EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

In our second article in the series on FIIAPP Expatriates, we interview Javier Vega-Barral, project officer of Application of the Rule of Law in the Horn of Africa and Yemen since 2016.

The objective of this project is to strengthen capacities and regional cooperation in counter-terrorism in the Horn of Africa and Yemen, focussing on training of the State security forces and their relationship to the rule of law. The project led by FIIAPP, as the European Commission’s delegated entity, includes the participation of agencies from the United Kingdom, France and Italy, and enjoys the support of the Ministry of the Interior (Secretariat of State for Security-SES), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, and the Ministry of Justice.

We talk to him about the project and his personal experience on the ground.

How was your arrival in the country?

I had already been in Nairobi for work, but as part of a short mission. So I already had some idea of the new environment, but obviously that idea was just a small slice of what it really means to be living in Nairobi.

Despite having been informed about my new field assignment in advance, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something I needed to finish before departing. I left my family behind during the first months to prepare for their arrival, but in parallel I was deeply involved in the different project tasks.

I arrived at the Nairobi airport at night, with the project manager (from the Ministry of the Interior) waiting to pick me up. It was raining hard that night, a typical rainy equatorial night. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but it was the first and only night of torrential rains that I had experienced up to then. It marked the end of the “long rains” season, which was especially unrelenting in 2016. But since then, almost all precipitation has been sporadic and has not kept drought from having been declared recently in a good part of Kenya, including Nairobi.

In those first months, I devoted myself exclusively to setting up the project office, establishing relationships with institutions to reinforce the work started by the project manager. I spent my free time arranging my definitive living situation and preparing for my family’s arrival.

What was the hardest thing you faced upon arriving?

The work we do on the ground by definition requires us to be multitaskers. So, at the same time as I was working with the experts on the content of the project, as a FIIAPP representative my main responsibility was to set up the project office and maintain strict control over the allocation and use of project funds.

That task is not just logistical but also one that involves intense institutional relations work. Due to the very nature of the activities and of the project, it’s impossible to separate institutional and personal relationships.

The professional profile of the various people involved makes it a closed and restricted circle in which you have to generate a significant level of trust before the institutions we want to work with will open their doors to us. We can never forget that we are foreigners and that in a matter as delicate as counter-terrorism, establishing a relationship of trust is an urgent and key task for being able to implement what the EU has entrusted to FIIAPP.

Another factor to consider is the fact that the EU is a relatively new actor in the region in terms of security issues. To overcome this unfamiliarity with the EU, it was essential to deploy recognised experts. These experts are from their same professional world and are capable of sharing common experiences, but with different perspectives and approaches, and, ultimately, capable of providing added value to their daily work.

Lastly, I would highlight the fact that, as this is a regional project, we cover an area of 5.7 million km² with a population of 250 million inhabitants with racial, ethnic and religious differences which are often a source of conflict. This work of forming personal relationships implies the need for direct familiarity with the region and the people, and for maintaining contacts over time.

Being located in Nairobi helps to maintain these contacts, the face-to-face aspect, which is so important in local cultures for generating the necessary bonds of trust, and it requires an absolute availability to travel in the region. Due to the region’s infrastructure, these trips can often turn out to be more gruelling treks that you can imagine.

And the easiest part?

I don’t think anything has really been easy, but it is true that we are seeing good acceptance and a positive first assessment of the efforts of the EU, through FIIAPP, and of Spanish public administrations and the member states involved in the implementation of our activities.

On a personal level, I have to say that a Spanish passport opens many doors, or at least keeps them from closing. The reasons are various. Without a doubt, the fact that we have not had a historic presence in the region, the image of our society as an example of coexistence and overcoming backwardness or limitations, and even the positive image associated with the athletic achievements of the last decade, which I call “sport diplomacy”, positively affect our image, and that makes it easier to approach third parties.

How do you rate the experience of working as an expatriate?

Personally, and while it sounds less glamorous, I believe that we expatriates are first and foremost immigrants and that, as such, we face similar situations regardless of the reasons we had for leaving our country. In turn, migration conditions today are totally different; communication media makes it so that, thousands of kilometres away, people can maintain relationships on an almost daily basis with the reality of their country of origin. The expatriate or emigrant becomes an expert on Skype, Whatsapp and FaceTime connections.

