A few weeks ago, I read an interview with anthropologist Arturo Escobar. In it he expresses his ideas on many subjects, including the role of experts and social media. He showed himself to be critical of the social transformation capacity of these communication channels and expressed an unflattering view of experts. Reflecting on his statements, I found myself somewhat in ‘no man’s land’ because, while they seemed on target, my experience raised objections.

Today we are all experts on something. There may be someone who has not accepted it (although our browsing, increasingly specialised and segmented thanks to Google, suggests otherwise), but categories, tags and keywords are here to stay in our digital reality. And up to a certain point, it’s good that there are experts, not because one has to emulate or praise them but because their experience can be very important for others, provided they communicate it.

Direct and personal communication

Before encouraging the experts on development cooperation, and especially those who have not yet started using social media, I will take this opportunity to recall some of the channels and genres that can help them:

·         Blogs

These are spaces that are open to creation, commentary and interaction. In Spain there are various, some journalistic in nature, with a community of contributors (El País or eldiario.es), others started in the world of DNGOs (Pobreza Cero , Fundación CIDEAL and the many run by Spanish DNGOs), by international bodies (World Bank) or the Spanish Public Administration (MAEC which also has created an important document on Digital Diplomacy;FIIAPP, or the Spanish Cooperation portal whose work I would like to promote).

·         Video blogs

This is a genre that still has not taken hold among our experts. It involves a high degree of public exposure (hence the influence of YouTubers) but can also generate greater empathy in the public, more so than the written word. (I’m not aware of any Spanish examples, nor of ones in Spanish, that focus their content on development, so don’t hesitate to point them out in the comments section).

·         Social Media

How networks are used depends a great deal on the characteristics of each channel. Twitter is not the same thing as Instagram, nor Facebook the same as LinkedIn. I recommend starting with Twitter due to its simplicity. There are many examples of good use made by its devotees; at @CooperacionESP we try to follow many accounts that work with diverse styles and objectives. It’s worthwhile to visit numerous profiles before starting one’s own and, always, much better to move into it gradually.

Despite this, many experts, mainly those working in public institutions, hardly use this media to transmit their knowledge. I know that it’s difficult and that there are good reasons as to why they don’t do so:

• Lack of time.
• Fear of public exposure.
• Self-exclusion from communication tasks.
• Rigidity in the institutional structure.
• Lack of confidence in one’s abilities.

However, I don’t just think that this is an error, but that boosting the use of social media would serve to improve institutional communication.

Communicate what you know how to do

I’ll give you an example. Recently I had the good fortune to share my workspace with various experts on diverse subjects, all related to the field of development cooperation.

I had never had the opportunity to learn about Spain’s gender policy, nor the implication of and degree of detail whichmultilateral cooperation requires. The same thing was true for me regarding the coordination of donors within the OECD, the flows of Official Development Assistance, the process of coordination of any position that represents Spain, the commitment to improving health systems and attention to childhood in other countries, or the need to better evaluate our work.

Everyone should know about these subjects, especially if their taxes are supporting them. The difference between me and anyone else is that I had access to an expert.

Spanish Cooperation has a tremendous panel of experts. I’ve been finding this out in the past two years. They have experience in other countries, knowledge, a good network of contacts and a great deal of documentation (that cannot be found on the Internet). In terms of communication, all of this is a rich vein. I think that they can improve the existing communities and strengthen social commitment to cooperation, which is already high.

Implementation of an easy-to-use communication system for experts in public administrations is not terribly complicated; France and the United Kingdom have already done it, and our experts as well, for example, in the field of education for development. That’s why I would like experts and specialists to get more involved in communication. Time is of the essence. I never tire of saying it; they already have the most important thing: knowledge. Transmitting is much easier.

Look at Natalia Lizeth López López. I’m convinced that she will become an expert; in fact she is already a good communicator who we would not know about if not for YouTube. The same is true of many assets from the Spanish Cooperation. (By the way, and this is key, one of its experts ‘told me about’ the link).

