The Second Session of the Regional Conference on South-South Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean will be held on June 17-18, 2025, bringing together representatives of the region’s countries, the United Nations system, and regional and international organizations. 

Representatives of government, the United Nations system, and regional and international organizations will analyze the challenges of international cooperation in shaping the new regional and global context during the Second Session of the Regional Conference on South-South Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will take place on June 17-18, 2025.

The intergovernmental meeting will be inaugurated on Tuesday, June 17 at 10:00 a.m. Chile time (GMT -4) by José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); Dima Al-Khatib, Director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC); and Mateo Estremé, Director-General of International Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship of Argentina, in his capacity as Chair of the First Meeting of the Conference.

At this event, participants will engage in five panel discussions addressing issues such as the quantification of South-South cooperation to mobilize funds for development; gender mainstreaming in international cooperation for development in Latin America and the Caribbean; international cooperation in comprehensive management of risks and disasters; international cooperation and the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (Seville, Spain, June 30-July 3, 2025); and enhancing United Nations system-wide coordination on South-South cooperation. In addition, the delegations will elect the Regional Conference’s Presiding Officers for the 2025-2027 period.

In the run-up to the conference, on Monday, June 16, the Forum on gender mainstreaming in international cooperation for development in Latin America and the Caribbean will be held. This event will bring together specialists to exchange experiences and proposals aimed at increasing cooperation and financing for achieving gender equality, as well as mainstreaming the gender perspective in cooperation policies and programmes. 

The Regional Conference on South-South Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean was established by virtue of resolution 752(PLEN.36), approved by member countries at the thirty-sixth session of ECLAC’s Committee of the Whole in December 2021.

Some of the objectives of this subsidiary body of ECLAC are to strengthen national South-South cooperation mechanisms and possible linkages with North-South and multilateral cooperation; to further South-South and triangular cooperation among regional and extraregional stakeholders, including donor countries and international organizations, to facilitate technology and knowledge transfer and joint activities in the field of cooperation; and to examine the experiences of South-South and triangular cooperation in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and make progress in evaluating them, in conjunction with the relevant subsidiary bodies that conduct studies in this field.

The programme of the Second Session of the Regional Conference on South-South Cooperation, along with participant registration, is available on the event’s special website: https://conferenciacss.cepal.org/2/en

The session’s official activities can be followed live online via the meeting’s website, ECLAC’s official website www.cepal.org, the webpage https://live.cepal.org/cooperacionsursur  and the Commission’s institutional accounts on X (https://twitter.com/cepal_onu) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/cepal.onu).