In turn, the Internet makes it possible to stay in contact with Spanish society itself. I think that is extremely important, as one of the risks of being far from Spain is that we concentrate on our daily work and forget that we also represent our institutions, and for this reason, it is essential to take the pulse of Spanish and European societies.

Professionally, being abroad is an experience that I can only recommend; it allows contact with other cultures, but also helps you to acquire the ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, which on a professional level means you to have more rapid and flexible responses to the unexpected, especially when working in international or multicultural environments.

And how do you rate doing this through an organisation like FIIAPP?

Working with FIIAPP means having access to the best professionals in the Spanish public administration, and thereby strengthening the presence of Spain, even in places where we previously have not had a significant presence, but which are geo-strategically very important for the EU as a whole and therefore also for our country.

Re-establishing security in the Horn of Africa and strengthening the rule of law should not be considered remote matters, as the impact on Spain can be direct. To illustrate, the majority of maritime traffic from Asia passes through the Red Sea and the waters of the Horn, and places like Valencia and Barcelona are some of the main destination ports for these Asian goods. Likewise, we all have heard about the problems that affected the Spanish fishing fleet some years ago in the Indian Ocean and which led to implementation of Operation Atalanta. Piracy in the region is closely linked to the phenomenon of terrorism. Terrorist recruitment in the Horn of Africa is also worth highlighting, not only in order to operate in the zone but also in order to combat it in the Sahel, and Libya in particular. Therefore, the challenges facing the states of the region are major, which, no doubt, adds relevance to the support provided by FIIAPP.

We would like to know more about the human side of your experience. Is there anything else you want to tell us?

Apart from my activity in FIIAPP, I had the opportunity to become familiar with some associations that focus on promoting employment for single mothers. As is the case all over the world, children are always the most vulnerable members of society. But in Africa this situation is, if possible, even more severe. It’s not rare to see destitute five- to ten-year children wandering the streets. Their powerlessness makes them particularly vulnerable to all types of abuses, and begging becomes their principal means of subsistence. The factors that lead to this situation are various, but in many cases these are the children of single mothers with no employment prospects.

In the area of Kangemi, a slum area, there is an association that does noteworthy work to support mothers, but also children, by increasing household income. An association called Mama Africa started a sewing workshop for women to develop basic skills that will give these women access to employment and to financial resources. Thanks to the efforts of this association, their work can be purchased in a shop located in the Kangemi neighbourhood, and it is also starting to become available in several shops in Nairobi.

We spoke to Lucía Ortiz Sanz, Adviser to the Technical General Secretariat of the Ministry of Employment and Social Security, during her visit to FIIAPP to explain the work of the ministry and its relationship with FIIAPP.

The Ministry of Employment and Social Security, like many other ministries, is one of FIIAPP’s partners and it collaborates by providing experts in the working areas of international cooperation projects.

 What is your work at the international level?

The Ministry of Employment and Social Security, like many departments of the General State Administration, has a wide range of international relationships. These are centred mainly in the European environment, where there are a great many institutions, among which we can highlight Europe’s highest cooperation body for employment issues, the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council and, as a multilateral agency within the scope of the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the employment dialogue and policy agency par excellence.

What is your relationship with the International Labour Organisation?

The ILO’s work is focussed on developing and drafting the conventions and agreements signed by states, such as international treaties. As an ILO member, Spain participates actively in the configuration of these agreements in working groups through conferences, and furthermore each state supervises compliance with these international commitments. That is strictly its work in the legal realm.

On the other hand, there is an entire supervision system that Spain also is part of at the moment, as we are non-permanent members of the Governing Body of the ILO.

We also have an intense relationship with the ILO in the area of cooperation. The ILO has an office in Madrid, something that is not very common, as there are 187 member states and only 40 offices.

In essence, it is a cooperation relationship that is very centred on labour and employment activities where AECID and FIIAPP play a fundamental role along with the ministry.

What international cooperation issues do you typically address?