Written by Angel González, FIIAPP (Communication- Spanish Cooperation)

In my extensive experience in charge of international relations at the Ombudsman’s Office, which is also the national institution concerned with human rights under terms of the United Nations Organisation, I have been able to see the importance of cooperating in human rights first-hand, not just to merely ensure that the beneficiary countries achieve certain minimum standards of respect and protection for these rights but also to enhance the prestige of Spain abroad.

People talk of “Brand Spain” to showcase to the world the successes achieved by our athletes and companies. But we shouldn’t leave it there: over the past 40 years, Spain has been an example of respect for human rights, and we can show the world how we had an exemplary transition from a dictatorship to a democracy, where we accepted a constitution that establishes the citizen as a subject of rights and established effective mechanisms for their protection. One of the main players in this transition was an extra-judicial institution, the Ombudsman’s Office, which is responsible for ensuring that public administrations respect these rights. Moreover, it is one of the institutions of this type with the most power in the world.

Therefore, I feel especially proud of having been able to help enhance the image and prestige of my country by working in cooperation with human rights in countries of the former Soviet Union, like Kazakhstan and Armenia, and in other ones closer to us, like the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and, most recently Turkey. Through EU Twinning projects, with the invaluable help of FIIAPP, we have helped to start or have strengthened other ombudsman institutions. The importance of sister institutions collaborating wholeheartedly in the same direction, improving action procedures, learning from one another, and thus being able to better serve citizens, the only reason for our existence, is something I understand to be unimpeachable and very positive.

One of our priority objectives is, of course, Ibero-America. The expansive force of human rights has made everyone see the need to intensify collaboration with the ombudsmen in other countries, especially those in Ibero-America by holding meetings within a new organisation that took the name Ibero-American Federation of Ombudsmen (FIO). Its purpose was, and is, to lay the groundwork for fruitful international cooperation, particularly in countries that share a common culture and past. That cooperation is expressed and made concrete through the implementation of practical and effective programmes for training specialised personnel and promoting the establishment and solidity of the ombudsmen in all of the nations in the Ibero-American community.

There is work being done in areas as important as immigration, human trafficking, youth, women and prisons. Precisely this field, that of cooperation in prison matters, and ultimately, the care of Spanish prisoners abroad, is one that can benefit most from Spanish cooperation. It is necessary to make our sister countries in America see that ensuring that sentences are served under humane conditions is as important as fighting crime. This is one of the most important duties we have today.

We also work with countries in the Mediterranean region. The Arab Spring represented a threat to the incipient ombudsman institutions that were being created, but in some countries it is also turning out to be an opportunity to better adapt to international standards. Cooperation with these countries takes place through the Association of Mediterranean Ombudsmen, the purpose of which has always been to give strength and consistency to the ombudsman institutions of the Mediterranean basin, as a secure channel for affirming democracy in the area, as well as to initiate action consisting of international collaboration to cooperate within the framework of the good neighbour policy.

The ombudsman is the friendly voice that listens to us, informs us and, if possible, helps us to improve our lives and solve our problems; and, above all, it is the last hope of dozens of people whom public authorities — culpably, intentionally or accidentally — have passed over them like bulldozers.

Let’s not forget that we are all citizens, whether Spaniards or foreigners, and therefore strengthening our institutions here and there with cooperation projects means strengthening our system of freedoms.

Image of the Chaco

The Gran Chaco is a territory people imagine to be remote, isolated and impenetrable. A land of jaguars, dust, gigantic cacti, lagoons and alligators, it extends over Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and a small slice of Brazil.

Numerous indigenous peoples with different ethnic identities coexist peacefully with other later-established communities, such as Creoles and Mennonites. In addition to the rich cultural diversity, the Chaco is a key area for conservation of biodiversity. However, the model of large-scale extractive development is a rapidly growing threat to the sustainability of the environment and the traditional ways of life of its peoples.

Chaco Ra’anga

Chaco comes the Quechua word chaku, meaning ‘hunting land’. Ra’anga is a Guaraní word that means reflection, image.

Chaco Ra’anga might be translated as ‘The Image of the Chaco’.

