Delegates from Latin America and the Caribbean took part in a Regional Workshop on Quantifying South-South Cooperation (SSC), a collaborative learning event designed to enhance technical and institutional capacities for measuring and reporting this form of cooperation. The workshop followed the voluntary framework established by countries of the Global South and supported by United Nations agencies, and took place at ECLAC headquarters in Santiago on July 28–29, 2025.
The event formed part of the second phase of the project “Quantifying South-South Cooperation to Mobilize Funds for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” known as the Master Stage. This phase focuses on assisting both pilot countries and new participants in strengthening their national information systems, with the aim of enabling consistent and sustainable measurement of SSC.
The initiative answers the call of the Second High-Level Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40) and aligns with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (2015) and SDG Target 17.3, which encourages mobilizing additional development resources from diverse sources. Participants included national technical teams from Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay, alongside institutions such as UNCTAD and ECLAC, with key support from the Colombian Presidential Agency for International Cooperation (APC-Colombia). Notably, Latin America and the Caribbean stands out as the only region to increase its number of pilot countries beyond the original group, signaling strong political commitment to advancing this measurement agenda.
The workshop’s main goal was to help countries prepare their first national report based on the Conceptual Framework for Measuring South-South Cooperation (SSC Framework). To support this, the program combined technical presentations, peer exchange sessions, and hands-on exercises focused on identifying available data, mapping institutions involved in international cooperation, and applying the framework’s methodological tools.
Following the workshop, participating countries committed to preparing an initial draft of their national reports under the SSC Framework in the second half of 2025, along with organizing bilateral follow-up meetings with ECLAC in the coming weeks.
This collective effort reinforces the region’s role as a reference point in measuring South-South Cooperation, highlighting that shared learning and sustained political commitment are key to advancing more inclusive and sustainable development.
