EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

Olga was born 38 years ago in Mexico in the heart of the indigenous community of San Miguel Totolapan in the state of Guerrero. Polio left her with a motor disability that prevents her from walking.

An engineer by training, the difficulties she had to face in finding a job in her field led her to decide to dedicate herself to working to defend the rights of people with disabilities.

In July of this year she participated as an external expert in the opening seminar of Bridging the Gap II, a project funded by the European Union and led by FIIAPP aimed at contributing to socio-economic inclusion, equality and non-discrimination of persons with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries through institutional strengthening and more inclusive and responsible policies.

Participating in the project are three cooperation agencies of the European Union (Austria, Italy and Spain), a European organisation of persons with disabilities (EDF), a network of disability and development organisations (IDDC), the Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation of the European Commission (DG DEVCO), as well as the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights, as observers.

What are the main problems faced by indigenous people with disabilities?

The main problem we face is that this dual identity often makes it unclear which administration is responsible for developing the public policies or the programmes to benefit indigenous people with disabilities. The indigenous people with disabilities themselves also experience this same confusion. Many people within the movement of indigenous peoples identify themselves only as indigenous and not as persons with disabilities, and vice versa.

In addition, our active participation is not highly visible, and often family members, lack of economic resources and lack of accessibility limit our participation.

In the case of women, there is also a situation of triple intersectionality and the risk of multiple discrimination based on gender, indigenous identity and disability. What are the specific challenges of this group? What progress has been made in the situation of indigenous women with disabilities?

Indigenous women mainly face the chauvinistic structures of our autonomous governments, educational backwardness and scant support from other indigenous women. These limitations are multiplied in the case of indigenous women with disabilities because the negotiations regarding their participation in society are initiated in their family environment, where our right to autonomy is often not understood.

What measures need to be taken to ensure that indigenous people with disabilities benefit from the protection of the CDPD (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) in the same ways as other persons with disabilities?

The most important challenge is understanding the legal pluralism that exists within the indigenous systems and not falling into the trap of identifying indigenous communities with rural areas, because this is not always the case and leads, for example, to policies being designed for rural areas that cannot always be applied to indigenous communities living in urban settings.

The rural areas are governed by the legal instruments the State designs. In contrast, indigenous communities are governed by uses and customs established by their ancestors from their origins, and, over time, they gradually add new agreements for social coexistence suitable for new generations.

Additionally, it is necessary to make a rigorous interpretation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples regarding the rights established by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. For example, the Declaration does not mention the issue of accessibility, but it does talk about the right to enjoy our territories, which requires that we have mechanisms that guarantee access to them.

Bridging the Gap II involves the participation of a European organisation for persons with disabilities (EDF) and a network of disability and development organisations (IDDC). How do you feel about the incorporation of civil society organisations in international cooperation projects?

Generally the organisations of persons with disabilities are consulted when the projects require our participation, but we rarely have the economic capacity to get to the places where the information and projects are centralised. That makes it more difficult not only to be consulted but also to participate as direct stakeholders in those processes. Therefore I think that it is a very good thing for civil society organisations to accompany the process or to somehow provide input on the life experience and solutions closest to reality.

You participated as an external guest in the opening seminar of Bridging the Gap II. Tell me about your experience at this meeting. What do you think the main challenges of this project are?

For me it was a wonderful experience because it was the first time I had been able to be present at the kick-off of a major project. I consider the main challenge of this and other projects that work on disability and development issues to be the ability to get good information from the fundamental stakeholders. That’s why it’s very important that the organisations of persons with disabilities or of indigenous peoples include indigenous people with disabilities who are still living in their communities of origin, because many of the social organisations and leaders in this field have never been in an indigenous community and they assume that the needs are the same in all of them. But every community is different, just as an indigenous community is not the same thing as a rural area or an urban setting.

In 2011 Morocco approved by referendum a new constitution which proposes a set of reforms aimed at modernising the state. The main reforms contemplated in the constitution include a reduction of monarchic powers, the creation of the figure of the president of the government, and freedom of religion.  Additionally, in a speech given by Mohammed VI in which he presented the new legal text, the monarch expressed his commitment to making the Moroccan judiciary independent of the executive and legislative branches.

Six years after approval of the constitution, we meet with the Secretary General of Morocco’s Ministry of Justice, Abdelilah Lahkim Bennani, who visited Spain with the aim of learning about the Spanish experience in the area of justice and to use it as a possible reference in future applications of Moroccan legislation.