The journey

1 month (May, 2015)

3 countries (Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay)

7 vans

27 people travelling with cameras and a great many questions

All of them full of good intentions, although this is not always sufficient.

“No one comes back from the Chaco (he who returns is, in part, a different person)”, Ticio Escobar. El círculo inconcluso, 2014.

 For one month we toured the Chaco, observing large cotton and soybean fields in northern Argentina. The soybean fields continued into Bolivia, accompanied by hydrocarbon operations. Entering the Paraguayan Chaco, endless hectares of cattle ranches.  We came into contact with indigenous communities that have been displaced from their ancestral lands and are fighting to recover their rights, not only territorial but also civil, political, economic, social and cultural.

Despite the environmental and cultural deforestation, we also get to see a Chaco that resists the encroachment of agriculture and livestock operations. There are alternative and sustainable development models that respect the environment, such as family farming, agro-ecology, and the ways of life of the indigenous peoples.

The tour, which allotted ten days per country, also included visits to peasant communities, Mennonite colonies, a gas extraction plant, natural parks, and key sites for recovery of the region’s historical memory.

Based on the field work, the contacts made, the projects of the expedition members and the advisers, we started to work on different components of the project:

– An International Symposium (held in November of last year at the AECID Training Centre in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia).

– An exhibition, ‘Territorio Acotado / Expandido‘,  which opened in April at the Juan de Salazar Spanish Cultural Centre (Paraguay), which will later travel to Spanish Cooperation’s Cultural Centres in Argentina and Bolivia. The exhibition is also slated to come to Spain next year.

– A documentary aimed at giving visibility to the wealth of the Gran Chaco. Click here to watch the preview.

– An interactive website and a book (under development).

The objective is to make the importance of the Gran Chaco and the threats facing the region visible, and to advance in the construction of a global citizenry committed to sustainable development, from a perspective of social justice, with equality and rights, and in a scenario of peace and international cooperation.

The future

It is difficult to evaluate the impact of Chaco Ra’anga in the medium term. As curator Lia Colombino says in the text that accompanies the exhibition: ‘This journey, which still has not finished, this crossing whose itinerary raises more questions than we have asked, has to first change what we are, so that this will not have been just a trip through the territory’.

I close with this phrase because, from my point of view, it is intrinsically linked to the fundamental objective of the project: the formation of citizens who are critical, committed to their environment and to their society. I believe that shared work, cooperative production, and exchanging ways of seeing and doing are things that can be done in response to ever more isolated and isolating presents, and of generating alternatives and commitment to change, not only of thinking but also of realities.

Marta García Moreno, Coordinator of the Chaco Ra’anga project in Paraguay. A project of Spanish Cooperation promoted by the Network of Cultural Centres, through the ACERCA programme and with the support of the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP).

If you want to learn more about the Chaco and the project, go to the blog at: www.chacoraanga.org

You can follow Chaco Ra’anga on social networks:

Facebook: Chaco Ra´anga / Twitter: @ChacoRaanga

It’s still several hours before sun-up and the jeep being driven by an officer in the anti-narcotics directorate is weaving around the sinuous, hairpin curves of a goat trail that will take us from Ayacucho to a government base in the middle of the jungle, near the valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, a territory located northeast of the capital of the Huamanga region.

The landscape is hard, like the people’s faces and characters; it’s a mountain range that gives way to dense and inaccessible jungle as the hours and kilometres go by. Ayacucho, the city we are leaving behind, is where the internal Peruvian conflict began that between 1980 and 2000 left 70,000 dead or missing. The victims included farmers, mayors, leaders and militants of political organisations, teachers, engineers, priests and nuns, labours, journalists, housewives, police officers and members of the armed forces.

Here no one has forgotten. To understand the situation facing us, you simply have to walk through the zone and listen to people tell you how their families were brutally tortured or murdered. It doesn’t take us long to realise that the State is not exactly welcome in these parts.

