16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

Opening Statements 9
in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) whose main
goal was to increase effectiveness and efficiency of UN operations by bringing about
greater synergy.
39. Turning to the main item of the agenda, South-South Cooperation, he recalled that
in 2003 the General Assembly formally opted to use the term South-South Cooperation
instead of Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries to reflect the new
trend in technical cooperation among the countries of the South. While South – South
cooperation did not replace North – South cooperation, it added a new dimension
– the triangular cooperation–which was South-South collaboration supported by development
partners in the North. UN reports indicated that all UN agencies were involved,
in one way or another, in South-South cooperation. Based on this, he suggested
that the efforts of the Fellowships Services should lead to the preparation of a database
of training institutions in the South which could be used as reference by all agencies in
their training activities.
40. An important place on the agenda was accorded to the traditional relationship
between the United Nations system agencies and the National Placement and
Supervising Agencies (NPSA). The very fact that NPSAs from both North and
South were invited to the Meeting in line with the Joint Inspection Unit recommendation
was testimony to the significant role they had played and the valuable
services they had provided to the UN agencies in the placement and supervision
of UN fellows. Mr. De Tomassi underlined that their role was not diminished at
all in the framework of South-South cooperation. Rather, it was expanded to encompass
training through triangular cooperation. NPSAs could serve as liaisons
among training institutions both in the North and in the South. It had become
common practice for many educational and training institutions in the North to
organize tailor-made training courses in the South. UN entities such as the United
Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) or the International Labor Organization
(ILO) were moving some of their training courses to the South. Those programmes
had been very successful and should be encouraged. In order to maximize mutual
profitability, NPSAs might make available to the UN agencies relevant databases of
their national training institutions. A unified inter-agency database would be very
helpful.
41. In the framework of South-South cooperation, Mr. De Tomassi laid emphasis on the
need to build partnerships in training and fellowships among United Nations system
agencies as well as between UN agencies, on the one hand, and national and private
training institutions on the other. Partnerships had become an integral part of the work
of much of the United Nations system. They were voluntary relationships between various
parties to work together to achieve a common purpose, to transfer knowledge, to
share tasks, responsibilities, resources and benefits. It was a give-and-take relationship.
In the Training and Fellowships sectors partnerships were built with the aim of sharing
and coordinating resources and expertise. Agencies could benefit from the complemen-