POPULATION: South-South Initiative to Exchange Expertise

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 2000 (IPS) - An intergovernmental alliance of 16 developing nationsbacked by several international institutions and US foundationsis in the process of turning out a new generation of planners, programme managers and technical experts in the field of population planning.

The South-South initiative, called Partners in Population and Development (Partners), is aimed at exchanging population-related expertise and experiences among developing nations.

Balla Musa Silla, Executive Director of Partners, says the South- South initiative is expected to lead to “sustained improvements in reproductive health and development.”

Based in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, Partners comprises Bangladesh, Colombia, China, Egypt, the Gambia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Thailand, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Collectively these 16 countries account for more than half the world’s population of 6 billion people.

Established in September 1994, immediately following the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Partners has an annual budget of about 2.5 million dollars.

So far, Partners has received over 4.5 million dollars in funding for South-South collaboration on reproductive health issues.

Last month, the US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated about 3 million dollars, one of the biggest grants received by Partners for its pioneering work.

Gordon Perkin, Executive Director of the foundation’s Global Health Programme, said that improving the health of women and children in developing nations was a primary goal of the organisation.

“The South-South initiative is a very effective model because it encourages developing countries to share their successes and best practices with each other,” Perkin said.

The funds have also come from the Rockefeller Foundation (about 800,000 dollars annually since 1997), the European Union (about 1 million dollars), the Flora Hewett Foundation (about 600,000 dollars) and the Packard Foundation (about 500,000 dollars).

Others who have made significant financial contributions to Partners include the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank.

Additionally, developing nations themselves have contributed either in funding (about 200,000 dollars from each of the 16 participating countries), or in fellowships and scholarships. India alone has pledged about 100 fellowships a year for population programmers.

Hernando Clavijo, a Senior Adviser for Partners, says that participating fellows will learn the best methods and practices from other developing nations with demonstrated success in using these techniques.

Partners has been established on the premise that scarce resources need to be pooled and shared for maximum cost-effectiveness, while it also argues that “it is rational and economically sound to share success stories as well as failures and to disseminate best practices”.

In a new 232-page publication titled “South to South” released last month, editor Jyoti Shankar Singh says that South-South co- operation in the areas of reproductive health and other population- related activities is based on two premises.

The first is that a number of developing nations have in the last several decades acquired considerable expertise and experience in the design and implementation of highly successful and effective national family planning and reproductive health programmes.

And secondly, that the sharing of this expertise and experience among developing countries will help enrich and strengthen the entire range of their population-related policies and programmes.

The publication is a collection of essays covering several related subjects, including a historical overview of the conceptual framework of South-South co-operation and a review of the progress and challenges in realising gender equality and empowerment of women.

Singh, a former UNFPA Deputy Executive Director and currently President of “Population 2005”, says that South-South co-operation is increasingly being seen as an innovative, cost-effective and result-oriented modality for transfer or exchange of relevant knowledge and experience among developing nations in areas of reproductive health and population.

At a 1999 review conference of ICPD, called ICPD-Plus-Five, there was concrete evidence of the widespread support the concept enjoys among developing nations.

Singh said that several multilateral organisations, such as the UNFPA and the World Bank, as well as many other donors, have demonstrated their interest in supporting a variety of population- related South-South projects.

He said that Partners does not solely depend only on the generosity of donor nations. The participating countries must devote more of their own financial and technical resources to South-South co-operation. In recent years, the economic crises facing many participating countries have reduced or limited their capacity to implement the ICPD Programme of Action.

“But as these countries begin to emerge from these crises, they should consider giving South-South co-operation the priority it truly deserves in the allocation of domestic resources,” Singh added.

He also pointed out that the time has come to broaden the scope of training and research programmes conducted nationally so as to include not only in-country experiences but also relevant experiences and lessons learned from other developing nations.

A truly global approach to formulating the content and framework of training programmes, he said, will enable participants from a much larger number of countries to benefit from such programmes, though this is not to deny the importance of devising special activities focusing on the needs and requirements of individual countries.