This visit took place within the framework of the MASAR, Democratic Governance in the Arab World project, a Spanish Cooperation programme in which FIIAPP participates.  The objective of the project is to support democratic processes in nine Arab countries, of which Morocco is one, through the modernisation and strengthening of public institutions, such as the Ministry of Justice of Morocco.

 Where is Morocco in terms of the independence of the judiciary?

We are in a new era with a new perspective, with new guarantees that are aimed at achieving the independence of the judiciary at institutional level, because the autonomy of justice was already indicated in the previous constitutions; we are talking today about institutional independence.

At constitutional level we have managed to promulgate modern law, it can be said that it is the phase of written laws, now is the time when we have the same success in implementation, and to do so we need to build correspondences with legal systems similar to our own.

What is the objective of this visit to Spain?

One of the objectives of this visit is to see the Spanish experience up close; in Morocco we are working to apply the civil laws of the judiciary following enactment of the new constitution and the appointment of the High Council of the Judiciary. Another objective is to make the Moroccan legal system compatible with European legal systems.

Following the application of the laws, we visited several countries to learn firsthand the specificities of each system. We should say that there is no perfect system, that each system has its own characteristics that address its different realities.

After this visit, what aspect of the Spanish legal system do you think you can apply in Morocco?

We have discovered many positive elements in the Spanish experience. For example, the level of transparency of the Transparency Portal of the General Council of the Judiciary. We also saw how the Council works hand in hand with the different judicial bodies; these mechanisms that are applied here can be applied in Morocco with adaptation.

The idea is that we are going to provide the judiciary with the autonomy it requires. But the executive branch will have its primary role in the management of the administrative services of the judiciary, so that this separation of powers that you have between the judicial and administrative branches is similar to the separation mentioned in our written laws.

This does not mean that we are going to copy the Spanish experience exactly, simply draw upon it.

How do you assess the work of international cooperation projects like the MASAR project?

Learning from the know-how of Spanish experts helps us to appreciate the level achieved by the Moroccan system. Often we discover that some options we have adopted spontaneously, without having used any foreign reference, actually coincide with the input of foreign experts.

These programmes are always beneficial, but Morocco’s pace of development is very rapid, and therefore we would like for the programmes to be updated continuously to adapt to the progress Morocco is making under its own steam.

Inmaculada Aguado is the Head of the Support Unit for the Director General of International Cooperation in Spain’s Ministry of Justice. Her collaboration with FIIAPP goes back a long way, since 2005. Up to now she has been responsible for coordinating numerous justice-related international cooperation projects managed by FIIAPP.

Currently her work is focussed on a wide variety of tasks of an institutional nature, such as preparation for visits by foreign delegations wanting to learn about the Spanish experience in the context of justice, negotiation of collaboration agreements with other countries, as well as coordination of the Ministry of Justice’s participation in international projects.

What is the work of the Ministry of Justice in international cooperation?

When we speak of international cooperation in the context of justice, it’s important to differentiate very clearly between international legal cooperation and international development cooperation. With respect to the former, international legal cooperation, it should be noted that legal assistance between countries is essential in a globalised world in which court proceedings increasingly have an extra-territorial component and, therefore, require the collaboration of various countries’ authorities for the prosecution of criminal suspects.

And with respect to international development cooperation, this involves the participation of the Ministry of Justice in justice-related projects with countries with which we have very special relationships. These projects may have very distinct purposes: supporting legislative reforms of criminal codes; the training of judges and prosecutors; the modernisation of justice systems; the creation of courts specialised in certain subjects, such as gender-based violence, etc.

What is the relationship between the Ministry of Justice and European Unión External Action policies? 

At the Ministry of Justice of Spain, we follow the guidelines given to us by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, which in turn aligns itself with EU External Action policies, and we support the strengthening of the rule of law in the countries considered high-priority for Spain. These includes the Ibero-American countries, European countries that aspire to EU membership (the Balkans and Turkey) and the countries whose stability is in our interest, such as those of North Africa, as they are our southern neighbours, and our security depends on their stability and development.

What matter do the justice projects that FIIAPP collaborates in address? 

Currently the Ministry of Justice is participating by leading two Twinning projects with Tunisia and Turkey.

The project with Tunisia’s Ministry of Justice aims to support that ministry in adapting its organisation and operations to the new challenges it is facing, as following the 2011 Revolution it must enact reforms that affect the rule of law following approval of the Constitution of 2014.

We also have another project with the Turkish Ministry of Justice and legal profession to support them in improving their public defence system, in which we are also collaborating with the bar associations of Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia.

