Issues

South Centre Inputs on UN Tax Committee, September 2025

South Centre Inputs on 2025-2029 Work Program of the UN Tax Committee

25 September 2025

The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General appointed a new Membership of the UN Tax Committee to hold office from 2025-2029. This includes Members nominated by Brazil, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, India, Jamaica, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone (all of them are members States of the South Centre). The Committee will hold its first meeting in October in Geneva, Switzerland, and will decide, among other things, the issues they should work on during the tenure of the new members. The Committee also issued a call for inputs to stakeholders to help shape this agenda.

To ensure that the four-year agenda contains topics of importance to South Centre Member States and developing countries more generally, the South Centre made a submission to the Committee which is reproduced below.

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HRC60 Side Event, 25 September 2025

The Role of the Human Rights Council in Advancing the Right to Health: From Guidance to Implementation

Side Event to the 60th Session of the UN Human Rights Council

Organized by the South Centre

Date & Time: 25 September 2025, 15h00-16h00

Venue: Room Concordia 1, Palais des Nations, Geneva

This side event to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council is convened to discuss the critical implementation gap at domestic level of oversight over state obligations related to health, placing the voices and priorities of the Global South at the center of the discourse to chart a course for a more effective approach to advancing the right to health for all.

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SouthViews No. 293, 12 September 2025

Bandung and Beyond: Reclaiming Collective Agency through Triangular Cooperation

By Amitabh Mattoo

Seventy years after the 1955 Bandung Conference, the Global South finds itself once again at a moment of moral and geopolitical reckoning. This article argues that Bandung must be reimagined not as a commemorative episode, but as an evolving framework of collective agency. By placing triangular cooperation at its centre, and by advancing new epistemic and institutional partnerships, we can craft a more inclusive, ethical, and action-oriented multilateralism for the 21st century.

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Research Paper 225, 12 September 2025

Seven Decades After Bandung: The evolving landscape for South-South and Triangular Cooperation

By Danish

Seven decades after the landmark Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, its outcomes and principles continue to guide South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTrC) among the nations of the global South. Despite the current challenges facing global governance, multilateralism and international development cooperation, the Bandung Principles or Dasa sila remain an effective framework for developing countries to work collectively towards achieving peace, economic growth and sustainable development, and creating a democratic and equitable global order fit for the current moment which ensures that no one is left behind. Highlighting the legacy and continued relevance of the Spirit of Bandung for developing countries, this paper looks at some of the important elements that are contributing to the changing landscape for SSTrC; its opportunities, challenges and future trajectories; and how SSTrC could be strengthened at the national, regional and multilateral level for realizing sustainable development in the global South.

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Financial Support for CSOs – AMR WAAW 2025

Financial Support for Civil Society Advocacy during World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week (WAAW) 2025

The South Centre invites applications from civil society organizations and research institutions from developing countries for limited financial funding (maximum 2000 USD) to design and launch or extend impactful advocacy campaigns that engage local government, communities, stakeholders and media to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The scope of the campaigns can be human health, the human-animal interface, use of antimicrobials in food production systems, the role of the environment in the transmission and spread of AMR.

The campaigns should take place during the World AMR Awareness Week 2025. The theme for the World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) 2025 is “Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future”. This year’s WAAW will take place from 18–24 November 2025.

To apply for funding, please complete the application form below and send it to Ms. Caroline Ngome Eneme at ngomeeneme@southcentre.int by 20 September 2025. In case you need more space to provide information on your project, please attach it in a separate document. Any questions about this call can also be sent to this email address.

The selection result will be announced by 15 October 2025.

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SC Statement – Global South Media & Think Tank Forum, 6 September 2025

Intervention by Carlos Correa at the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum, Kunming, 6 September 2025

We were pleased to speak at the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum on the increased weight of the Global South in the world economy and the need for a more assertive role in shaping a more inclusive and fairer international order.

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Policy Brief 145, 5 September 2025

History of the Negotiations of the TRIPS Agreement

By Carlos Correa

When the currently developed countries started their industrialization process, the intellectual property system was very flexible and allowed them to industrialize based on imitation, as it was notably the case of the United States. The international intellectual property system evolved since the end of the XIX Century based on a number of conventions on which the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) was later built on. Developing countries resisted the incorporation into the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of broad disciplines on intellectual property, as they were conscious that they were disadvantaged in terms of science and technology and that a new agreement, with a mechanism to enforce its rules, would freeze the comparative advantages that developed countries enjoyed. Faced with the threat of not getting concessions in agriculture and textiles -that were crucial for their economies- they were finally forced to enter into negotiations of an Agreement, the terms of which were essentially dictated by developed countries. Coercion rather than negotiations among equal partners seems to explain the final adoption of this Agreement.

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WTO Public Forum Working Session, 18 September 2025

Mapping Africa’s Digital Trade: AfCFTA, JSI & AU AI Strategy

WTO Public Forum Working Session 49

Organizer: South Centre

 18 September 2025    10:45-12:00    Room S3

This session explores how Africa is shaping its digital trade future through the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, engagement in WTO e-commerce discussions, and the Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy. It will examine the region’s priorities on data governance, local value creation, and inclusive digital markets, while assessing risks of fragmentation across regimes. Speakers will consider how African countries can assert greater agency in global digital rulemaking and align trade, technology, and development strategies. The session offers a forward-looking perspective on what a fair and inclusive global digital trade architecture could look like from an African and Global South perspective.

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South Centre Working Paper, 1 September 2025

WTO Reform: Rewriting Trade History – The United States as Architect and Beneficiary of the Multilateral Trading System

A Working Paper on Elements of WTO Reform, 1 September 2025 

By Vahini Naidu, Trade for Development Programme, South Centre

This paper examines the revisionist trade narrative advanced by the United States, which portrays multilateral rules as disadvantageous and seeks to justify unilateral tariffs and coercive bilateral arrangements. It demonstrates that the principles of non-discrimination and reciprocity pre-date Bretton Woods and were embedded in the multilateral system through U.S. initiatives from the 1930s through the creation of GATT in 1947. Far from being disadvantaged, the U.S. has consistently shaped and benefitted from the system, including through the Uruguay Round’s expansion of enforceable rules on services, intellectual property, and investment. The analysis shows that the shift toward what has been termed the “Turnberry system” risks fragmenting global markets, eroding the MFN principle, and deepening structural asymmetries that leave developing countries more vulnerable to exclusion. By correcting historical records, the paper underscores the importance of defending multilateral guarantees of equal treatment while building institutional capacity and strategic coordination to better safeguard development priorities in an increasingly contested global order.

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HRC60 Side Event, 8 September 2025

Sustainable Development with an Unsustainable Investor – State Dispute Settlement Mechanism?

Side Event to the 60th Session of the Human Rights Council

Co-organized by the South Centre, Permanent Mission of Honduras in Geneva and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development

Date: Monday, 8 September 2025, 2-3 PM

Venue: Concordia 1, Building A, Palais des Nations

Is the current ISDS mechanism undermining human rights & sustainable development?

Join our HRC60 side event to discuss the impacts and explore fairer alternatives.

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