The issues we address are always within the scope of our competences: development of institutional capacities, to create and strengthen labour institutions; social dialogue, which also helps to strengthen social agents; the entire issue of decent work, a term coined by the ILO that means legal, protected, declared work under decent working conditions; compliance with legal regulations, legislative, regulatory and legal development.

We also work to support basic institutions in the social-labour context, such as employment observatories, public employment services, promotion and strengthening of youth employment, the area of social security as a minimum social protection network, without forgetting the work of labour inspection as a guarantee of regulatory enforcement.

What is the link between the Ministry of Employment and Social Security and FIIAPP?

FIIAPP is our link to EU projects; on various occasions possible Twinning projects have been studied, the last one with Croatia, a Twinning programme with the labour inspection authorities; in fact, this was embraced enthusiastically by the General Inspectorate for Labour and Social Security. The presentation and defence of the project was done jointly with FIIAPP. We were not awarded the project in the end, but it was very important work.

On migration issues there have also been important initiatives in all areas regarding planning for migratory flows. Moreover, FIIAPP tends to call on experts from the ministry for training activities or to receive visitors when delegations come that need social-labour issues explained to them.

I would also like to mention the synergies we have developed in recent years with FIIAPP. The ministry has sections abroad in our embassies, where FIIAPP has explained first-hand the work it does so that the directors and general secretaries can commit to disseminating this work and informing the beneficiary countries of interesting initiatives, such as the Socieux programme, so that the sections end up becoming like antennas that broadcast information.

What is your role in the project FIIAPP is managing in China?

The project reached us around 2012, precisely through FIIAPP, which was looking for partners in a project called EU-China Social Protection Reform.

The Chinese giant, who we all have our eyes on, has been weighing the need for internally-driven growth for years. For this it needs to lift several million people out of poverty and also to guarantee them a minimum income all through life. This income would generate a minimum level of spending and demand. This minimum income is aimed at social protection of the elderly. In a culture where the tradition was to have one child and for this child to take care of the parents in their old age, this is a major change.

FIIAPP called on us to assist in this project, which has three lines: the first more focussed on the issue of pensions, protection and formation of a comprehensive social security system, as China does not have just one social security system; a second component focussed on the issue of use of the Chinese social security reserve fund; and a third more focussed on social protection in the work being done by the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, from the Ministry of Employment and Social Services, which is also the one that absorbs the most money.

How will the 48-month duration of the project be used?

During this time, the European and Chinese counterparts will work on joint activities and pilot projects to test out the possibilities for improving China’s social security system. We, one of the seven EU member states in the consortium, have been present at all the high-level meetings, of which there have been two.

We have received the delegations in extended, two-week study and training visits. A great deal of effort and time has been dedicated to teaching and showing the strengths of the Spanish social security system that we consider could be useful for China. Furthermore, within the process of resizing social security in Europe, we have been one of the countries at the European level which has shown that it is reaching the community level. This has led to a direct relationship with the Chinese counterpart, a very important intensification of our link with the Chinese embassy and Chinese authorities and, above all, a translation of the need for social protection and of our track record of good work in this area.

One of the objectives is to intensify bilateral relations between Spain and China. To this end, China has asked us to create a memorandum of understanding on social security.

Clearly this is an interesting project that puts Spain in a good position in its international relations with China.

In our post this week, we talk to the FIIAPP representative in Brussels, Cecilia Castillo, about our role in the Practitioners´ Network, a network of European Union cooperation agencies formed in 2007 to promote collaboration and knowledge exchange between the various agencies and the European Commission within the scope of European cooperation policy.

In addition to the European Commission, the network is made up of another 14 organisations from 12 Member States of the European Union.

FIIAPP joined the network in 2014 and took a very active role. Previously it was an observer and participated in the discussions of the network, but without voting rights.

Our objective in being in the network is to contribute to the coherence and complementarity of the actions of the different European cooperation actors to improve our efficiency and effectiveness in programme management. This involves sharing the challenges that the agencies are facing at the project implementation level in order to find solutions jointly.

What advantages does participation in this network have for FIIAPP?