In Peru, an arroba (11 kg) of coca leaf sells for $45. Each hectare under cultivation can bring a cocalero up to $10,000 per year. Each 265 kg of coca leaf can yield 1 kg of cocaine chlorhydrate (what people sniff), with a total production cost of around $1,200 in Peru.  This same kilo of cocaine is sold by the ‘narco’ in Spain for €36,000; from there, the local dealer cuts it however he chooses and sells it for €60 a gram. Peruvian coca leaf is especially efficient because of its high concentration of alkaloids; for the narco, Peru is a paradise for cultivating coca.

In the coca production zones, there is no transportation infrastructure, no hospitals or clinics, hardly any schools, and, of course, forget about universities or even basic services like drinking water or sewer systems. Many citizens feel abandoned by institutions, and it is the narco who sets the rules.

It’s enough to see the harsh reality of many of the inhabitants of these coca-producing regions to get an idea of what needs to be addressed. According to data from the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion, nominal poverty may affect as much as 60% of the population, and up to 30% of children suffer from malnutrition.

In territories like this one, beyond the reach of the State and with no strong institutions, crime is endemic and it’s a question of survival of the fittest.

After a 10-hour hike, we reach the base, which is a military compound in the middle of the jungle surrounded by a wall topped with barbed wire. The commander, the perfect host, welcomes us and provides us with all the comforts a facility like this has to offer.

The daily routine during the training course is to get up at 5:00 a.m., exercise, eat breakfast, and then start classes at 8:00. The training is on basic investigative techniques and includes a real operation to raid paste pits for coca leaves and a laboratory. There is a 50-minute break for lunch, and at 5:00 p.m. classes are over. At the base, there is nothing to do except jog on the runway off to one side of the facility or go to the gym. Dinner is at 7:00 p.m., and bedtime is 9:30 p.m. My electronic book turns out to be perfect for these occasions.

These types of training courses make a difference. This is the first time the students, normally very young officers who have been posted to a hostile territory, are learning, first-hand, techniques, adapted to their reality, which will improve operational efficiency exponentially. This is vitally important in terms of the handling of evidence to ensure that it is admissable in a trial.

On this occasion, in addition to a theoretical module, the students and instructors took part in a real raid on a laboratory involving an on-the-spot investigation that could lead to the arrest of a narco, or at least satisfactory collection of evidence that can be used against the individual later. Prosecutors also participated in the training course and the operation, providing a more complete vision of all the players in the criminal process.

Now, when the men start trusting you and you spend 24 hours a day with people like this on the front lines of the fight against drugs in the jungle, reality speaks for itself. The problem of drug trafficking is very broad and, although the work done at times like this is vital for preventing traffickers from infiltrating some countries’ institutions, more than they already have, a comprehensive, long-term strategy is needed. This would require courageous decisions at the international level, such as doing away with tax havens, among other measures with high political impact.

Gerard Muñoz, is the coordinator of the project to fight drug trafficking in Peru.

When I landed in Addis Ababa, I had a feeling that many aid workers no doubt experience: ‘I’m coming to contribute with my work, but I will end up learning much more than I give.’ This initial impression was borne out, and that’s one of the things that makes development cooperation so stimulating and educational.

And when the country is Ethiopia, these feelings can be more intense, because it’s a very special country. The altitude, the temperate climate; a conservative culture that dates back to the dawn of Christianity; the tolerance of the people with only occasional animosity between the Christian majority and the sizeable Muslim minority; the absence of European colonisation; and the suffering of the past, still palpable, make it a unique country.

For several years, the Ethiopian government has been committed to achieving universal health coverage and providing access to healthcare services. A public care network currently exists that requires co-payment for each healthcare service received and includes payment exemptions for childbirth, malaria, and extreme poverty. The main challenge is to achieve a level of quality sufficient to make this universal coverage a reality, as people who can afford to, even if it means enormous sacrifices, prefer private healthcare, and the poor endure much greater risks.

