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International Day for 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.

That cooperation is done through 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.

The United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation celebrates the economic, social and political developments made in recent years by regions and countries in the south andhighlights UN's efforts to work on technical cooperation among developing countries.


The Global South-South Development Expo 2017 will be hosted by the Republic of Turkey and will take place in Antalya from 27 to 30 November 2017. The theme of this Expo will be “South-South Cooperation in the Era of Economic, Social and Environmental Transformation: Road to the 40th Anniversary of the Adoption of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA+40)”.

To know more about the Objectives of South-South Cooperation visit United Nations Office for 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 specify 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.)