The first-hand access to trends and the major discussions about European development cooperation. This is facilitated by the fact that the European Commission itself is one of the members of the network. And also the exchange of experiences with all the other agencies is very important to FIIAPP in a context as volatile as that of cooperation.

For example, the agencies in the network jointly negotiated a contract model applicable to projects funded by the European Union. The large agencies have large well-staffed departments that take care of these matters and make their analyses and conclusions available to the rest of the members. Based on this, there is discussion and adoption of a common position with respect to the European Commission. Many of the agencies would be unable to even begin to assess these changes, and thanks to the network they not only can analyse and comprehend them but also defend their position and have greater strength because they are going in with another 13 agencies.

One of the main advantages of participating in this network is the chance to participate in and influence the key discussions about items on the cooperation agenda, such as reform of the European Consensus on Development (policy framework) and reform of the Financial Regulation (legal framework applicable to all programmes and projects that receive European funds). It has also allowed us to participate in improving how the Fiduciary Funds function.

What is FIIAPP’s contribution to the Practitioners´ Network?

We contribute a fresh and different point of view. On one hand, we are specialised in programmes for exchange of experiences between administrations and in the work of public technical cooperation. On the other, the majority of the agencies are national cooperation agencies, with the rigidity that characterises these organisations which are very accustomed to their own practices and procedures. FIIAPP, in contrast, being a foundation, has a flexibility that allows us to be more agile, and this characteristic is very important in the current situation where rapid actions are required.

Could you highlight some activities that the network organises each year?

The most important event of the year, which brings together the most senior representatives of the agencies and of the European Commission, is the General Assembly. It is held over two days. On the first day, prominent figures working in European cooperation talk about the hot topics; in 2016 these were countries in crisis and fragility and modes of cooperation. On the second day, operational matters of the network are addressed, such as the strategic priorities that will give rise to the working groups for the year.

In the framework of the working groups, there is discussion and negotiation with the European Commission; workshops and periodic meetings are organised; position papers and studies are prepared, etc. And this connects with the visibility actions for publicising the work of the network and its added value.

What are the challenges of the network for the future?

The most important challenge the network is facing at the moment is joint implementation. And this challenge arises out of the current European cooperation panorama, in which cooperation programmes are increasingly ambitious and the European Commission has less implementation capacity. In this context, a narrower and more effective cooperation on the part of the various European agencies becomes necessary. Along these lines, the directors of the agencies of the network signed a statement on joint implementation in November. This statement represents a clear intention on the part of the organisations to join forces, take advantage of the best of each one and to complement each other so that the resources and specialisation of each are used effectively and lead to better outcomes in the countries where we work. To do this, we are working now on the framework of one of the working groups, “effective partnerships”, of the network. It’s complicated because of the different nature of the agencies, and it requires considerable effort, but we have high hopes for it.

And, in terms of long-term challenges, the network will try to contribute to the commitments agreed to internationally (sustainable development and development effectiveness goals). And we are also working to increase the participation and influence of European development agencies on the international scene.

Vanessa Untiedt lives in Ankara, Turkey, since 16th June 2016. She is a lawyer with the Spanish Justice Administration and a FIIAPP special envoy to Turkey. There, she worked on a Twinning project funded by the European Union aimed at strengthening the free legal aid system in the country.

Before Turkey, she had other opportunities to work in the field, in Croatia, Ukraine, Romania and Albania, but this is her first experience of long-duration.

At FIIAPP, we want to hear about her experience in the field.

This is the first in a series of interviews of expatriates working on FIIAPP projects in which they tell us about their field experiences with a personal and more human focus.

How has your adaptation to the country been?

My adaptation has been great. I came with my husband and three small children. They are going to the German school. We have met many people from different countries: Italy, France, United Kingdom, Laos, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Nicaragua… the experience is proving to be very enriching.

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

The hardest thing for me has been the political situation of the country. The coup occurred when I had been in Ankara for less than a month, and under those circumstances convincing your family in Spain that the situation is safe and you’re not going to abandon the project… is no easy task.

The least difficult thing? The day-to-day routine, the city, its rhythms and its customs. And, Turkey is a marvellous place for travelling, with so many places to discover.

