'Poor countries must cooperate'
David Masango
17 June 2005
South Africa's foreign affairs minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, has urged delegates attending the G77 + China Summit in Doha, Qatar to cooperate in advancing member countries' development.
She said developing countries faced the same challenges and shared similar aspirations for economic development, poverty eradication and combating diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/Aids.
Dlamini-Zuma was representing President Thabo Mbeki.
The summit aims to enhance cooperation among developing countries and combat problems by engaging in global strategies and policies.
It will also seek to come up with ways to face the challenges of the 21st century, particularly globalisation, as well as discuss the readjustment of the G77 + China vision for South-South cooperation.
The reform of the United Nations and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are also on the agenda.
The summit comes just two months before
the UN Millennium Summit and the UN General Assembly, to be held in September.
Dlamini-Zuma reiterated Mbeki's view that the South-South cooperation should encourage "an extensive system of bilateral relations" to strengthen developing countries' collective capacity to represent themselves in relation to developed countries.
"This should not simply be a matter of increasing our bargaining strength; it should also address the central issue of the elaboration of a word agenda for human-centred development," she said, quoting Mbeki.
Dlamini-Zuma said Africa had developed Nepad as its collective people-centred development programme.
"We have put together all of the ideas. What is now needed are the requisite resources to implement what we have agreed.
"Human, financial and technological resources are critical elements. While we should look to the North for debt cancellation, increased development aid and the completion of the Doha Development Round, it is
just as important to strengthen our own South-South Cooperation," she said.
Dlamini-Zuma said developing countries had among themselves all the natural resources needed for development - oil, gas, most of the strategic mineral resources, agricultural resources, and some cutting-edge technologies.
"We have the human resources, and we have the markets as well. What is crucial is that while cooperating with the North, we must strengthen South-South cooperation in order to turn these natural resources into wealth," she said.
She said a number of critical decisions about the survival of the UN and the strengthening of the multilateral system would have to be taken at the September summit.
Dlamini-Zuma said the need for reforming the UN had been recognised and discussed for many years, but the UN "still reflects the political landscape of 1945".
A reformed UN would benefit the South more than the North if approached in a comprehensive way, she said, and UN
reform should be done in an inclusive and democratic manner.
"The African Union, in its determination that the marginalised people of Africa should be fully represented in all the decision-making organs of the UN, acted with unity of purpose to engage in the current UN reform process. African member states forged a common African position on the reform of the UN, also known as the Ezulwini Consensus," she said.
She added that the collective strength of the G77 + China gave it the means to ensure reform was carried out.
"Arriving at a reform package that serves all of humanity will always be difficult, so we might as well seize the opportunity to do it now. We, the countries of the South, cannot afford to miss this historic opportunity. We owe it to future generations to bequeath to them a better United Nations than the one we found," saisd Dlamini-Zuma.
Source: BuaNews
| 
