A/HRC/38/40 citizenship that currently holds sway? If the idea of global citizenship is not a valid representation of our current reality, is it a worthy near- to mid-term ideal? What is its relationship to human rights-based international solidarity and the right of peoples and individuals to international solidarity as stated in the draft declaration? Does adherence to these imperatives require us to forge and author one form or another of global citizenship, or are these imperatives necessary consequences of a kind of global citizenship that we already enjoy, however limited and uneven? These are some of the questions that the Independent Expert intends to address and report on during his tenure. G. South-South cooperation as international solidarity 44. The Independent Expert recalls that, in addition to their participation in other forms of multilateral cooperation, States in the global South have for a very long time, at least since the Bandung Conference of 1955,19 sought new and innovative ways to address their peculiar social, economic and environmental problems. This has brought about some important changes in the global order. 45. According to the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, the key feature of South-South cooperation is that it is “initiated, organized and managed by developing countries themselves”. 20 Yet, as the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee has noted, drawing on the work of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation: “non-State actors do actively participate”.21 46. Furthermore, according to the Advisory Committee: “An important goal of this approach to international cooperation is to ‘increase the quantity and enhance the quality of international development cooperation’. And a key benefit of this form of cooperation is the ‘use of experience and capacity that already exists and the development of new capacities in developing countries’. A second benefit is that, as is well recognized now, it tends to rankle less and be received better in the receiving country when the ‘donor’ is a similarly situated country. Another such benefit is that it is often significantly less expensive to execute than other forms of international cooperation.”22 For the Independent Expert, the interconnections between South-South cooperation and human rights-based international solidarity should therefore be obvious. 47. As such, the Independent Expert intends to study and report on the following kinds of questions, some already presaged by the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee: What are the human rights impacts, both positive and negative, of increased South-South cooperation? How can the experience and capacity that already exists within certain countries of the South be deployed, in a spirit of human rights-based solidarity, in other developing countries that are not as endowed in the relevant respect, thereby developing new human rights resource capacities and other positive outcomes in the latter in a less expensive and more effective way? 23 What role, if any, would exist for triangular cooperation in this regard? 24 How can the expertise and legitimacy of non-State actors, particularly civil society organizations, be leveraged to enhance the positive human rights impacts or eliminate any negative human rights impacts from this form of cooperation? The Independent Expert also plans to participate in the second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, in March 2019. 19 20 21 22 23 24 12 See Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri and Vasuki Nesiah, eds., Bandung, Global History and International Law (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017). See http://unossc1.undp.org/sscexpo/content/ssc/about/what_is_ssc.htm. See the preliminary study on the enhancement of international cooperation, available from www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/AdvisoryCommittee/Session12/Pages/Index.aspx. Ibid. Ibid., para. 16. Ibid.