When I reviewed the most general demographic and health indicators, I wasn’t really surprised, but confirming the existence of such gaping needs never ceases to be shocking. With a population of over 80 million people, nearly half are under 15 years of age. Preventable transmissible diseases and malnutrition-related disorders continue to be widespread. The infant mortality rate is around 75 per thousand, and 90% of this is due to pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, neonatal complications, malnutrition, and AIDS.

The maternal mortality rate continues to be high, around 600 cases per 100,000, almost always due to avoidable causes. The problems include a shortage of qualified midwives, defects in procedures for referring patients to clinics, substandard care, and a paucity of funds for key services.

One of the principal measures for improving healthcare is financial reform aimed at achieving more efficient, suitable, and equitable care, eliminating the need for patients to pay out-of-pocket in the case of illness, especially in cases of very serious financial difficulties.

The main financial reform measures are the following: allowing healthcare centres to retain their own revenues for use in providing better care; suitable design of a system of payment exemptions for certain cases; outsourcing of non-medical services in healthcare centres; allowing hospitals to have private wings; autonomy for healthcare centres by allowing them to have their own governing bodies; and the use of social insurance to finance the public healthcare system.

The establishment of social insurance as a means of financing healthcare means transitioning from a system where people are bankrupted when illness strikes to one where the policyholder pays only a monthly or annual premium, which transfers the financial risk of getting sick to an insurance company, in this case the Ethiopian Health Insurance Agency. Being a social insurance system, this premium is not affected by age, gender, or pre-existing conditions.

Two schemes are planned for establishment of the insurance coverage, aimed at different segments of the population. A Social Health Insurance scheme for the formal sector: civil servants, public enterprises, and private companies with more than ten employees; and a Community Health Insurance scheme for the informal and agricultural sector.

The Ethiopian Health Insurance Agency is in operation and ready for the Social Health Insurance scheme for the formal sector to begin functioning whenever the government decides; as regards the Community Health Insurance scheme for the informal sector, this is in the pilot phase in various regions with promising results. But the health insurance programme will only be effective if it is financially healthy and has a clear vision of the resources needed to sustain it over the long term.

To achieve this, the central part of our technical assistance involved ensuring that the Agency has the necessary financial management tools, especially for assessment of its financial sustainability and analysis of statistical information, and that the technical staff responsible for these tasks develops the knowledge and skills to do so.

Thus, we developed a computerised model designed to estimate the future income and expenses of health insurance policies for a ten-year period, so that the user can enter data and relevant demographic and economic hypotheses, with the model supplying the desired results. These results are the estimated trends according to the hypotheses put forth, in the form of a ‘what if’ scenario. For people to use this tool, it was also necessary for us to provide training to the technical staff on the accompanying statistical software, methods of calculating payments to hospitals for inpatient treatment, the data needed for income and expense projections, and the financial basis of social health insurance.

With this, we hope that the Ethiopian health insurance scheme will be able to determine and estimate for the future the portion of the population to be covered; the premium rates and other revenues that will be needed; the financial burden on the government as an employer; different operating scenarios with different employment and inflation levels; the evolution of the population structure, the costs of healthcare services, etc.

As part of our project, an Ethiopian delegation travelled to Madrid and Toledo to learn first-hand about the Spanish National Health System and exchange experiences. I know that this visit was enormously helpful for them.

I have the hope that all of this has contributed in some way to improving the prospects for Spanish cooperation with Ethiopia in health.

Juan José Charro is an expert from the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP) who works in the APIA Programme (Support for Inclusive Public Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa), which is managed jointly with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

This year, 2016, marks a momentous five years since of the eruption of this social and political movement which, starting in the impoverished city of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, spread throughout the Arab-Islamic world. Many of its consequences continue to reverberate today. In the context of this more or less significant anniversary, many analyses have emerged, most of them pessimistic in light of the chaotic situation in the Middle East, riven by the Syrian civil war, the rise of DAESH, instability in Libya, the consolidation of modern Islamist parties in some of the countries, and the backward progress of rights and guarantees in others. This post is not intended to deepen or take part in these analyses based on geo-strategy, international relations, or political science by experts in these and other fields. Rather, I am content to pass on my experience over these years as a worker in the area of cooperation with FIIAPP.

