World Development Information Day: The Need for International Co-operation
Development plays a crucial role in our lives. From personal to global, development is what we always look forward to. Recognizing this need, the United Nations celebrates World Development Information Day every year on October 24th.
The UN General Assembly in 1972 established the World Development Information Day to direct people’s attention toward developmental problems and the need to strengthen international cooperation to solve them.
The main aim of this day is to propagate information and mobilize public opinion, especially among young people, in order to draw their attention and create awareness of the problems surrounding development, promoting efforts in the field of international cooperation for growth and development.
The UN General Assembly in 1964 established The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with the primary objective of formulating policies relating to all aspects of development including trade, transport, aid, finance, and technology. UNCTAD is a part of the UN secretariat.
Prior to officially announcing 24th October as World Development Information Day, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) proposed measures for dissemination of information and for the mobilization of public opinion, relative to trade and development problems on May 17th, 1972. It was then passed by the UN General Assembly on May 19th, 1972.
To promote prosperity among all countries be it poor, rich, or middle-income while protecting the planet, the UN has proposed 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These goals recognize and address the global challenges targeted to be achieved by 2030.
- No poverty
- Zero hunger
- Good health and well-being
- Quality education
- Gender equality
- Clean water and sanitation
- Affordable and clean energy
- Decent work and economic growth
- Industry, innovation, and infrastructure
- Reduced inequalities
- Sustainable cities and communities
- Responsible consumption and production
- Climate action
- Life below water
- Life on land
- Peace, justice and strong institutions
- Partnerships for the goals
In recent years, many events have concentrated on the role of modern technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones, which can play a key role in alerting and making people aware, while simultaneously trying to find solutions to problems of trade and development.
The World Development Information Day is an observance declared worldwide and it is every individual’s responsibility to act toward the sustainable goals, which are now termed as #GlobalGoals.
Striving to achieve these sustainable development goals is probably the most important need of the hour as these not only relate to the UN alone but are applicable to the world as a whole. WDID is observed to draw attention of world to development problems and necessity of strengthening international cooperation to solve them.
International cooperation
In general, international cooperation is understood to refer to the interactions among groups that work together towards a common goal or cooperate to solve an issue – here, the burden of NCDs. One definition of cooperation is that it occurs “when actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others”.
Accordingly, international cooperation can also be described as interactions to achieve common objectives when actors’ preferences are neither identical nor conflicting. It includes interactions between different types of actors; for example, not only intergovernmental, but also transnational and on various scales, ranging from bilateral to multilateral, and regional to global.
The three key types of cooperation to be explored in this dialogue are North-South, South-South and triangular.
North-South cooperation
North-South cooperation describes a geographical division whereby the North represents the richer countries of North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and the South represents the poorer majority of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
North-South cooperation is thus the cooperation between the North (the developed countries) and the South (the developing countries); this is the more traditional structure for international cooperation.
“North” can refer to more than one Northern country or organization; for example, two Northern countries can provide support for one Southern country. Alternatively, several Northern countries could financially support one organization that cooperates with a Southern country or organization.
Within this framework, exchanges between Northern and Southern countries often flow out of international official development assistance (ODA) commitments and are measured by universally recognized benchmarks of ODA. Such collaborations often address capacity-building.
For instance, the Leadership and Advocacy for NCD Prevention and Control (LeAd-NCD) initiative in Japan is a short course in capacity-building for NCD prevention and control, based in Saitama, Japan. LeAd-NCD uses international cooperation to bring together relevant NCD stakeholders and equip them with the necessary information and skills to strategically act to accelerate progress in NCD prevention and control in their own countries.
Participants obtain the necessary information and skills to further enhance leadership and advocacy in NCD prevention and control. LeAd-NCD thus works by improving the capacities of national-level, multisectoral stakeholders and managers to respond to the NCD crisis in ways that are cognizant of the technical and financial resources available to them.
North-South cooperation can also be used in the prevention and control of one specific NCD. Over 70% of cancer deaths occur in developing countries; barriers to effective cancer control include lack of adequate local resources for capacity-building, lack of information dissemination, and lack of patient assistance and advocacy.
