Remarks by the President of the General Assembly
H.E. Ms. Annalena Baerbock,
30th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Fund for South-South Cooperation
5 December 2025
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[Pre-Recorded-As Delivered]
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
First of all, happy birthday, as we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the United Nations Fund for South-South Cooperation.
Over these three decades, the Fund has supported practical solutions towards development to meet national priorities and regional needs, and its impacts are already visible across continents.
In the past 3 years alone, the Fund has:
- Helped communities in Latin America and the Caribbean strengthen food systems under climate pressure.
- Expanded access to renewable electricity in rural areas of Peru and the Lao People¡¯s Democratic Republic.
- Supported new approaches to ecosystem management and technological innovation in the Lake Victoria Basin.
- And supported advanced climate-smart agriculture in the Sahel and Central Asia, improving both livelihoods and resilience.
These initiatives reflect the Fund¡¯s demand-driven model, responding to the priorities identified by developing countries themselves.
Last year, the Fund launched the Triangular Cooperation Window to expand this approach.
Designed to facilitate three-way partnerships, it connects the expertise of countries in the global South with financial and technical support from developed countries and international organizations.
It is a flexible mechanism that helps successful local solutions grow and adapt across different contexts.
Such partnerships and strategic mobilization of resources are needed now more than ever.
Progress is lagging in areas that disproportionately affect developing countries.
This includes climate change, debt distress, persistent poverty, and widening inequalities.
These interconnected crises demand cooperation at a scale and speed equal to their complexity.
They also demand?effective?partnerships.
As?recognized?by the?Pact for the Future, and as reiterated at the Second World?Social?Summit?for Social Development?recently held in Doha, today¡¯s global challenges cannot be addressed in isolation.
Progress depends on stronger partnerships across governments, the United Nations system, international financial institutions, the private?sector?and civil society.
I therefore encourage the international community to strengthen its support for the United Nations Fund for South-South Cooperation, and other relevant financing mechanisms that help developing countries design and deliver initiatives that are nationally owned, regionally grounded, and globally relevant.
As South-South and Triangular Cooperation embodies the very essence of multilateralism, indeed of the United Nations: helping each other out in the best way we can, and learning from each other, whether through knowledge sharing, technical exchange, or peer-to-peer learning. Being Better Together.
Indeed, such cooperation is essential to helping developing countries meet their goals as we fast approach our deadlines for the 2030 Agenda.
Yet for such cooperation to be effective and sustainable, it needs proper financing and the solidarity that the relevant Funds are designed to provide.
By investing in them, we can ensure that the most vulnerable countries and communities are not left further behind.
On this thirtieth anniversary of the Fund, let us commit to strengthening South-South and triangular cooperation.
To supporting the mechanisms that sustain it.
And to realizing a world that is, truly, Better Together.