices and innovative development solutions, in areas such as climate change, sustainable energy, sustainable transport and disaster risk reduction. Although at their innovative stages, many of these emerging practices will benefit from continued practice and adoption, as they are scaled-up in different island countries. But it is the ability to create these home-grown and South-South solutions that must be protected and encouraged. The extent to which these efforts catalyse transformational change will depend in part on how enabling the environment is at the local, regional, and global levels.

The challenges posed by COVID-19 are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. In 2020, the global community suffered a severe setback in the progress made towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Millions of people lost their incomes, and the SDGs financing gap, already significant before the pandemic, may increase by 70%. The challenges related to COVID-19 are numerous, the resources available to both developed and developing countries are stressed, and financing for sustainable development is on edge. 

The development cooperation system is currently under pressure to change and demonstrate its usefulness for addressing more complex development challenges. Triangular Cooperation constitutes a modality of cooperation that can contribute to this change, opening space to more inclusive formulas of partnership. However, such results are neither guaranteed nor automatic, as TC can also contribute to reinforcing vertical relationships that characterize traditional aid. It is therefore important to identify the factors that contribute to tipping this balance in one direction or another. This article aims to investigate these aspects, offering an analytical framework by which to identify the main elements that contribute to giving TC its transformative role. The analysis suggests that this result depends on the relationships established among the actors involved, which are conditioned not only by structural factors associated with the countries’ diverse conditions (economic, technological, geostrategic position) but also by other ideational and strategic factors.

Publication only available in Spanish.

More than 1,000 initiatives stand out, in the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, dedicated to capacity strengthening in key areas to face the crisis, such as health, emergency management, support for vulnerable populations, ICTs, entrepreneurship, among others.

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For developing countries to realize the full potential of SouthSouth and Triangular Cooperation (SSTrC) for achieving their national sustainable development objectives, it is important to formulate national SSTrC strategies as part of their national SSTrC ecosystems. Such national strategies would serve as guidance for a country’s SSTrC activities, initiatives and institutional framework, both as provider and beneficiary of SSTrC. This policy brief highlights the importance of developing national SSTrC strategies for achieving national development objectives and lays out the main elements that can be taken into consideration by developing countries for designing their national SSTrC strategies. While many developing countries do not have an explicit SSTrC strategy in place yet, the state of play shows that its elements can be found in various policies, institutional guidance and national development strategies. The absence of a holistic approach and a nationally acknowledged strategy carries the risk of fragmentation and incoherence in undertaking SSTrC activities. The potential of national SSTrC strategies for enabling effective responses to crises (such as COVID-19) is also explored.

The Outcome Document of the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation reaffirmed the key role of United Nations system entities in leveraging South-South and triangular cooperation for sustainable development. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, such cooperation is playing a vital role in the global response and recovery. This first United Nations System-wide Strategy on South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development points the way toward even greater use of this invaluable vehicle. Developed through an inclusive inter-agency process, the Strategy aims to ensure more coordinated and coherent support to Member States in driving forward the 2030 Agenda and the Decade of Action to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals.

This assessment framework document was developed by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) based on its concept on National Ecosystems for South-South and Triangular Cooperation. The document was authored by Riad Ragueb, Ahmed Faruk Diken, Abdelhakim Yessouf, Abdul Majid Khan, Aminuddin Matt Ariff, Faquaruddin Mehmood, Moncef Soudani, and Sameh Hussein of the Reverse Linkage Section of the Islamic Development Bank.

This publication was made possible through the collaborative efforts of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and partners from Member States, UN entities, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and other development partners. It contains 195 good practices in South-South and triangular cooperation grouped according to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
ADELANTE's good practices are described in pages 337 and 339.

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In development cooperation, trilateral cooperation (TrC) is increasingly seen as having potential not only to achieve impacts in the beneficiary countries, but also to contribute to improved cooperation relationships and partnerships on the strategic level – especially between DAC donors and emerging countries. This evaluation of TrC in German development cooperation examines the extent to which the objectives and expectations of the stakeholders are being achieved. Alongside an analysis of the German TrC portfolio and the relevant literature, extensive case studies in Latin America and the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa serve as the data base.

Publication only available in Spanish.

Publication only available in Spanish.

Publication only available in Spanish

SYSTEMATISATION OF THE ADELANTE PROGRAMME • 2016-2020 The purpose of this document is to compile and analyse the lessons learned from ADELANTE, the European Union’s flagship programme for Triangular Cooperation with Latin America and the Caribbean. The experiences gathered in it are the result of the implementation of eight projects co-financed by the programme during the period 2016 to 2020. These projects have been characterised by addressing different thematic areas, taking place in several countries and with a wide variety of actors, building on different forms of collaboration among one another and with different action strategies. However, ADELANTE has touched on many other important areas of work these past four years: the added value of Triangular Cooperation as a development modality, the contribution to the 2030 Agenda, knowledge management, strategic relationships and an active role in Triangular Cooperation, communication and visibility.

This paper is the result of a joint pilot exercise of the “Toolkit for identifying, monitoring and evaluating the value added of triangular co-operation” among the EU-LAC Facility for Triangular Co-operation (ADELANTE) and the OECD. The eight projects of the ADELANTE Facility worked with the questionnaire of the evaluation tool to assess the value added of working in a trilateral partnership. The EU team and the projects agreed that the six areas identified as potential value added of triangular co-operation are valid for ADELANTE. The joint pilot exercise was insightful and inspiring for all of the partners involved as an instrument for mutual learning. The recommendations arising from this joint exercise will contribute to the design of future EU triangular co-operation initiatives, aiming to make good use of the value added of the modality and addressing the challenges in a constructive, forward-looking way.

The Report on South-South Cooperation in Ibero-America 2019 is the most comprehensive intergovernmental systematization of South-South Cooperation in a developing region.

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The Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Co-operation (BAPA +40) is a great opportunity to provide more visibility for the different, and often innovative, trilateral partnerships around the globe. To do so, the Global Partnership Initiative (GPI) on Effective Triangular Co-operation has embarked on a journey of collecting case stories, operational tools, experiences and lessons learned from its members. The result is this report which provides inputs specific to triangular co-operation1 into the overall theme of BAPA +40 “The Role of South-South Co-operation and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Challenges and Opportunities” as well as its four sub-themes, which will be elaborated in the following.

Publication only available in Spanish