EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

With good reason, the equality of men and women and protecting women from violence occupies a leading role in the European Union-Latin America Dialogue. The efforts of public authorities and civil society on both sides of the Atlantic continue to be focused on reducing the incidence of a culturally-rooted phenomenon based on persistent inequality, how power is understood and the way that relationships between men and women have historically been structured. The challenge is therefore immense and represents one of the most important hurdles facing institutions, organizations and public decision-makers in the last two decades. The kick-off milestone for American countries was the Belem do Pará Convention on preventing, penalizing and eradicating violence against women, the 20th anniversary of which happens to be this year.

EUROsociAL accompanies institutions in the justice, security, health, employment and education sectors in the region as they explore and deepen public policy solutions to tackle a problem that is both global and multifaceted in its manifestations. The contributions have been varied, from national to regional, ranging from legislative support to the construction of coordination mechanisms and statistical measurement. Here are some of the most significant ones:

April 2008.The Congress of the Republic of Guatemala approves the Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women.

March 2009. Costa Rica launches the Unified System of Statistical Measurement for Gender Violence.

November 2013. In the AIAMP (Ibero-American Association of Public Ministries), 20 Ibero-American Public Ministries approve the Regional protocol for applying a gender perspective in the investigation of violent crimes against women committed in the family setting.

September 2014-February 2015. Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay adopt the regional investigation protocol nationally through instruments adapted to the realities of each country affecting investigation by the Public Ministry and its coordination with the police and security forces.

The work from institutions and for institutions at times leaves unaddressed the matter of improving people’s living conditions—the ultimate objective of policies that often require lengthier processes to materialize—in terms of implementation on the ground. EUROsociAL already has a perspective based on 10 years of work in Latin America through its two phases and verification that women now have more mechanisms and resources to ensure their access to justice and social services when victimized by gender violence.

The work perspective for 2015 includes improvement of assistance services to victims of violence in seven countries in the region, within the framework of the protocol for comprehensive assistance to victims backed by the Conference of Ministers of Justice of the Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB), and promotion of over 30 institutions in different sectors involved in this process at the national level.

This European project isworking in countries like Senegal. Senegal has a bay, Hann Bay, which is an example of how environmental pollution can endanger public health. A water treatment plant needs to be installed to clean up all the pollution and filter the water before it reaches the sea.

But we’re not just talking about pollution. The “Management of hazardous chemical and biological waste in the African Atlantic Façade region and Tunisia” project must confront another great problem.The Ebola virus has emerged in some of the countries involved (Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Gabon and Tunisia). Poor handling of biological wastes increases the possibilities of Ebola infection. For this reason, the project will include the fight against the virus among its objectives and activities.

This project is being financed by the European Union as part of the CBRN Excellence Centres initiative.

The current outbreak of Ebola is the largest in history and the first to occur in West African countries. It is affecting several countries in this region (Liberia, Guinea Conakry and Sierra Leone). Because of the way the virus is spread, it does not represent a significant risk for countries distant from the African continent or for the rest of the world.

As of 1st October, the number of reported cases and deaths are as follows:

– Guinea: 1,199 cases and 739 deaths;
– Liberia: 3,834 cases and 2,069 deaths;
– Sierra Leone: 2,437 cases and 623 deaths;
– Nigeria: 20 cases and 8 deaths (latest case confirmed in Lagos on 5th September, 2014)
– Senegal: 1 case, no deaths. Case confirmed on 28th August, 2014

On 6th October, Spanish authorities reported one confirmed case of Ebola in a healthcare professional who participated in the treatment of a Spanish citizen infected with Ebola in Africa and repatriated to Spain. The infection of this nurse’s aide represents the first case of transmission of the Ebola virus in the European Union.

What is Ebola virus disease?
This fatal and rare disease is caused by infection with one of the strains of the Ebola virus (Zaire, Sudan, Bundibugyo or Taï Forest ebolavirus). The Ebola viruses are found in several African countries. The Ebola virus was discovered in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since then, there have been sporadic outbreaks of Ebola in various African countries.

What are the signs and symptoms of Ebola virus disease?
The signs and symptoms of Ebola include fever (above 38.6°C) intense headache, muscular aches, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain or unexplained bleeding or bruising. The symptoms may appear between 2 and 21 days after exposure to the Ebola virus, but most commonly appear between 8 and 10 days.

