History

The beginning of international technical cooperation activities in the world, as an auxiliary mechanism for the development of countries, took place at the end of World War II with the Bretton Woods Conference held in July 1944, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were created. 

The first initiatives for structuring regular international cooperation as a whole (scientific, technical, and technological) were motivated by the United Nations due to the need for rebuilding the countries affected by the conflict and accelerating the development of the least industrialized countries.

The term "technical assistance" was instituted in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly, which defined it as the transfer, on a non-commercial basis, of techniques and knowledge through joint implementation of projects by actors with unequal levels of development. Such projects involved expert consulting, staff training, sharing of bibliographic material, donation of equipment, and studies and research. 

In 1959, the UN General Assembly decided to revise the concept of "technical assistance”, replacing it with "technical cooperation”, a term that was more adequate to defining a relationship that, on the one hand, presupposes the existence of unequal parties, and, on the other hand, represents a relationship of exchange, and mutual interests between the parties.

Considering that the lack of adequately trained institutions was a major impediment to development, international cooperation should therefore give priority to institutional capacity building. The existence of technically-qualified national institutions (in the fields of public administration, planning, science and technology, management of government programs, etc.) was considered an essential condition for the continuation of efforts undertaken in the future, and for countries to acquire the desired autonomy. 

The definition of appropriate instruments and mechanisms for implementing international cooperation was the subject of special attention right from the beginning. Technical support, training of human resources, technology sharing, donation of equipment and materials, among other mechanisms, were, and continue to be, widely used to enable international cooperation operations. The main instrument for defining interventions proposed and planning cooperation actions is the project, which is concretized in a document that contains the intended purposes and the necessary means for achieving them, in addition to the rationale of the intervention (logical framework, hypotheses formulated, risks assumed, shared responsibilities, etc.).

Since the project is the instrument par excellence for the correct planning and management of the work to be undertaken, the methodology for drafting it has received special attention from international organizations and bilateral agencies. The methodology developed by the United Nations has become widely used by the most diverse entities operating in the field of technical cooperation. 

The particularities of each modality of cooperation (financial, technical, scientific, technological, etc.) dictated how intensive one or another support mechanism was used. In the case of international technical cooperation, due to its own characteristic of sharing knowledge without any commercial interest, emphasis was placed on specialized consulting, training/capacity development of personnel, and complementing the infrastructure available in beneficiary institutions.

Urged by the United Nations, several developed countries have engaged in cooperation initiatives, a fact that has continued even after the reconstruction of the countries most affected by the war. However, as underlying commercial interests intensified, obstacles to the free flow of technical knowledge began to become more evident. In this scenario, the cooperation provided by international organizations became very attractive when compared to bilateral cooperation, which often limited the areas that could get support from technical cooperation to the donor country’s specific policies. International organizations, especially the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), have provided the means for developing the capacities of developing countries’ governments in strategic areas, by recruiting experts available internationally to work on specific projects, and financially supporting the implementation of the latter.

In the 1970s, the positive experiences acquired by developing countries, which could be shared with other countries facing similar challenges, led the United Nations to develop the concept of "Technical Cooperation Between Developing Countries (TCDC)” or "horizontal cooperation” and promote it worldwide, as opposed to "North - South cooperation”. In 1974, a special unit for TCDC was created within the framework of UNDP, starting studies to promote this type of cooperation. In 1978, the guidelines formulated were proposed at the United Nations Conference on Technical Cooperation Between Developing Countries and their recommendations were adopted in the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA).

Thus, international technical cooperation is an auxiliary instrument for promoting national development and an important mechanism for strengthening relations among countries. With a purpose of contributing to the process of socioeconomic development, technical cooperation provides for the sharing of knowledge between an international organization and a country, or between countries, on a non-commercial basis, with a view to achieving objectives previously defined and agreed upon by the parties involved (embodied in a “Project Document”), regarding a specific topic.

The stage of development that Brazil has reached, in view of several other countries that had been benefiting intensely from international cooperation in recent decades, has led to a situation where some Brazilian institutions have been increasingly demanded by both countries interested in their experience and international organizations. In this respect, and recognizing the importance that international technical cooperation had for its national development, the Brazilian government began providing cooperation abroad by sharing experiences acquired and good practices developed. 

The Brazilian government’s fundamental assumption about technical cooperation received is that it should contribute significantly to both the country's socioeconomic development and its autonomy regarding the fields that such type of cooperation covers. The same idea applies to technical cooperation that Brazil provides to other countries, that is, South-South Cooperation (formerly known as TCDC). The Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC, acronym in Portuguese), under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE, acronym in Portuguese), is the unit responsible for planning, coordinating, negotiating, approving, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating both modalities of Brazil's International Technical Cooperation: cooperation from abroad to Brazil, and cooperation from Brazil abroad. Additionally, ABC operates in accordance with the guidelines of Brazilian foreign policy. Hence, it is worth mentioning that Article 4, Paragraph 9, of the Federal Constitution of Brazil states that “the international relations of the Federative Republic of Brazil are governed", among others, by the principle of “cooperation among peoples for the progress of mankind”.