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

My day-to-day experience at work depends a great deal on whether I’m working on an activity involving experts or not.

When you’re not implementing an activity, you have to be organising upcoming ones, thinking about how best to achieve the project objective, setting new objectives, locating the specialists who will be coming here to work, and explaining to them in detail what their task consists of.

When you’re implementing the activity, the week is full of meetings, seminars, conferences, workshops, and the pace is frenetic.

In what project areas are you most specialised?

The project has to do with free legal aid and, as a Justice Administration lawyer, I’m specialised in the relationship between free legal aid and the court, and between the court and the person who requests free legal aid.

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

I have a stupendous relationship with the main office in Madrid. I have daily contact with Esther Utrilla, who always answers my questions and is on the other side to listen to me and help me. Carolina Morales, Eva Aranda and, now, María Gutiérrez… The truth is that it’s a fantastic team.

In Ankara, I work in the Ministry of Justice and have two beneficiaries: the ministry itself and the country’s bar association. The relationship with them is not bad, but as there is a need to negotiate a great many things with both institutions, it’s not always easy.

In my office, my team is excellent. The project assistant and the interpreter are very helpful and we get along quite well, which makes our day-to-day work easier. In addition, the beneficiary country also has a resident consultant, a very hard-working judge.  Lastly, the bar association also has a contact person with whom I work closely and very fluidly.

How would you rate the experience of working as a FIIAPP expatriate in Turkey?

Professionally, it’s the best experience I’ve ever had. Often it’s very stressful, other times it’s extremely frustrating because you ask yourself if the objectives are really going to be achieved. But then you realise that you are making progress, and that makes you feel completely satisfied. Every small achievement is a step forward that brings you closer to the objective.

Personally, my family and I are fully integrated into life in Ankara. We’ve become part of a fairly large group of people and we know people from different countries and cultures, which is enriching.

Is there anything else about your experience in the country that you would like to highlight?

Yes, I would like to say that being in Turkey and seeing the drama of the refugees up close, my husband and a group of volunteers are collaborating with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.  They meet at someone’s house and prepare sandwiches for 100 people, 100 bottles of juice and 100 pieces of fruit, and they take all that to one of the Agency’s centres in Ankara, where the refugees have to wait for hours to get the compulsory interview to obtain legal refugee status. There’s a huge waiting room where entire families wait their turn. Seeing that there were so many children, and since the project I’m working involves contact with NGOs, a group of third-graders from the German school of Tenerife bought small toys which we’ve taken over to give to the children with the sandwiches.

It’s marvellous to unite: Spain – Turkey/Solidarity – children – refugees. Always with the project as the nexus, as we’ve gotten in contact through the NGOs we work with to study the possibility of handing out the toys.

Listen to our show Public Cooperation Around the World, on Radio 5 (RNE), to hear more about the project Vanessa is working on in Turkey:

Acceso gratuito a la justicia en Turquía

The first Twinnings began in May, 1998, when the countries of Eastern Europe entered Europe to make them better prepared for the enlargement of the European Union.

It is a specific type of project in which Spain occupies third place in the European Union in terms of the budget implemented, and fourth in projects won. Specifically, Spain implements 10% of the projects that circulate.

To better understand their purpose and the types of projects that exist, we talked to Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga, National Contact Point for Twinnings at Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

What are the European Union’s Twinning programmes?

The Twinning programmes of the European Commission are institutional cooperation programmes that are funded by the European Commission from the EU external action budget.

They represent a very particular type of funding. Specifically, they are from public administration to public administration. They must be implemented by and for agencies that are part of, or are themselves, public administrations, and they are managed by civil servants.

They are also results-oriented, which means that the two parties, both the administration that wins the project and the beneficiary administration, commit to achieving a series of results in a contract signed in advance.

Furthermore the defining feature of Twinnings is that the two parties, in addition to making a commitment, work together.

How do they function?

Well, a civil servant from the administration that wins the project relocates temporarily to the site of the other administration for one to two years, depending on the Twinning, and helps the civil servants there develop, work on and promote European Union legislation.

What is the purpose of Twinnings?