How the Ebola virus is spread
The virus is transmitted through direct contact (through broken skin or cuts, or mucous membranes) with the blood or bodily fluids (urine, faeces, saliva, vomit or semen) of a person who has Ebola virus disease; or through animals (game), monkeys, apes and bats; or with objects, such as needles, contaminated with the virus. The Ebola virus is not transmitted through air or water or, in general, through food; nevertheless, in Africa the Ebola virus can be spread through the handling of meat from wild animals (game) and contact with infected bats.
There is no evidence that it can be spread by mosquitoes or other insects.

Who is most at risk of contracting Ebola?
Healthcare professional who treat patients who have Ebola virus disease, and the family members and friends of infected people who are in close contact with sick people through transmission via blood or other bodily fluids.

Can I catch Ebola from an infected person who does not have a fever or show any symptoms?
No. People infected with the Ebola virus are not contagious until symptoms appear.

Can an Ebola survivor still spread the disease after recovery?
People who recover from Ebola can no longer spread the virus. Nevertheless, the Ebola virus can be found in semen for up to three months. It is recommended that people who have recovered from Ebola abstain from sexual relations or use condoms for the following three months.

How is Ebola treated?
There is no vaccine or specific drug that has been proven to prevent or cure Ebola. The signs and symptoms of Ebola are treated as they appear. The following basic treatment measures can increase the probability of survival if used from the beginning.

– Administer fluids and electrolytes.
– Maintain adequate oxygen and blood pressure levels.
– Treat other infections that appear.

It is important to detect Ebola early in order to provide adequate care to the patient and to prevent the infection from spreading.

How can I protect myself from the Ebola virus?
If you are currently in an area affected by an outbreak of Ebola, or are going to travel to one, you can protect yourself by taking the following measures:

– Wash your hands frequently.
– Avoid any contact with the blood and bodily fluids of any person,
especially anyone who is ill.
– Do not touch objects that may have come into contact with the blood or
bodily fluids of someone who is infected.
– Do not touch the body of any person who has died of
Ebola.
– Do not touch bats or non-human primates or their blood or bodily
fluids, and do not touch or eat raw meat from
these animals.
– Avoid going to hospitals where patients with Ebola
are being treated.
– Seek medical attention immediately if any of the signs or symptoms of
the disease appear
– Limit your contact with other people until you can see a doctor.
Do not travel or go anywhere except to go to a centre for
medical treatment.

The World Health Organisation has issued an advisory for travellers going to or returning from affected zones. More information here.

A TV ad for an airline and a video clip for a Nigerien singer. These were just two of the projects brought to life by a group of ten Nigeriens after a month of training in audio-visual production under the umbrella of the ACERCA cultural programmeof the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). Training opportunities in this sector in Niger are not abundant and the workshop was free of charge. Result of the demand: a waiting list. The ten students selected for the workshop, all professionals in the audio-visual and journalism sector, were trained in scouting shooting locations, staging, filming and editing.

This programme, with the support of the FIIAPP, has been promoting culture as an engine of development for the past decade. “After completing the training, I think that we will be able to produce professional video clips of local artists, and also advertisements on the same level as international ones”, explains Mohamed Elquedir, a 33-year-old workshop participant. This translates, for example, into the production of television advertisements with a duration of one minute or less than 60 seconds, shorter than the ones being produced up to now.

This workshop was conceived of as a way to leverage Nigerien human capital in this area and to respond to local demand. “In Africa in particular, there is a very evident interest in building bridges, especially with Europe, where production companies often have relationships with local African film production companies and where there is a large audience. Cinema for many of these countries is still a very minimal portion of Gross National Product (GNP), but it offers great potential through new technologies, as in the case of Niger: social networks, advertising, television…”, explains Guillermo Escribano, Head of the Department of Cooperation and Cultural Promotion of the AECID.

Culture, a tool of cooperation
The FIIAPP joined this programme because it considers culture to be another working tool for promoting social cohesion and economic development in countries like Niger. “We are promoting the power of culture as an engine of development, of combating poverty and social exclusion”, indicates Isabel Ramos, Director of Special Programmes of the FIIAPP.

Mohamed and his colleagues showed great interest during the workshop last September. “The students are motivated because they were pre-selected, as there was not space for everyone because of the stipulation that the group had to be limited to 15 people to better organize the workshop, explains Eric Rivot, the instructor and member of the production company responsible for designing the content, Termites Films. Rivot also highlights the democratic and participatory nature of the course, which includes collective decision-making and the selection of topics and filming locations of the final workshop projects. If both projects are approved, the work of these students will start appearing on television.

