Over the last few years, South-South Cooperation has boomed as a result of the fact that developing countries – particularly the Member States of SELA – have attached high priority to it in their national agendas on international cooperation and international politics.

Since the United Nations Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) was held in Argentina in 1978 – when the Buenos Aires Action Plan (PABA) was approved and a global framework for developing and strengthening South-South Cooperation was created – various specialized meetings to review and update the guidelines for this type of cooperation have been conducted over the years.

Special mention must be made of the I and II Summits of the South, held in Havana (April 2000) and Doha (June 2005), respectively, which underscored the advisability of continuing to strengthen the institutional framework for South-South Cooperation, particularly for the definition, monitoring, evaluation and control of projects and for improving the financial mechanisms to implement cooperation activities.

The efforts to promote and strengthen South-South Cooperation are carried out in different areas, not only within the framework of the United Nations through the High Level Meetings on South-South Cooperation, but also within the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77, at the Meetings of International Cooperation Directors for Latin America and the Caribbean that have been held within the context of SELA for 23 years now, the Conferences of Middle-Income Countries, the Ibero-American Summits, and the Presidential Summits of regional and subregional integration schemes and, more recently, the OECD, with the creation of the Technical Group on South-South Cooperation.

Despite the huge coordination and collaboration efforts that have been carried out over time, there is still a long way to go in order to guarantee the necessary funding to promote effective actions and projects through South-South Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Hence the importance of this activity, which is aimed at systematizing the various instruments and mechanisms available to Latin America and the Caribbean for funding and developing South-South Cooperation.

The conduction of this initiative is in line with the recommendations made by the representatives of the Member States, as adopted by the XXI Meeting of International Cooperation Directors for Latin America and the Caribbean, held on 29 and 30 July 2010 in Paramaribo, Suriname.

The results and recommendations stemming from this workshop will be important inputs for the funds and instruments for financing South-South cooperation programmes and projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, ahead of the IV High Level Forum to be held in 2011 in Busan, South Korea.