Pacific Island countries are innovators and global champions of peer to peer learning and south-south cooperation was the message delivered to the second high level meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation in Nairobi yesterday. Addressing the meeting, Samoa’s Minister of Finance, Hon. Sili Epa Tuioti said “Small as we are, we Small Island Developing States, can also be innovators as we have unique experiences emanating out of our diversities, expertise and innovations to offer, and we can also be providers of development cooperation.” “We are innovating island to island, peer to peer learning, to help build our institutions, capacities and policies to better plan for, deliver, and account for our development aspirations as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals, SAMOA Pathway, our Framework for Pacific Regionalism and most importantly, our national strategic plans for sustainable and inclusive development.” Minster Tuiota was addressing a plenary focussed on lessons learned from south-south and triangular cooperation to improve effective development cooperation to achieve the SDGs. Six pacific countries including Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu attended the meeting. A peer review of the Pacific region’s systems was recognised in the United Nations Secretary General’s report in January 2016 as an example of how countries could learn through regional peer to peer mechanisms to inform National voluntary reporting on the SDGs. Over the past two years Samoa alone has hosted more than forty senior officials from across the region in an effort to strengthen country systems and institutions by sharing their experiences with each other. Through south-south cooperation, the Pacific is taking stronger leadership and ownership of our particular challenges, and finding solutions many of which have been replicated or adapted from good practices within our region.” “Based on seven years of peer learning, we can confirm that learning by doing and learning from practitioners works well, and that we have been able to strengthen country systems and capacities through this form of knowledge sharing and learning.” “The Caribbean region have asked the Pacific to help introduce a similar peer review process of their country systems. The demand for south-south cooperation is high, it is cost effective, sustainable and complements north-south cooperation.” “We ask development partners to help us scale up south-south cooperation amongst our member countries. We call for systematic mechanisms to enable peer learning for systems reforms. We encourage the UN System and development partners to allocate sustainable resources to enable south – south cooperation, as it is good value for money for investments in capacity building.” South-South cooperation is as term that describes the exchange of resources and knowledge between developing countries. North-South cooperation is a similar exchange between developing and developed countries. The Second High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation was focused on amplifying the positive impact of development cooperation over the next 15 years. It was hosted by the Government of Kenya and closed on the 1st December. More information and details of the overall outcomes can be found http://www.hlm2nairobi.go.ke/