The ACERCA programme will continue its activities and, from now on, will enjoy the support of the FIIAPP to continue promoting culture as an engine of development all over the world.

You can hear the words of Mohamed and the rest of the protagonists in this story on the FIIAPP’s radio programme “Public cooperation around the worldon Radio 5, All News (RNE).

Cultura, herramienta para la Cooperación

“Clearly, prison conditions affect later re-integration into society and prevention of recidivism”, asserts Mercedes Herrera. Prison overcrowding is just the tip of the iceberg of an issue with multiple emergent consequences, such as health and coexistence problems, that complicate the social re-integration of inmates. Herrera, who is also one of the experts sent by the FIIAPP to Algeria to participate in the EC project in support of the reform of the Algerian prison system: “Programme supporting reform of the prison system in Algeria 2008-2014”, states that this network of problems makes it impossible to apply individualized rehabilitation approaches to the inmates.

“Up until now, and not only in Algeria, people believed in this outmoded vision of prison treatment where work and training amounted to rehabilitation work: if we’re capable of preparing people to do a job and training them, then illiterates enter prison and leave with an education. This only consisted of rehabilitating the prison population. It has been recognized and proven that this is not the case”, says Andreu Estela, the FIIAPP Programme Coordinator. Today, Algeria has adopted all of the UN and Council of Europe guidelines and recommendations for introducing individualized treatment for inmates into prisons.

In the years prior to the start of the Programme, the number of people in prison had increased due to the increase in petty crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. When inmates entered prison, they received a common treatment. “Today, the inmate undergoes a diagnostic evaluation upon entering prison, and, based on that, an individualized treatment programme is established depending on the person’s crime and problems”, explains Estela. A treatment that is, moreover, directed by specialized staff, hired as a result of this reform, which includes psychologists, social workers, teachers, trainers and monitors. The FIIAPP expert states that this dynamic changes the functioning of the Algerian prison system. “It’s been brought up to date and to the same level we have in Europe”, he points out.

With this Programme, which is the working framework between the Algerian Justice Ministry, the Delegation of the European Union and the Spanish Directorate-General for Prison Administration and Social Re-integration, Algeria has taken inspiration from international guidelines and standards for the reform of its prison system, developed a plan to build 80 new prisons, of which 13 are up and running, and improved facilities and developed training courses and workshops for inmates and also staff. “Before, there were 133 prisons and now there are 131, but there are more spaces”, says Estela, putting the data into context. All of these measures are starting to breathe new life into the Algerian prison system and reduce prison density, although this still exceeds the limits: 150 inmates for every 100 spaces. The FIIAPP expert calls this statistic “positive”. “However, the main achievement has been the change in mentality regarding treatment of inmates”, he adds.

In 2013, according to the International Centre for Prison Studiesand based on official data, Algeria, a country with nearly 37 million inhabitants, had a total of 60,000 inmates. The prison density in the country was growing (160 people for every 100,000 inhabitants), especially for petty crime like robbery. In its prison reform, Algeria has also made plans to introduce measures as an alternative to prison, such as community service. This would reduce prison overcrowding, but it still has not been fully developed.

Women and juveniles

The Programme which has supported the reform of the Algerian prison system has also focused on women and juveniles. Although the percentage of female inmates in Algeria is lower than that of men, women represent just 1% of the prison population, the stigma they suffer after being in prison marginalizes them and subjects them to discrimination. “Because of the Algerian social, religious and cultural idiosyncrasy, their difficulties in rejoining society are much greater. In many cases they are rejected by their families and left without any type of support on the outside”, explains Mercedes Herrera.

In order to offer people leaving prison more re-integration possibilities, the Programme has studied the conditions of these women and prepared a series of reports and proposals.

In the case of juveniles, Algeria had already placed an emphasis on this group, which can be convicted starting at 13 years of age, and is giving them training and job-placement assistance following detention in centres for juveniles. Through this Programme, the North African country has benefited from the perspective of European experts and developed proposals for improving the living conditions of this group.

“A prison, in addition to being a place where a person serves a sentence, also must be oriented towards social re-integration of the person serving the sentence”, concludes Herrera.

