India, China boycott high-level meeting on global partnership

UNITED NATIONS: India and China boycotted a high-level meeting on global partnership for development cooperation as the two major economies had concerns over the conference's approach to South-South cooperation and the binding nature of the meeting's outcome document.

The first High-level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation ( GPEDC) was held in Mexico City on April 15.

The two-day meeting brought together over 1,500 participants - including heads of State and Government, ministers, parliamentarians and leaders from international organisations, business, civil society and foundations - and built on commitments made at the Fourth High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in 2011 in Busan, Korea.

The global partnership was created at the Busan meeting and had aimed to bring together aid donors and recipients, emerging economies, civil society organisations, private sector companies and foundations in the hope of eradicating poverty through better cooperation.

India and China, however, boycotted the meeting. Sources here told PTI that both India and China had specific issues of concern on aspects relating to developing countries especially with regards to South-South cooperation.

The two sides were also concerned that the Mexico High Level Meeting Communique, adopted after the meeting concluded, would become a "binding input" to UN processes especially when all member states were not present at the meeting.

Even the G-77 bloc, a critical grouping of 133 developing nations, did not participate in the meeting due to concerns with certain provisions of South-South cooperation.

The Mexico comminque also noted that to achieve global development, the international community must "muster" political will for "bold and sustained action" for shared development, improved gender equality, and the promotion and protection of human rights.

Sources pointed out that India has always maintained that poverty eradication should be the main pillar of global development, which should not be linked with issues like human rights protection.

The comminique noted that the principles, commitments, actions and working arrangements agreed in the outcome document of the Busan forum and in the Mexico meeting shall be references for South-South partners on a voluntary basis.

The outcome document noted that the results of the GPEDC meeting would be submitted as "inputs" to "all convergent intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder processes", including the UN Development Cooperation Forum, the UN International Conference on Small Island Developing States, the International Conference on Financing for Development, and the UN deliberations to devise the Post 2015 Development Agenda.

Sources said India had concerns over these aspects of the communique since it linked the messages and results of the GPEDC meeting to other UN processes.