South-south Partnerships Advisory Panel Evaluation of South-south Cooperation in Undp Promoting and Supporting South-south Cooper- Ation Has Been an Expressed Priority for Undp for Many Decades, Most Recently with the 2004–2007 Multi-year Funding Framework. the Framework Explicitly States That South

Over the past 30 years, there has been a remarkable upsurge in South-South cooperation. Sustained economic growth since the late 1980s has led to an increasing number of developing countries becoming regional centres of economic dynamism. To support emerging needs, member countries expect the United Nations development system to mainstream South-South cooperation as a cross-cutting theme in its work. that is approved by the Executive Board of UNDP. Prior to the approval of a fourth cooperation framework for South-South cooperation in 2008, the Executive Board requested the Evaluation Office to conduct an independent forward-looking evaluation of results achieved. This report presents the outcome of the evaluation , which looks at the effectiveness of the Third Cooperation Framework managed by the Special Unit, and also assesses the results achieved by the inclusion of South-South cooperation as a driver in UNDP programmatic work. The scope of the evaluation covers relevant UNDP-supported programmes at the country, regional and global levels in all geographic regions from 1996 to the present. The analysis is based on evidence collected from case studies in seven countries Africa and Thailand), an in-depth desk review in India, consultations with headquarters of UN system agencies in New York and Geneva, an electronic survey of UN country teams in all regions, consultations with Permanent Missions in New York, and is supplemented by a desk review of related evaluative material. Altogether, 248 stakeholders were interviewed, and 149 responses from 51 UN country teams were analysed. A key issue faced by the evaluation was the lack of an agreed definition of South-South cooperation within UNDP. In the absence of a common understanding, the evaluation uses the definition adopted by the General Assembly in 2003, describing South-South cooperation as a process by which two or more developing countries initiate and pursue development through the cooperative exchange of multi-dimensional knowledge, resources, skills and technical know-how through different types of cooperation. The evaluation reaches four important conclusions. First, while the conceptual areas of the Third Cooperation Framework for South-South Cooperation were valid, the effectiveness of the framework was constrained by a mismatch among the mandate, resources and implementation strategy adopted by the Special Unit. Second, UNDP has not developed a robust and proactive corporate strategy to promote South-South cooperation. There is a lack of common understanding , no incentives and little systematic codification of experience. Third, at the country and regional levels, UNDP has been responsive …