Maximizing the impact of actions oriented towards development and the fight against poverty, as well as aid management based on results and effectiveness, should be habitual practises in international cooperation. However, since the 1990s, multilateral bodies, foreign aid donors and recipients have shared a common concern. Now in the 21st century, the poor effectiveness of aid due to the phenomenon of stakeholder proliferation and fragmentation of activities, with the resulting increase in transaction costs, is clear. These demands for effectiveness become more relevant in contexts of economic crisis, when society demands that aid fulfil the assigned objectives and governments cut Official Development Assistance (ODA) to address budget deficits.

For decades the international debate about development mainly revolved around the amount of aid. The International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Monterrey in 2002, broadened the terms of the debate by including quality of aid as one of the key elements for evaluating progress. In subsequent years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) organized four high-level fora on aid effectiveness: Rome (2003), Paris (2005), Accra (2008) and Busan (2011). Each of these represented a step forward. In Rome, for the first time the importance of the principles of aid effectiveness was highlighted, and a declaration stating the need for convergence between aid and the priorities of the partner countries was signed. In Paris, the principles of effectiveness were defined, and the member governments were included in the debate on how to improve aid. And in Accra, two key stakeholders for development were included: civil society and private sector organizations.

It was in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness that global commitments were established by donor and recipient countries to improve the delivery and management of aid with the aim of making it more effective and transparent. The agreement was signed in 2005 by over 100 donor and recipient countries, international agencies and multilateral organizations. The Paris Declaration proposes five key principles:

Ownership: Developing countries, with the participation of all the development stakeholders (central and local governments, parliaments, the private sector and civil society) must be the ones to determine and implement their own development policies.
Alignment: International cooperation will focus its efforts on supporting the national development policy, which means channelling the funds through national financial management systems. For their part, the recipient countries will improve the quality and transparency of their public financial management system.
Harmonization: International cooperation will be conducted in a coordinated and transparent manner. Donors will unify and simplify their procedures to reduce the bureaucratic burden for the countries they collaborate with.
Results: This means managing and implementing cooperation to focus on the results desired.
Mutual accountability: Developing countries and donors will increase transparency and accountability in the use of development resources.

Despite this ambitious agenda, the results obtained were not tangible. It turned out to be more complicated to establish the results of the donors than those of the partners. The latest OECD monitoring reportshows that the recipient countries have kept their promises. The donors have not. Of the 13 objectives agreed to, significant progress has been made in only one: the donors now coordinate better among themselves. The main deficiencies of cooperation are:

•       A significant percentage of technical cooperation continues to be governed by supply, with a low level of ownership and involvement by the partner countries and little accountability.
•       Many partner countries lack sufficient capacity to guarantee active ownership and manage the overloaded Paris Agenda, which includes the objective of ensuring coordination and ownership.
•       Dependency on suppliers in the North leads to high costs. The cost and the effectiveness of technical assistance personnel are a source of concern.

Lastly, at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in 2011, the progress made in improving the impact and effectiveness of development aid was examined, and new commitments were made to guarantee that aid contributes to reducing poverty and supports progress towards fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals (now rechristened Sustainable Development Objectives—SDOs). There was a shift from a focus on aid effectiveness to a focus on development effectiveness. The forum placed aid effectiveness into a broader context: investments/private sector, transparency, financing to combat climate change and the fight against corruption. Likewise the principles most strengthened in Busan were those of transparency of aid flows and alignment, with agreement on the need to maintain consistency between all the public policies for promoting development.

In line with the commitments reached in Busan, the EU launched the Programme for Change in 2011, with which it aimed to increase the impact of aid by concentrating on fewer sectors and on the countries with the greatest need. This policy change was aimed at concentrating the resources of the 48 least developed countries in terms of governance, social protection, agriculture and sustainable energy, with the goal of making EU aid more strategic and results-oriented.

In terms of the results of the effectiveness agenda, despite world economic instability and budgetary pressure in the countries, the commitment to the principles of development cooperation has remained solid. The commitments in the area of aid effectiveness, especially those concerning ownership and harmonization, have given rise to promising changes. The partner governments are increasingly participating in a more active way in the dialogue on issues related to cooperation, and the efforts of the donor community to coordinate its actions have managed to reduce aid fragmentation. But despite these positive changes, there is still much left to be done to make cooperation more effective in terms of sustainable results. It is necessary to focus efforts in order to continue progressing and reach the goals set for achieving more effective, inclusive and sustainable development.