Int'l webinar on poverty eradication and sustainable development held in Beijing

Abdulla Shahid addresses the South-South Cooperation on Leveraging Knowledge and Good Practice Sharing for Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Development webinar via video, Oct. 21, 2021.

The South-South Cooperation on Leveraging Knowledge and Good Practice Sharing for Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Development webinar was held on Thursday both online and offline in Beijing, capital of China.

Co-organized by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the event aims to provide a platform for sharing knowledge and good practice to achieve SDG 1, which calls for ending poverty in all its forms everywhere. More than 120 international experts and scholars representing think tanks from developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America attended the webinar.

Abdulla Shahid, President of the United Nations General Assembly, highlighted the significance of South-South Cooperation and the discussion at a time when the world faces extreme poverty and chronic hunger exacerbated by the impacts of climate change and COVID-19.

He called for scaling up capacity development and ambition and financing South-South Cooperation initiatives to step up poverty reduction and sustainable development. “The key here is the involvement of all stakeholders, including the private sector, to drive innovation and sustainable investments in green and blue programs.” Shahid stressed.

China's practice of eliminating absolute poverty has directly promoted the process of global poverty reduction, making major contributions to achieving sustainable development and promoting a community with a shared future for mankind, CASS President Xie Fuzhan said in his speech, pledging that his institution will work to implement the Global Development Initiative and deepen exchanges and cooperation with UNOSSC so as to make due contributions to the realization of the United Nations SDGs by 2030.

During the webinar, UNOSSC and CASS signed an MOU to officially formalize partnership and established the Global Coalition of Think Tank Networks for South-South Cooperation.