EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

Ten years ago, the homicide rate in Honduras was 30 per one hundred thousand inhabitants. According to official statistics, it is currently 86. This represents an increase of over 200%. Driven in large part by the uncertain future faced by young people in a country in which two thirds of the country’s population subsists in poverty, this violence and criminality not only translates into homicides but also into other types of crimes such as extortion. Up to now, the public policies developed in Honduras to address this problem have been not been effective and criminal acts have not been adequately prosecuted.

“Young people have a high level of unemployment, and in response to this sensation that there is no future in the country and that nothing can be done here,the escape valve—summarizing perhaps too much—for a young man is illegal immigration to the United States or the possibilities offered by crime: money in the short run”, explains Francisco de Asís López Sanz, the director of the technical assistance team the FIIAPP is providing to the PASS. With this programme, Honduras is confident that the national security institutions will be strengthened and that the country’s security sector reform will be supported.

Something needed considering that the population has opted to rely on private security systems, which the poorest inhabitants cannot afford; as a result, they end up being affected the most by crime. “There’s a high rate of extortion, which popular opinion blames on street gangs, but taxi drivers and shopkeepers have also corroborated that they have to pay the police the corresponding ‘mordida’ (bribe) if they want to operate their businesses on a day-to-day basis”, explains the FIIAPP expert.

For this problem, generated decades ago and having different origins, to subside, it will be necessary to wait a generation or two, according to Francisco de Asís. “The government would have to engage seriously with measures to promote a correct distribution of income”, he emphasizes. “There is a high rate of tax evasion and money laundering, very low rates of education and also a high index of violence of a political nature and against journalists, in addition to an increase in murders of women”, adds the expert about the factors working against social harmony.

Training to combat crime

Along these lines, the FIIAPP is providing Honduras, through the PASS programme, with experts who are training judges, prosecutors and police officers for the purpose of strengthening judicial processes and security in the country. This has resulted in the development of 15 courses which have been given between the start of the programme (2011) and this July.

The Deputy Attorney General of Honduras, Rigoberto Cuéllar, told the FIIAPP that the justice sector in the Central American country lacks credibility. “There’s only one way to guarantee this point, and that is through training processes, both initial and ongoing, and a system of subsequent specialization for each of its members”, he indicates. This type of training, based in large measure on practical approaches, became paralyzed in Honduras a decade ago.

One of these courses was “Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure” directed at 650 prosecutors from the Honduran Public Ministry, 30 judges and 30 police officers, who were trained on the need to preserve evidence and to not obtain it at any cost or by any means. Also, how a prosecutor should approach a case in a trial and how to prosecute it, among other subjects. “Something that’s not taught in universities or in books”, Cuéllar emphasizes. In terms of the Prosecutor’s Office, this course has enabled it to assess its situation in the country. “Drawing on the lessons learnt can serve the Deputy Attorney General of Honduras when taking decisions regarding what his staff’s needs are, their weak points and how to properly reassign jobs”, explains FIIAPP expert Francisco de Asís.

The PASS programme, financed with nine million euros from the EU and one million from Honduras, is another step towards this desired generational transition that will reduce violence. Now we will have to wait for it to bear fruit in the hope that this figure of 19 lives lost per day is not seen again.

I didn’t know anything about the issue of genital mutilation beyond what I used to hear in brief news stories on television, and it was my short one-month stay in Guinea Conakry that opened my eyes to this harsh reality.

We went to Guinea—I say “we” because I went with a colleague—to participate in some workshops to raise awareness of violence against women. And it’s clear that when you talk about this type of violence in certain African countries, you have to mention female genital mutilation.

Curiously, the talk for raising awareness was given by an expert on the subject and, if I consider the statistics for this region, of the approximately 20 women attending the course, at least 19 must have been ablated. The reality is that in Guinea Conakry, the number two country for this phenomenon, 98% of the women have suffered some type of alteration of their genital organs.

And the strange thing was that among the students, rejection of these types of practices seemed notable. It took a Christian guy to clue me in to the reason for this apparent incongruence: “a woman who has not been ablated is exposed to rejection by a large part of society”. Traditions still carry great weight in this society.

The physical consequences for the women who are victims of these practices are incredible and range from all types of physical problems and difficulties when giving birth to psychological consequences that stay with them for the rest of their lives.

I didn’t want to delve into the topic with the students to avoid making them feel uncomfortable, but I couldn’t keep from asking one or two women outside that setting, and I was again surprised by the answers. I can’t say that this is significant, because I only spoke with two young women, both under 30, but neither of them was ablated. One in particular had two daughters, and she was clear that she wasn’t going to put them through this awful experience either.

It seems that part of the younger generation is starting to react against these types of practices, and we hope this is a general attitude that will reverse the statistics and allow this country to stop heading the list of countries where it is most practised.

One of the latest natural phenomena that has most affected Colombia was the 2010-2011 “La Niña” event. Its influence on wind patterns caused heavy and intense rains that exceeded habitual rainfall by 200%. These rains caused the destruction of 8,000 homes, damage to more than 400,000 and affected more than three and a half million people.