Both projects include the participation of ministry employees, judges, prosecutors, justice administration attorneys and lawyers who travel to Tunisia or Turkey for a week to work and share good practices with their Tunisian and Turkish colleagues. We implement these projects in collaboration with other countries, in the case of Tunisia with Italy, and in the case of Turkey with Lithuania and France.

In the time you have been collaborating in this type of projects, have you seen an evolution in cooperation projects? 

Cooperation projects are becoming increasingly ambitious and in, the case of those I typically handle, these are projects that aim to support institutional changes in the countries where we work.

To contribute to real changes, the Spanish experts hold positions of responsibility in the corresponding institutions in Spain, as justice ministry professionals are the people who know how to propose improvements to other countries because they have had to make these reforms. And so they are increasingly asking for more specialised people who know their technical working area (for example, judge training) and also have certain skills for working in different cultural environments and often in another language.

What are the challenges facing justice in a globalised world? 

In a globalised world in which borders no longer exist, not even for criminals, justice administration faces the challenge of finding new mechanisms for fighting new types of crimes, such as cybercrime offenses, as well as those associated with organised crime and terrorism.

To combat these crimes, harmonisation of legislation is necessary, a task that corresponds to the justice ministries, but also collaboration between all professionals working in every part of the criminal justice system, whether at the operative level, through police investigation, or in the prosecution phase, which is the responsibility of prosecutors and judges.

We’re putting the spotlight back on the work being done in the field, and this time we’re interviewing Gerard Muñoz, the coordinator of the project on fighting organised crime and drug trafficking in Peru.

Gerard has been in the country for three years working to improve the capacities of the Peruvian state in criminal and financial intelligence and anti-drug police operations in ports, airports and jungle areas.

This is not the first time he has worked as an expatriate; he did so years ago in Brazil, but this experience is very different to the last one. We let him tell us about it:

Gerard, how has your adaptation to the country been?

Very positive and everything has been a learning experience. When you arrive you have to adapt yourself to the Andean character; the institutional idiosyncrasies, the way of working, the time factors, the chaos in the city, etc. Once you understand all these local codes, you start to develop a greater capacity for understanding, which becomes evident in the results of your work and also on a personal level. It’s all an exercise in social and cultural anthropology.

You have to adapt to local customs. In fact, when we undertake activities in some eminently indigenous zones like Ayacucho or the VRAEM, where Spanish isn’t even the majority language and the state has hardly any presence, you have to be especially flexible with the customs and needs of the beneficiaries.

It cannot be forgotten that this country experienced an internal crisis between 1980 and 2000 that claimed more than 70,000 victims and that there are still active vestiges of the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla movement. That, together with the high levels of citizen insecurity, means that great mistrust exists amongst the population. You have to know how to behave in different environments and adapt to them to avoid committing blunders.

What has been the most difficult thing for you? And the least?

One of the things that can be most testing is getting used to the chaos of a city like Lima, which has more than 10 million inhabitants and is one of the most polluted on the planet. To explain, traffic is infernal and getting from one place to another can take over two hours.

Likewise, there is always the issue of insecurity. You can’t live obsessed with it, but it ends up affecting your freedom of movement, particularly at night. Although once you accept the chaos as normal, you can live pretty normally and when I go back to Europe I even miss it a little.

The thing that was easiest for me is the work dynamic and the adaptation to my colleagues.

Tell us about your work and your day-to-day life. 

The truth is that at work every day is a surprise. The office I coordinate, with eight people in total, is one of the largest FIIAPP has in the field, and naturally absolutely every sort of thing happens to us. Sometimes magic realism falls very short of the mark.

There are days when I have to accompany training or technical assistance activities, do the work of institutional representation or prepare reports for the EU. In the end it’s a question of solving problems, often creatively, and driving the project from the technical, institutional and management standpoint.

Regarding my day-to-day life, traffic restricts your movement and it’s not possible go many places during the week. But I live in a zone where you can do sports, and I appreciate that greatly. At the weekend, it’s another story and you can take advantage of a wider offer of cultural and night-time leisure activities.

How is your relationship with the main office in Madrid? And with your colleagues in Lima?

My relationship with them is practically on a daily basis. The truth is that I’m very grateful for the support I get from the Security and Justice area, which I’ve been a part of for years. In reality, they are my umbilical cord to home.

In Lima, I would call them family members over colleagues, with all the sympathies and antipathies which they imply. In these types of projects, with the issues we deal with, you experience certain situations which form very close bonds.

How would you assess the experience of working as a FIIAPP expatriate in Peru?

 Personally, I’m very happy. Although it’s not the same as at first, I’m still surprised by those little things that seem right out of the novel “Captain Pantoja and the Special Service”, by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa; very far from the reality that we live in Europe.