Using six WHO-developed capacity-building modules, the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific, in collaboration with the National Cancer Centre of Korea, a WHO collaborating centre, developed a five-day Workshop on Leadership and Capacity-Building for Cancer Control (CanLEAD) to enhance leadership and build capacity for national cancer control programme development in the region.
To enhance access to the course, the National Cancer Centre of Korea worked with WHO headquarters and the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific to convert the modules into an online course on cancer control, or eCanLEAD.
These activities have been funded jointly by the Korea National Cancer Centre, the Republic of Korea and voluntary contributions by the Government of the Republic of Korea and WHO.
CanLEAD is an example of international collaboration on NCDs where a specific need for capacity-building is being addressed in a sustained manner.
Another approach to the prevention and control of NCDs involves targeting a specific modifiable shared risk factor. North-South cooperation has been mobilized by the Integrating Nutrition Promotion and Rural Development (INPARD) project in Sri Lanka to investigate the feasibility of linking nutrition with rural development.
By focusing on improving health, nutrition and food security using various community-led methods including microfinance schemes, physical and social infrastructure development, and livelihood support – INPARD aims to investigate whether such a multisectoral rural development programme can be utilized to deliver nutrition promotion interventions within rural Sri Lanka and whether it is effective in improving nutrition outcomes.
Working with communities where the Re-awakening project – a rural development project funded by the World Bank through the South Asian Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (SAFANSI) is taking place, the INPARD project has a strong emphasis on multisectoral collaboration and involves coordination between stakeholders from a range of government and NGOs. Government stakeholders, for example, are drawn from the Departments of Health, Agriculture, Education, and Public Administration. This is in keeping with the framework developed by the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, which recommends multisectoral interventions as the most effective way to promote health outcomes.
South-South Cooperation
South-South cooperation can be defined as “a process whereby two or more developing countries pursue their individual and/or shared national capacity development objectives through exchanges of knowledge, skills, resources and technical know-how, and through regional and interregional collective actions, including partnerships involving Governments, regional organizations, civil society, academia, and the private sector for their individual and/or mutual benefit within and across regions. South-South cooperation is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to, North-South cooperation.”
South-South cooperation is initiated, organized and managed by developing countries themselves. Governments often play a leading role, with active participation from the public sector and private sector institutions, NGOs and individuals.
Projects may include different sectors and may be bilateral, multilateral, subregional, regional or interregional.
South-South initiatives can involve sharing national experiences of good practices with other countries. For instance, Brazil’s National School Feeding Programme, developed as part of the national Zero Hunger Strategy, has been shared with other governments by the World Food Programme’s Centre of Excellence against Hunger, located in Brasilia, as an example of best practice.
This programme served 47 million children, with at least 30% of food supplied from local farms. The Zero Hunger Strategy started in 2003 and argued that hunger in Brazil was not caused primarily by lack of food, but rather by lack of income among vulnerable groups to afford it.
This diagnosis in Brazil in the early 21st century also suggested that demand for food was insufficient in the country, thereby preventing commercial agriculture and agro-industry from stepping up food production, among other hindrances to market accessibility.
Through collaboration between some 20 Brazilian ministries which exemplifies the multisectoral responses to NCDs advised by the WHO Global Action Plan on NCDs 2013–2020 and policy development in a number of different sectors, the Zero Hunger Strategy implemented multiple programmes that ranged from rural technical assistance to social and health care units, to the School Feeding Programme, which was shared by the World Food Programme’s Centre of Excellence with other governments experiencing similar obstacles.
South-South cooperation can also involve sharing between Southern countries information that was originally implemented at a national level as part of international efforts to tackle NCDs. For example, the International Cooperation Centre on Tobacco Control (ICCTC) of Uruguay was created by the Government of Uruguay to promote international cooperation for the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) through the exchange of information on legal, medical, communications and management matters related to tobacco control.
In May 2014 the Government of Uruguay signed a memorandum of understanding with the Secretariat of the FCTC for the ICCTC to act as a knowledge hub to promote the sharing of information and knowledge on the implementation of the Convention internationally.
