Through years of development assistance programmes, many countries from the Global South have been able to make considerable progress in development issues including in reproductive health. They have acquired capabilities that can be shared with other countries. As a result, South South Cooperation has become the expression of partnership among countries from the South in exploring their complementary strengths to go beyond their role as aid recipients. This modality has been further reinforced by the participation of traditional donor countries in the form of Triangular Cooperation.
South South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) improves effectiveness and efficiency of development assistance activities. The movement gained further momentum after it was designated as part of SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. UN Member-States reaffirmed SSTC as a developmental modality in the Second High-Level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40), held in Buenos Aires in March 2019. This strong mandate from UN Member-States is further reflected in their recommendations in the UN Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review. In response, in 2020, more than 30 UN agencies, collaborating under the auspices of the Office of the Secretary General, developed the first UN System-wide Strategy on SSTC.
Taking advantage of this momentum, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Strategic Plan 2022-2025 has deployed SSTC as one of the accelerators for results. This is a departure from the ad-hoc practice of SSTC in the past to a concerted and systematic approach. SSTC is no longer something that is nice-to-do on the sidelines; it is what we need to do as the mainline of our work. To operationalize SSTC, the Policy and Strategy Division, in collaboration with colleagues and SSTC champions in HQ divisions as well as in the field, developed this UNFPA corporate strategy on SSTC that has six operational dimensions.