Cooperation among developing nations crucial, Assembly President says

To reap the benefits of globalization, countries of the global South must cooperate to achieve development goals and fully integrate into the global economy, the President of the United Nations General Assembly said today.

“Globalization brings opportunities, and has also brought challenges,” President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa told a high-level committee on South-South cooperation that met in New York.

Emerging markets are driving growth in the world economy, which creates new opportunities for the South, she said.

She pointed out that as new economic trends – including patterns of trade, investment, technological collaboration and development aid – emerge, some regions, especially Africa, have yet to be enmeshed in the world economy.

Developing countries with relatively stronger economies must assist their fellow Southern counterparts, especially the most vulnerable developing countries, Sheikha Haya asserted.

“In the face of all these changes however, we must remember that for all the benefits to be sustained they must be shared – by all,” she stated.

Countries of the South must band together to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight targets for slashing social and economic ills by 2015, Sheikha Haya said.

“Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and wider development objectives dealing with the sharp social and economic inequalities that persist is central to our collective global economic stability and prosperity,” she added.