The ICCTC’s mission is to pursue implementation of the WHO FCTC globally, with the objective of reducing tobacco consumption prevalence and tobacco smoke exposure and its consequences; promoting capacity development, creating knowledge and resources, and integrating public policies to reach the objectives of the FCTC and its protocols; and promoting FCTC improvement as an instrument to combat the tobacco epidemic.
Some of the actions taken include providing technical support in tobacco cessation to Costa Rica and hosting a meeting on South-South and triangular cooperation to strengthen the implementation of the FCTC. As well as directly corresponding to a decline in tobacco use, increases in tobacco taxation- one of the measures under the FCTC can also serve to strengthen public health systems. For example, in Panama, 50% of the tobacco tax revenue was allocated to public health purposes.
Additionally, the United Nations Organization for South-South Cooperation holds a regular Global South-South Development Expo. This is the only expo solely from the South and for the South and showcases successful Southern-grown development solutions.
Triangular Co-operation
The United Nations defines triangular cooperation as “Southern-driven partnerships between two or more developing countries, supported by a developed country(ies) or multilateral organization(s), to implement development cooperation programmes and projects”.
This type of collaboration involves the facilitation of South-South initiatives by traditional donor countries and multilateral organizations through the provision of funding, training, and management and technological systems.
It can bring together the resources of different actors – providers of development cooperation, partners in South-South cooperation and international organizations to share knowledge and implement projects that support a common goal.
One such goal is pursued through the framework of triangular cooperation is to mainstream a strategy, led by FHI 360, to use the link between cardiovascular disease (CVD) and people living with HIV to leverage HIV health infrastructure in order to treat other chronic diseases.
This strategy acknowledges that CVD is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally and accounts for nearly 30% of deaths in low- and middle-income countries; that the burden of chronic conditions has grown and will continue to place an increasing burden on the health care system and individuals, families and communities affected; and that HIV-positive individuals are at increased risk of CVD due to the effect of both the virus itself and antiretroviral therapy drugs.
In Kenya the CVD/HIV pilot operates through a partnership between the Ministry of Health, the Kenya Cardiac Society and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Findings from the pilot show that health care providers and clients valued the addition of CVD and diabetes services, which patients receive at the same time as HIV screening. In Nigeria the CVD/HIV programme began as a small pilot project within the USAID-funded Global HIV/AIDS Initiative Nigeria.
Due to the success of CVD integration within the context of a HIV chronic care model, the programme has been scaled up in all health services in the country supported by the Strengthening Integrated Delivery of HIV/AIDS Services project.
In Zambia, integrated chronic care screening operates in collaboration with the government, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Community Development, Mother and Child Health through the USAID-funded Zambia Care and Treatment Partnership project.
Screening is provided in HIV counselling and testing, prevention of mother-to-child transmission and antiretroviral therapy. Collaboration between these three countries is even stronger at the subnational level, where implementation takes place.
The FHI 360-led strategy has been so successful at the facility and community level that the ultimate goal has become mainstreaming it to all facilities providing care for people living with HIV. There are a number of benefits gained from mobilizing South–South and triangular cooperation on NCDs.
First, these forms of collaboration allow the voice and bargaining power of developing countries to be strengthened in multilateral negotiations. They also draw on experience and capacity that already exists while at the same time allowing for the development of new capacities in developing countries.
Both South-South and triangular cooperation open additional channels of communication on NCD prevention and treatment between developing countries: this enhances the multiplier effect of technical cooperation, facilitates economic, scientific and technological self-reliance, increases knowledge of and confidence in the capacities available in developing countries, and assists in the coordination of policies on development issues.
An additional benefit of South-South cooperation is that developing countries share similar problems with respect to NCD prevention and treatment, which are different from those experienced by high-income countries.
South-South and triangular cooperation complement North-South cooperation. All forms of collaboration have been integral in working towards the Millennium Development Goals and will be key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. By providing a variety of development practices and policy solutions, building common agendas, taking collective action, and increasing opportunities for development assistance these forms of collaboration also serve to expand the resources available to combat NCDs.
In recent years many events have interpreted the title of the day slightly differently. These have concentrated on the role that modern information technologies, such as the Internet and mobile telephones free from digital divide can play in alerting people and finding solutions to problems of trade and development. One of the specific aims of World Development Information Day was to inform and motivate young people and this change may help to further this aim.