These costs are the consequence of country’s vulnerability to natural phenomena, which is growing according to the World Bank. This is due to both the intensity of these phenomena and the habits of the population. “There continues to be a lack of culture with regard to the country’s weather and climate, indicated Christian Eucastegui, engineer and head of the forecasting office of the Colombian Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM).

“The population settles in areas that are vulnerable and critical in terms of the occurrence of hydrometeorological events. Many settlements are on the banks of rivers, zones that have historically suffered flooding. And this has something to do with the disasters we experienced during the 2010-2011 ‘La Niña’ event”, he continues. In the case of Colombia, these settlements are related to migratory movements and also, Eucastegui points out, to displacement caused by armed internal conflict. The causes-consequences don’t stop there. “This behaviour by the population generates intense pressure on the environment that gives rise to changes in climate patterns and normal atmospheric flows worldwide”, adds the engineer.

Investment in forecasting

Even today, the country is recovering from this episode that marked a before and after in its Early Warning System (EWS) for hydrometeorological phenomena. The consequences of the 2010-2011 “La Niña” event led the Colombian government to develop a recovery plan that also included the redesign of this EWS. A redesign that was carried out by the IDEAM and the Spanish State Meteorological Agency (AEMET)and managed by the FIIAPP.

Before starting this project, forecasting weather variations in Colombia, despite having the IDEAM, was complicated given the country’s location between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, its topography and the scarcity of hydrometeorological stations. “Likewise, its technological resources could not meet the growing need for dissemination of the information and also failed to integrate data from the existing radars. Nor did they cover the entire country. This made it necessary to redesign the early warning system”, explains Eucastegui, the delegated technical supervisor for this project.

The aim of this projectwas to redesign the EWS, upgrade the over two hundred existing stations and acquire another two hundred automatic ones, and to establish a national radar system. “Radars in meteorology are systems that provide an immediate forecast up to six hours in advance. As the IDEAM is also a hydrological service, the improvements will be considerably greater because it will be possible to predict rising water levels and flooding two or three days in advance, depending on the type of basin”, indicates the project’s Spanish technical coordinator and AEMET staff member, Jesús María Patán.

In terms of technology, the radars represent the most important advance; up to now it has been nonexistent in hydrometeorological forecasting. In addition, the automatic stations will monitor the amount of water falling at all times and the intensity of the rains. “Another thing that was very important was the organization and coordination of the new facilities and the training that was given to the staff”, he adds.

The final activities of this project were carried out in early June after six months of work. Now Colombia will have to continue the process that was started. “Even if radars and stations are installed, if you don’t have the staff and the organization isn’t well structured, they’re worthless in the end. The country has to commit itself to the development of the IDEAM. They have a large and interesting road ahead of them. Both for the government and for society”, indicates Patán, going on to say: “This will result in less destruction and death and, with the improvement in forecasting, the country’s wealth will grow thanks to tourism and agriculture, among many other things”. Now it is time to start demonstrating this.

On a day like today, exactly 42 years ago, the first United Nations conference dedicated exclusively to the environment was held in Stockholm. In this pioneering “Earth Summit”, the international environmental agenda was launched and, for the first time, beyond highlighting the value of nature, a warning was sent out regarding human action: “Through ignorance or indifference we can do massive and irreversible harm to the earthly environment on which our life and well being depend.” It was also there that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was created and 5th June was declared World Environment Day to raise awareness in the world’s population and to incentivize political action at all levels.

From 1972 to today, this environmental agenda has grown, gaining momentum with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where three of the most important environmental conventions were approved: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. It was also there that the United Nations formally adopted the principle of sustainable development, which is defined as: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This definition made two aspects clear: the existence of a direct link between the environment and development, and the vulnerability of developing countries in the management of natural resources.

It was after this summit that social and political concerns about environmental threats really started to grow, and little by little they are being incorporated transversally into the sectoral public agendas of international bodies. Thus, the environment is becoming intertwined with health, security, industry, transport, energy, migration, etc.

Nevertheless, despite the progress made in political agendas, the summits and the new objective oriented towards “sustainable development”, in this same time period the world’s population has grown exponentially—to 7.2 billion people today—at the same time as strong economic development has taken place in the most advanced countries. The combination of these two factors meant, and continues to mean, intense pressure on natural resources to the point where it is clear at a scientific level that the planet’s limits are being exceeded. We consume more than the Earth can replace naturally, and we produce more waste than we can dispose of.

This has given rise to a series of environmental imbalances with enormous repercussions, with climate change—whose effects are already visible—being one of the most important. Nevertheless, other imbalances such as the overuse of water resources, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, deforestation and loss of biodiversity are also enormous global challenges. In addition, because of the pace at which species are disappearing from the planet, we are considered to be facing the sixth largest extinction of biodiversity in the history of the Earth.

Developing countries are the most affected by environmental problems. On the one hand, they depend on natural resources for subsistence, directly or indirectly, and, on the other, they have fewer financial and technical resources with which to confront these difficulties. Therefore, when the latest Earth Summit—“Rio +20—was held in 2012, the final declaration entitled “The Future We Want” made it abundantly clear that “progress has been insufficient”, that urgent measures are necessary, and that these challenges can only be addressed through coordinated global action at a national, regional and local level, with the commitment of all social stakeholders being essential: government, the private sector, civil society, scientists, academics, etc. The call to action is directed both at developing and developed countries, while maintaining the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibility”.