After spending 28 months in Tunisia collaborating in the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, particularly in the area of educational and occupational inclusion, since May 2014, I have been very excited to be involved in the management of a new Twinning project with the Kingdom of Morocco.

I left Tunisia having intensely experienced the entire political transition and the constitutional reform period. I arrived just as the results of the parliamentary elections were being announced, and I left a few weeks after approval of the new constitution in a festive atmosphere of great relaxation in which a dynamic and modernising process of political consensus was anticipated.

This new project was concerned with the institutional and technical strengthening of one of the new institutions formed in the constitutional reform process of 2011. With the creation of the Inter-Ministerial Agency for Human Rights, Morocco complied with one of the recommendations of the United Nations: to establish permanent government mechanisms to coordinate the relations of the States Parties to human rights treaties with their respective monitoring bodies.

At the same time, this body, reporting to the Prime Minister, was required to centralise actions for making human rights a cross-cutting issue in the different public policies, in collaboration with the responsible technical departments.  With this decision, and with the creation of a powerful and independent National Human Rights Council, Morocco was implementing one of the recommendations of its internal process of national reconciliation and transitional justice issued by the country’s Equity and Reconciliation Commission. In addition to the 2011 constitution, it established various bodies to provide follow-up and monitoring in the area of human rights, such as the Authority for Parity and the Fight Against All Forms of Discrimination (APALD). And, lastly, the National Plan of Action on Democracy and Human Rights was created in a participatory manner and with international input.

No sooner did I arrive at my post, I had the opportunity to participate in the Second World Forum on Human Rights, hosted by Morocco in Marrakesh, which was attended by delegations and activists from numerous countries. Morocco announced the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment within the framework of intense convention-related activity on the subject, recognising the pseudo-jurisdictional competences of some of the human rights committees and various reservations.

As in the case of Tunisia, optimism and faith in the reform processes, of course, should not be confused with complacency or ignorance of reality. And so, following these major decisions of a “macro” nature, the important and significant tensions that have built up in this process, and which are not easy to resolve, should not be swept under the rug. At times, these tensions have been manifested in open conflicts, such as with Amnesty International in the spring of 2015, or with the European Union itself at the start of this year, or currently in the context of the United Nations. No one can hide or deny the fact that this is not an easy transition, for both internal and external reasons.

From its modest position and the simple contribution institutional cooperation can make, it will be hard for these tensions and difficulties to be overcome. But we do what we can to equip the Public Administration with the means and resources to successfully confront the challenges ahead of it and for which society expects answers and solutions.

As with the Tunisian experience, in Morocco I have been able to work with and personally get to know numerous young people, both men and women, who firmly believe in an intense process of ongoing and stable reforms that will, each in its own way, make it possible to deepen and improve the rule of law and democracy in their country. Young people with tremendous preparation, the majority of which, nevertheless, see a very limited horizon for their expectations and capacities.  But there are also broad sectors that, for different reasons, see some reforms as serious threats to their way of life and what they consider to be their identity. And, lastly, every day I discover how the main concern of a large swathe of society is just to survive each day with the greatest dignity possible in a context of low salaries, high prices, and scarce public services.

In this difficult equilibrium of optimism and realism, my daily experiences in Morocco and Tunisia make me very aware of the difficulties and threats, of the precariousness of the processes unleashed by Mohamed Bouazizis’ self-immolation in December 2010. But also of the responsibilities on both sides of the Mediterranean, as well as our mutual dependency. As the refugee crisis shows us in an extremely raw way, the social, economic, and political stability of our southern neighbours is essential for our own social, economic, and political stability. By weaving together, little by little, the threads of joint work and cooperation, these internal tensions can be dissipated gradually, and we can confront the external issues, because these are common threats. And that is the other big contribution European institutional cooperation, and the Spanish government through FIIAPP, can make today, because working to make Maghrebi institutions more democratic, robust, and transparent will also make for a more democratic, robust, and transparent Europe.

Diego Blázquez is an expert from the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP).