South-South Cooperation: Meeting Health and Development Challenges of Developing CountriesCooperation among developing countries for exchange of successful experiences on reproductive health and population is cost-effective, attuned to cultural and social conditions, Anwarul Chowdhury, the permanent representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, said Tuesday. The South-South cooperation is producing positive results, Chowdhury said.He made the statement at the launching of a new book, entitled "South to South: Developing Countries Working Together on Population and Development." The South-South approach to sharing expertise in capacity building, research and information is becoming increasingly accepted, he said. However, donors and policy-makers have had little access to concrete information about the issues and opportunities it presents. "This book is the first to really provide our community with practical information on key elements of South-to-South cooperation," Chowdhury said. The concept of South-to-South collaboration is deceptively simple: share and extend ideas that have worked so that more people benefit. Over the past 20 years, several developing countries have made significant progress in providing family planning and reproductive health services. Through a combination of political commitment, financial and human capital, countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Mexico, Tunisia and Kenya have successfully addressed complex health and population challenges through these programs. Today, increasing numbers of men and women in these countries have what they need to make informed choices about their health and families and are able to avail of the services needed. Many of the case studies in the book are drawn from the experiences of the countries from the Partners in Population and Development, which represents an alliance of developing countries established specifically to realize the concepts of South-South collaboration elaborated in the Cairo Program of Action, endorsed by more than 180 nations at the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). |
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