Valledupar hosted the event called ‘A look at development from the Global South’ with ambassadors and representatives from 18 countries at the Popular University of Cesar (UPC) during this Monday and Tuesday.
At the meeting, EL PILÓN spoke with Eleonora Betancur, director of the Presidential Agency for International Cooperation, APC Colombia, lThe entity of the national government that convened this dialogue between experts and diplomats from Cuba, Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil and Panama, Uruguay, Paraguay, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Germany and Spain.
What is the objective of this look between these countries?
Reflect on the vision of the global south, how countries that are developing, Latin America, but Asia and Africa, have common points and challenges and how we can together support each other in those challenges and exchange knowledge and experiences because we have common problems.
The idea of the event was to talk about various instruments that we have to collaborate, one of them is south-south cooperation, that is, cooperation between peers, between countries that have a similar level of development.
Why in Valledupar?
It seems to us that to talk about development we have to be close to the territories and that vision of territory also reaches us in those spaces of debate. Tourism is a source of economic development, that is why we also decided to hold this event in Cesar, perhaps it would have been easier to do it in Bogotá, perhaps because of less travel, even cheaper due to logistics, but no, we wanted to come here so that other people from Colombia and other countries get to know Valledupar.
These events generate economic development because there are taxis, food, logistics… and that moves the economy. It is a bet on going to the territories, taking them into account in the benefits of these events and having them participate in the discussions.
Many people told us that there were more international places, but that is the idea to internationalize Valledupar, to show the territories and to get to know other parts of Colombia, not always the same. It is a commitment to show that things can be done here, that you are prepared, that the University welcomes us, that the infrastructure works and that we can do things of international stature.
What are those similar points between countries and the challenges?
The challenges are global, but there is still a lot of social inequality in our countries, we are very fragile to climate change…, so there are multiple challenges that we have in terms of the fact that development has not yet reached all territories and there we share the challenge of look for sources of economic financing that help us solve them.
Cooperation is one of them, it is not the only one, but it is also a way to support each other, especially in matters of knowledge on technical issues because cooperation is not how much you give me and that’s it, it’s not about that, it’s also about What do you know, what can you teach me? How can I exchange knowledge on many issues, on climate change, on work, on sports, on various aspects of development and public policies.
What can other countries learn from Cesar and Colombia?
Well, I believe that learning is a two-way street, we can learn a lot and one not only learns from the good things one has done, but also from what one has not done so well. And that’s the idea of knowledge sharing.
I believe that other countries can learn from us and have also come to learn about the architecture that we created for the signing of the peace, for example, creating the Jep, creating institutional bodies within the Government, the Victims Unit…
Last week we had visitors from the Congo, for example, they also had a very strong, very strong war, and they wanted to come here to learn how we have built all these entities and what each entity did.
They went to the Memory Center, they went to the Jepm and they went to all those spaces because they want to replicate those institutions to be able to do those topics in their country, which can also generate spaces of peace, so they are learning from us, from the good, from the bad, of everything we did. I believe that there are many lessons about peace that the world can take from us.
By Andrea Guerra / EL PILÓN.