We once again turn our attention to the field to find out about the experiences of our expatriates. On this occasion we travel to Accra, the capital of Ghana, to interview Inmaculada Zamora.

She is the coordinator of the Accountability, Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption in Ghana (ARAP) project. Inmaculada has been working in Accra since June 2016, when the project began.

This is not the first time she has worked in the field; she has done so on other occasions for AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation) as the general coordinator in Vietnam and the Philippines; in Guatemala as the director of the Antigua Training Centre, and in the Dominican Republic as an expert.

We ask her about her personal experience in Ghana.

How has your adaptation to the country been?

Frankly, this country is comfortable and the personal and social adaptation is mild, even though it is not one of the large African countries but rather a small one with no major tourist attractions.

Ghana has qualities that cannot be found in many of its neighbours: the people are very friendly, and the country is tranquil, safe, and you can move around with a certain ease. In short, it is welcoming and familiar.

From the professional standpoint, it’s another story. There are challenges in terms of the project design, cultural and political issues, and power relationships, which aren’t always easy to understand and address. The construction of relationships of trust with the counterparts is a slow process that has its ups and downs, but we are building bridges and progressing at a good rate. We are pleased.

Tell us about your work and your day-to-day life.

We could say that day-to-day life is very similar, in essence, to what you would experience in any part of the world. With the difference that here professional, personal and social lives are very intertwined, and the lines between them are blurry. Your friends are often the people you work with, and the line between working hours and leisure hours is not as clear as in your own country. You can work in the evening or over the weekend without having the feeling that your life lacks work-life balance.

The usual working hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with an hour for lunch in the middle, but the local people come from very far away and it can take up to three hours to get to work, so they tend to arrive and also leave early. We have meetings almost every day with the counterparts, with other donors, and many team meetings, so really working, reading, writing, thinking and producing documents and actions are often done after hours.

And your personal life?

Accra is an African city that is famous for its very animated nightlife. There are many restaurants, bars with live music and a great deal of evening activity, so at least twice a week you go out to dinner, to have a beer, to experience the city. I take advantage of evenings and weekends to get exercise, read, listen to music and watch films and documentaries, my favourite activities.

There are many shopping centres and you can find almost everything here. During the first months, I would ask my visitors to bring things from Spain because it’s hard to know where to find what you need. But after six months, I’ve discovered that you can find everything, just like anywhere else (except Jabugo ham!).

In what project areas are you most specialised?

My area of specialisation in this project is public sector accountability. My career as a civil servant in Spain and also my international posts have given me a pretty broad and comprehensive perspective of what it is to be ethical in the public sector. Above all, I am very clear about remembering who we work for: citizens, which are the owners of the services we provide, the people who have placed their trust in us so that we can carry out the tasks that they themselves have entrusted to us with the funds they have provided through their taxes.

Transparency towards citizens in administrative actions, their right of access to all types of public information, citizen participation in decision-making, etc., are all mechanisms that citizens should have easy access to in order to demand what the political establishment has promised.

In this area (accountability), the ARAP programme focuses on supporting Ghanaian institutions in the design and implementation of public education campaigns to increase citizen awareness; telling them about their rights and the mechanisms that exist to demand accountability of public authorities.

How is your relationship with the main office in Madrid? And with your colleagues in Ghana?

The relationship with the main office is daily and one of great trust and collaboration. Everything is discussed.

With regard to my colleagues in Ghana, I have to say that formation of the team has been delayed for many reasons in these eight months, and the recent incorporation of all my colleagues has been a great joy, even more so after discovering their capacity for work and personal qualities. I hope that in the years we have left we can address together, with a common vision, the interesting challenges that await us.

How would you assess the experience of working as a FIIAPP expatriate in Ghana?

The first moments are always difficult; setting up an office from scratch presents great challenges. But then the satisfactions are also more certain, more real, more palpable.

Joining the efforts that the local institutions are making and being able to offer what they lack is fairly hands-on work, and you get to feel the small changes that sometimes happen up close and that can trigger chain reactions so that in the end people see the  positive impact on their lives. Witnessing this up close is a marvellous experience.

And I could tell you many more things, but I wanted to sum up by saying that the aspects of this experience that can be more difficult end up seeming insignificant next to its other brilliant and varied facets, which make it an unparalleled experience.

Interview with Inmaculada Zamora, coordinator of the ARAP project, to learn about her experience as an expatriate in Ghana.

Every year, on 8 March, International Women’s Day is celebrated.

Ever since this day was established in 1910 during the Second International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen, on 8 March each year women all over the world occupy their rightful place as protagonists of history thanks to the visibility provided by the media.

So, on a day like today, at FIIAPP we wanted to give a voice to one of these women, Liliana Caballero Durán, Director of the Administrative Department of Public Service (DAFP), an administrative department at the ministerial level dedicated to public employment, public management, service to citizens and transparency.

Liliana has more than 15 years of experience as a public official and 25 advising Colombian public agencies on institutional strengthening processes.

In her position, Liliana has a key role in the reform process on transparency of the Colombian government, which, jointly with FIIAPP, is collaborating in the ACTUE-Colombia project. This is an EU-funded project aimed at preventing and combating corruption more effectively by focussing on transparency and accountability.

A job, in the DAFP and in the ACTUE-Colombia project, which has an extremely important role in the country’s post-conflict situation.

DAFP and the Secretariat of Transparency (ST) are key partners in the ACTUE project, as both institutions have responsibilities in implementation and enforcement, and orientation and promotion of Colombia’s Transparency and Access to Information Act, Anti-corruption Statute and Citizen Participation Statute.

What is the importance of implementation and enforcement of the Transparency and Access to Information Act in Colombia?

It has great importance because this has made it possible to increase people’s trust in the State. All of the legal measures have resulted in gradual cultural changes, such as internal control, accountability, transparency in information… This makes citizens aware of their rights and of how to exercise them.

Additionally, it means that administrations are more careful with information and aware of the obligation to make all types of information available to citizens. That’s why the importance is total, and the idea is not just that these are regulations that have legal mandates and obligations but also that citizens and employees of the public administrations grasp the importance of the regulation, that this becomes natural for them, and that things don’t have to reach the point of sanctions.

How do you think the lives of citizens will improve with these reforms in terms of transparency and citizen participation?

This has two sides. For the government, it is very important that citizens trust the State and the employees of public administrations, so increasing trust is absolutely important because it is very difficult to advance a public policy, no matter how good, if there is no trust in the State and in its employees, because the State, ultimately, is an entelechy, as we say. But public employees are its face; they represent the State. So it is very important that citizens trust them.

And citizens should feel secure in the knowledge that they have access to everything, that there is no secrecy in what is being handled, in budgets. There is a need to communicate and inform on all issues.

Many years ago in Colombia, the obligation of accountability was established.

At first this meant a series of unbearable hearings where only indicators were given, very obtuse language was used and citizens had no way of knowing if the issues were even of interest to them.

Today, citizens are taking a growing interest in what is happening in the public sphere, and this, as I was saying, has the virtue of increasing trust. But the most important part is that it enables the shared responsibility that citizens need to have in public institutions. They shouldn’t be satisfied to simply participate electorally; they have to participate in management and understand that they are jointly responsible.

What concrete measures will be taken in this work so that citizens participate?

Today, the Web is an open space where the citizen can go any time. The decreased need to take care of things in person and the continuous use of technology has made it possible to bring the citizen closer to institutions.

Yesterday, for example, someone asked me about an issue I worked on many years ago, and I asked “how did you know that?” And the person told me it was via Internet.

That’s why the use of media, of technology, but above all the awareness of the State and of public servants, are important. It’s not enough just to be transparent, you also have to appear so; you have to communicate, inform, allow access to information.

The aim is for the citizen to lose this perception of a state that is not only corrupt but, more seriously, a state that creates obstacles and doesn’t think of the citizen. That’s why these types of decisions, like the Transparency Act, help to change this perception.

What are the challenges in your work, particularly in today’s post-conflict Colombia?

I lead the public service, which is an administrative department at the ministerial level that is responsible for issues of institutional structure, public employment, public management, but also something very important, which is transparency, participation and service to citizens.

We direct our efforts towards everything that has to do with public employees. Above all, in things that today are called soft skills, such as learning to engage in dialogue, conflict resolution, how to work in an atmosphere of diversity, etc.

Institutions are very convinced of the need to work in a flexible institutional structure. We can’t apply the same standards to capital cities as we do to post-conflict municipalities. The issue of internal control, transparency and accountability is very important, because precisely in this period of transition it is key.

The conflict in Colombia has been governed by a vicious circle; there is less presence of the State because there is an armed conflict, and there is an armed conflict because there is no State presence. Breaking that circle isn’t easy; we have to prepare ourselves, prepare citizens… but I believe we are all happy to have the possibility of building a country in peace, which we are going to achieve.

You can hear more about the ACTUE-Colombia project on our programme Public Cooperation Around the World on Radio 5, Spanish National Radio.

Colombia y su apuesta por la transparencia