Jeddah - 16 September 2021: The Global South celebrated on September 12 the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation. It was an occasion to take stock of the achievements made last year in the countries of the South, and to discuss the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead over this Decade of Action.

The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), a key player on South-South Cooperation (SSC), joins the international community to observe this celebration and reiterates its unwavering support to continue promoting SSC in its member countries and worldwide. In this respect, the IsDB seizes this international occasion to announce new contributions to the body of knowledge of South-South Cooperation.

In line with its framework on “Developing Nations Ecosystems for South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTrC)”, the IsDB prepared two publications related to two pillars of the ecosystems namely the political will and national strategy of SSTrC.

The publication on “Guiding Process for Enhancing the Political Will for SSTrC” recommends systematic steps to facilitate making major SSTrC-related decisions. These decisions may demonstrate the desire of leaders to help other countries and be helped by other countries for mutual benefit, as well as to contribute to addressing regional and global development challenges.

Furthermore, the publication on “SSTrC Strategy Development Framework” provides guidance for designing a long-term joint course of action for the SSTrC stakeholders that will take the contribution of SSTrC to national development within the country concerned to a higher level and create greater benefit for these stakeholders.

Through the above-described efforts, the IsDB is taking concrete steps to achieve the recommendations of the Buenos Aires Plan Aires (BAPA+40) Outcome Document which was endorsed by the representatives of over 160 member countries of the United Nations during the 2nd High-Level United Nations (UN) Conference on SSC in 2019.

The IsDB is the only Multilateral Development Bank that is owned by countries from the Global South alone. It has been promoting South-South and Triangular Cooperation among its member countries since its establishment and contributes actively to the global conversation on strengthening development cooperation.