UNOSSC, NeST, Southern Voice, Reality of Aid, UNDP and Mexico South-South cooperation (SSC) has played an ever-increasing role in overcoming national, regional and global developmental challenges and is now a key enabler for achieving 2030 Agenda and other Internationally Agreed Development Goals. SSC has grown in quantum and geographic reach, through a diversity of approaches, modalities and instruments, constituting an important complementary source of financing and partnerships for sustainable development required for “transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies”. Accounting these vast flows of human, financial, knowledge and technological transfer between developing countries and reporting on their impact for the achievement of sustainable development remains a challenge for many governments as well as international institutions. Southern partners do not subscribe to a common definition and reporting parameters for SSC. Measurement efforts are further challenged by the lack of common conceptions, shared standards and consistent recording. Forty years from the adoption of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) an updated narrative needs to emerge that can effectively capture the new reality and role of South-South cooperation in the sustainable development era. Among the areas that the UN Development Cooperation Forum (UNDCF) has identified for further work in the lead-up to BAPA+40 is “systematisation of data and information on SSC”. In December 2015 the G77+China called on UNCTAD and Southern think-tanks to improve statistics on SSC, as part of the “Data Revolution” required for the successful realisation of the SDG campaign. On the side-lines of the 2018 UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF), the South-South Global Thinkers networks, the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), and other Southern partners, will be convening a Davos-style panel discussion on how to define, measure and report developing and emerging economies’ contributions towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Agenda. The informal discussion, held under Chatham House rules, will provide important inputs and policy recommendations that will feed into the preparations of the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40 Conference) and its outcome, to be held in March 2019. Opening Remarks • Mr. Jorge Chediek, Envoy of the Secretary-General on South-South Cooperation, Director, United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) Moderator • Prof. Neissan A. Besharati, Senior Fellow, Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD), South Africa Proposed Panellists • Mr. Vitalice Meja, African Coordinator, Reality of Aid Network, Kenya • Representative of Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mexico • Dr. Stephan Klingebiel, Head of Development Cooperation, German Development Institute (DIE) or Representative of Ministry of Economic Cooperation (BMZ), Germany • Mr. Kevin May, Beijing Representative Office, Oxfam Hong Kong, China • Ms. Ana Ciuti, General Director for International Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, President of the Intergovernmental Council of the Ibero-American Program for the Strengthening of South-South Cooperation (PIFCSS), Argentina • Prof. Sachin Chaturvedi, Director General, Research & Information Systems for Developing Countries (RIS), India • Representative of Egyptian Development Partnership Agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egypt (TBC) Overarching Questions for the Discussion: 1. Why is it important to measure and report SSC? Is transparency and accountability important also in the Global South? How should we track the impact of SSC to 2030 Agenda? 2. Is there a new conceptual framework for SSC in the 21st Century? Can Southern countries agree on a shared definition of SSC with minimum common standards? What are the modalities and instruments included in SSC today? 3. How can SSC partners practically quantify the different features of SSC: technical cooperation, capacity-building, development finance, trade & investment, knowledge & technology transfer, peace-building, etc.? What methodologies can be used? Is there a need for an intergovernmental process to harmonise these approaches to quantification? 4. Should Southern countries account only official public sector cooperation or also the activities of their private sector and civil society actors. Should private flows, trade and investment be included in the reporting of SSC and its contribution to the SDGs? 5. What institutional arrangements can be made to consolidate statistics on SSC? Can there be a common international hub dedicated to collecting, analysing and publishing SSC data? What global institution can host such global information centre and serve as a platform for reporting on the impact of South-South and triangular cooperation? RSVP: https://goo.gl/forms/xmUrkFhLwAaHR4gL2 by 11 July 2018 Enquiries: Yoko Shimura, Programme Analyst, United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, yoko.shimura@unossc.org , +1 212 906 3642