Unpacking And Demystifying South-South Cooperation (SSC) by Dr Kaustuv K Bandyopadhyay and Ms. Manya Sharan

The seminar started with an introduction by Sumitra about the event.

A foreword was given by Dr. Bandyopadhyay on the topic to be covered here.  He explained that how the South and North of the world are being divided and segmented into a separate identity and its formation/characterisation.  Also, briefed about the different land marks in the world history that changed the world into a different directions (1942 to 1990).  During the 1980s to 1990s, world has witnessed dramatic turn of events such as fall of USSR, open global market, new economic policies etc.  

Also pointed out that in 1990, first Human Index Report was released by UN and Poverty Reduction Programme (PRS) was introduced covering Health, Livelihood and Education’s importance to the third world. Then, UN declared Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 and how this programme invited Civil Society to become part of achieving the same along with National /State Governments. An important event -Paris declaration – Aid Effectiveness was mentioned. This has then changed to Partnership for Development Cooperation in 2011 and in 2015, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were also declared by UN. 

All the above series of events were able to strengthen the South-South Cooperation and induction of Civil Society into the programme.

It also mentioned about the criticism about SSC:

-          Lack of overall framework

-          Lack of mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation

-          Driven by foreign policy

It brought out the information on how civil society came into the picture of SSC and how PRIA got active in it.

A very interactive Q&A session was also carried out at the end.

As the name suggests, this was an enchanting seminar on demystifying the term South-South Co-operation!