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Amid so many other United Nations events this September, headlined by the procession of national leaders addressing the General Assembly, it would be easy to miss the celebration of the U.N. Day for South-South Cooperation on Sept. 12. Slotted inconveniently late on a Friday afternoon—well before most world leaders arrive the following week—the event will mark the 47th anniversary of the adoption of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation Among Developing Countries (mercifully shortened to BAPA).

The U.N. celebration is just one example of the growing calls for a renewal of south-south cooperation, the tradition of developing countries relying less on the industrialized world than themselves for their path to material progress. But are these renewed calls up to the task of charting a new path through the current crisis in international development?

Amid so many other United Nations events this September, headlined by the procession of national leaders addressing the General Assembly, it would be easy to miss the celebration of the U.N. Day for South-South Cooperation on Sept. 12. Slotted inconveniently late on a Friday afternoon—well before most world leaders arrive the following week—the event will mark the 47th anniversary of the adoption of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation Among Developing Countries (mercifully shortened to BAPA).

The U.N. celebration is just one example of the growing calls for a renewal of south-south cooperation, the tradition of developing countries relying less on the industrialized world than themselves for their path to material progress. But are these renewed calls up to the task of charting a new path through the current crisis in international development?

The situation for traditional development looks bleak. The spectacular destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest (and depending on definitions the oldest) bilateral aid organization in the world, captured headlines this year, but other warning signs about bilateral aid abound. Even stalwart agencies in countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have instituted significant cuts in bilateral assistance.

The consulting firm McKinsey and Co. estimates that the new steady state could easily end with aid up to 22 percent below current levels; it calls this a “generational shift” that goes well beyond the cruelty-by-design efforts of the Trump administration. In such an environment, encouraging poorer countries to engage in collective self-help seems one of the few avenues still open. But is it enough?

Over its many decades, south-south cooperation has blossomed in moments of crisis. It came into being, and has persisted, as an idealist movement born of harsh realities. With faint echoes for calls to revolution—“Poor countries of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains”—proponents hoped that building solidarity and self-reliance could protect them from the apathy (or even antipathy) of the global north as well as from global economic headwinds. In such settings, cooperation within the global south functioned as a consolation prize—and a potent symbol of the distance between the global south’s aspirations and its options. This may well be the case for present-day south-south cooperation efforts.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon dances with Guaraní Indigenous women during a visit to Bolivia on June 13, 2014, ahead of the G-77 China summit.Aizar Raldes/AFP via Getty Images

Calls for cooperation of the have-nots date back at least to the 1920s, decades before the term “global south” came into common usage. Anti-colonial activists found common cause, and the Soviet-supported League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression brought together leading nationalists from Europe’s colonies. And South Asian lawyers crisscrossed the British Empire

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