Since the 1960s technical cooperation has come to include various approaches within both bilateral and multilateral relations. In the UN system the concept known as horizontal cooperation has brought new development aid profiles and helped enhance the social impact of development.
Traditional international technical cooperation (ITC) has reached a point where some beneficiary countries have learnt sufficiently from efforts to achieve social impact through ITC and have mastered techniques that they can now pass on to other countries to promote this learning process. This is known as south-south cooperation.
Most countries that are now donor countries to the UN system and to the ILO in the past benefited from traditional cooperation. One case is Brazil, which has learned a great deal from such cooperation, notably under the multilateral framework, and is now ready to pay back some of the intensive flow of international contribution to its peer countries and to other countries that receive low levels of support from traditional donors. Over the last two years Brazil has been
promoting horizontal cooperation in African Portuguese-speaking countries and Haiti, sharing its experience and technical knowledge on mechanisms to fight child labour.
Since 2005, the ILO has assisted the Government of Brazil in initiating more systematic horizontal cooperation in the field of child labour with Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. The Office signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Brazil on 14 December 2007 to guide the future development of this important South-South initiative in a spirit of equality and non-discrimination with the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work at its core. Its most recent achievement is Brazil's agreement finance projects in Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Timor Leste (see box, right) following the conclusion of a framework agreement with the ILO in March 2009.
28 October 2009 – Under the agreement signed with the ILO in March, the Government of Brazil today signed agreements for projects under the south-south initiative with the ILO and partner countries (Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Timor Leste) to promote decent work, eradicate child labour and strengthen social protection.