It´s cooperation between the different administrations. It’s to improve the administrative capacities of other beneficiary countries. It’s to bring these beneficiaries up to European standards so that they function increasingly better.

And it’s to export our experience, our working methods and our fundamental values, such as democracy or human rights. It’s to bring these neighbours closer to the EU acquis. In all sectors, from the justice sector, which is generally the one with the most Twinnings, to finance, energy, structural funds, consumer protection, etc.

Could you give us an example of a project FIIAPP is participating in?

We have a Twinning in Algeria for setting up a Directorate-General of Traffic (DGT), as no organisation currently exists there to regulate this area. So we have sent a civil servant from Spain’s DGT to Algeria to help set up a DGT over the next two years, and to look at how to improve traffic and reduce traffic deaths in that country.

Listen to our radio programme, Public Cooperation Around the World, on Radio 5 (RNE), about Twinnings here.

The 20th is the third Sunday in November and, as every year, it is the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, a date established by the United Nations to commemorate traffic accident victims and their families. Reducing the number of traffic accidents is also one of the goals of the European Union.

In 2010, the European Commission adopted the Road Safety Action Plan with the aim of halving the number of traffic accident victims by 2020. The road safety project in Algeria arose within the framework of this action programme. Carmen Girón, Head of the International Relations Area of the DGT is the coordinator of the Twinning project in Spain.

What is the overall objective of the project in Algeria?

It is a Twinning project funded by the European Commission within the good neighbour policy with other countries. And specifically what it seeks to do is to enhance and support road safety policies through twinning, in this case with our colleagues, the Algerian authorities in charge of promoting road safety in their country.

What are the expected outcomes of this project?

This Twinning can be specifically explained in five outcomes, because that’s how it was designed by the European Commission and subsequently agreed upon reciprocally between Algeria and Spain.

A first macro outcome refers to the organisation, the foundation and the base for making it work to address how this organisation should be structured, what powers it should have, how to coordinate with other bodies at the national level, and what  legislation is to be developed.

A second step is to have reliable information about the number of accidents and the accident rate in the country. Data that can be utilised by the public authority responsible for promoting road safety is fundamental and, this being the case, Spain is playing an important role, because of its experience, in relation to Algeria. And we are working hand in hand with them, advising them on how to collect, process and analyse the data in the case of a traffic accident in order to be able to ultimately establish a policy at the national level.

A third area is everything related to the safety conditions of people who participate in road traffic. In this case, particular attention is paid to drivers, addressing the training they should have in order to obtain driving licenses, covering theoretical and practical content and the methodologies to be used for giving tests.

There is also a very concrete aspect which is driver education extended to the entire population linked to road safety awareness campaigns.

Lastly, there is the outcome that addresses legislation and the technical procedures for inspection for upgrading vehicles, that is, to ensure that they meet the necessary technical requirements for safe driving, and treatment of the risks associated with road infrastructure.

What is the action framework for the project?

At the international level, it is under the reference framework of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, which is always understood as an umbrella of a policy for promoting road safety within the scope of the EU’s international cooperation.

Are there any outcomes to be highlighted?

We have now reached the midpoint of the Twinning project, and training and technical assistance missions have been carried out by expert Spanish civil servants, mainly professionals working in the Directorate-General of Traffic and the Civil Guard Traffic Group. Moreover experts from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, the Ministry of Industry and city halls will be joining in.

What is the work of the Directorate-General of Traffic internationally?

It participates actively in all the international technical groups for improving road safety. In the WHO global status reports on road safety from 2013 and 2015, Spain is ranked in the top tier of countries with the best road safety in the world, which is no obstacle against continuing to work to achieve even better levels of road safety.

Additionally, in international cooperation it is responding to the request of the UN Secretary General that the countries with the best road safety situations lend other countries a hand, as other countries did with us in the past. And so, for example, in 2011, the UN specifically highlighted the protective work of the DGT with other countries, particularly in Latin America, to promote and improve road safety.

It also should be remembered that we are not just working in Latin America or within the scope of the EU. We also respond to bilateral requests from countries that are identified as priority and strategic for Spain’s external action, something that is set by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.