Knowledge Sharing Forum on Monitoring & Evaluation of South-South and Triangular Cooperation Initiatives

A recording of these remarks can be found on YouTube and Tencent.

Excellencies,

Distinguished guests,

Colleagues from the United Nations,

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

On behalf of the United Nations Country Team, it is my great pleasure to welcome all of you to the UN Compound to attend this special event on South-South and Triangular Cooperation organized by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). 

Today is a special day for the Organization and the entire community of nations. Today, we celebrate the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter - our founding document. 78 years on, the purposes and principles of the UN Charter remain as timeless as ever, and the UN remains the one place where the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems and find shared solutions.

As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message for today’s UN Day, “The United Nations is guided by timeless values and principles, but it must never be frozen in time. That is why we must always keep strengthening ways of working and applying a 21st century lens to all we do.”

With our many global challenges that threaten the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we need diversified models of cooperation that build mutual trust and benefit while diving into the rich knowledge of developing countries which have solutions to pressing challenges in their local contexts.

In this context, South-South Cooperation has been widely recognized as an essential mechanism and an important complement to traditional models of cooperation to enhance resilience between the countries of the Global South by consolidating and sharing knowledge and resources to achieve scaled-up impact on sustainable development. 

IFAD has been an important member of the UN Family since 1977. As the only international financial institution in the UN system, IFAD has the specific mandate to eradicate poverty and hunger by investing in poor rural people through financial and technical assistance to agriculture and rural development projects in developing Member States and has maintained a strong partnership with China in the past 45 years, including on South-South Cooperation. 

The Government of China has played an essential role in promoting South-South cooperation globally. The establishment of the China - IFAD SSTC Facility in 2018 is one such example where China has committed to joining efforts of UN entities and international financial institutions to leverage resources and knowledge for the benefit of other developing countries. 

The UN in China remains committed to providing technical assistance and expertise to the Government of China, to help align South-South Cooperation efforts with best practices and recognized international norms and standards. 

On best practices, while the value of South-South and Triangular cooperation is widely accepted, we need to have strong monitoring and evaluation systems in place to ensure the outcome and effectiveness of development interventions are achieved as anticipated. 

Across the UN system, there is recognition that monitoring and evaluation are essential management tools to ensure that expected results are achieved, bottlenecks are identified, and adjustments are made if required. We need to learn continuously, and we can only do so by assessing our own strengths and weaknesses. 

For the UN Country Team in China, with the support of over 20 Government ministries and UN entities, we have also implemented joint monitoring and evaluation of our Cooperation Framework to ensure effective reporting on the progress we have achieved on the SDGs.  

Today, the insights and experiences shared by the invited speakers by a diverse range of development partners should further enrich our discussions on how to jointly achieve the SDGs through South-South and triangular cooperation by building more robust monitoring and evaluation systems.

All of you gathered here today are key partners of the UN in China. I take this opportunity to thank you for your support of the UN Country Team. 

I wish you all productive discussions and a joyful celebration of UN Day. 

Thank you.