The international debate on the new Post-2015 Development Agenda is based on the Rio+20 declaration, the preamble of which states that “the eradication of poverty is the greatest challenge confronting the world today and an essential condition for achieving sustainable development”. Therefore, to prepare this agenda, the Millennium Goals are being improved and reorganized into 10 Objectives for Sustainable Development. These will be the model towards which all countries should direct their efforts starting in 2015. Under this new framework, and based on respect for Human Rights, there are four essential dimensions: (i) inclusive development, (ii) inclusive economic development , (iii) environmental sustainability and (iv) good governance (peace and security).

International Cooperationand the FIIAPP, as a prominent actor, therefore have a key role in this new system and in supporting developing countries as they confront environmental challenges and accompanying them as they move towards more sustainable development. Nevertheless, the most advanced countries, in addition to facilitating and promoting the transfer of efficient technologies and the exchange of knowledge and best practices, must also become references in shifting consumption and production patterns to more sustainable models.

Lastly, today being World Environment Day, I didn’t want to end this post without appealing to each of us as inhabitants of the planet. The vast majority of our actions have an impact on the environment: our consumption habits, the transportation we use, which foods we buy and how we educate our children are just a few examples. Everything has an impact in some way or other on natural resources, and therefore no effort is superfluous.

“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable. And we believe they can do it again.”  
John F. Kennedy

On 14th April, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the European Union, at a meeting in Luxembourg, approved the declaration of 2015 as the European Year of Development. The EU has been supporting development cooperation since 1957 through a policy that has been progressively expanding to where it is now present in over 130 developing nations.

Currently the EU, along with its Member States, is the largest donor of official aid, with a volume of 56.5 billion euros in 2013, more than half of the world total. In addition, the EU is the number one donor of humanitarian aid and, in 2011 alone, it assisted over 150 million people in 80 countries.

The choice of the date is no coincidence. 2015 will be an emblematic and crucial year for at least two good reasons. First, because this is the last year for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) agreed upon jointly between 189 States in September 2000, making this a good opportunity to take stock of the international commitments achieved. Second, because 2015 will be the year for taking an important international decision about the new post-2015 development agenda, which will replace the MDGs and serve as the frame of reference for coming decades.

Increasing support for development cooperation is absolutely vital in a rapidly changing world. The special Eurobarometer poll conducted in October 2012 demonstrated that 85% of EU citizens support the idea of aiding populations of the member countries. Despite the economic situation, more than six out of ten Europeans think this aid should be increased.

However, at the same time, the poll also indicates that European citizens often lack information about development cooperation, about the reasons why it is necessary and about the added value of EU development policy. For example, the Eurobarometer revealed that 53% of those polled showed complete ignorance of the purpose of the EU’s aid. In general, citizens are not very aware of the effectiveness and positive effects of the aid, which must be explained in terms that are less technical and much more oriented towards results and the impact on the populations where the interventions take place.

The Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP) is one of the most important actors in Spanish cooperation for participating in the EU Development Policy in an area as relevant and necessary as the improvement of the institutional framework of our partner countries. Since its founding in 1997, the FIIAPP has managed more than 1,100 projects, with a budget of some 600 million euros, the vast majority with financing from the European Commission (in 2012, nearly 80% of its budget came from European funds).

To carry out its work, the FIIAPP manages the Twinning Programme (over 280 twinning projects with the Administrations of 30 Eastern European and Mediterranean countries), Public Technical Assistance (PTA) projects (which yearly mobilize more than 1,000 experts and public servants from the Spanish and European Administration) and, recently, Delegated Cooperation operations.

In terms of regional programmes of special relevance the FIIAPP is working on, it’s worth highlighting some as important as EUROsociAL, which attempts to promote a Euro-Latin American dialogue on public policies in the area of social cohesion; URB-AL, a decentralized cooperation programme aimed at regional and local governments in the EU and Latin America; and COPOLAD, aimed at improving the consistency, balance and impact of drug policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In January of 2012, just after I had started in my position as Director-General of Policies Supporting Persons with Disabilities, I encountered the launch of this project in Tunisia. From the first moment, it seemed like an opportunity for growth and expansion for both the professionals of the Directorate-General and myself. Managing to situate disability policies in the context of the first of the Arab Spring revolutions was a great challenge.

In the course of these nearly 28 months, Spain has contributed its over 30 years of experience in the development of a disability support system that has given us one of thehighest rates in Europe of inclusive education for children with disabilities, a model of occupational integration that, even in times of crisis like these, has not only maintained employment of this group but actually increased it. Above all, Spain contributed the dynamism and organizational capacity of a civil society that, through the CERMI and the ONCE Foundation, has made disability one of the most important and influential associative sectors with the closest collaboration with the Administration and State institutions in general.

So I believe that this project has enabled us to expand the influence of the Spain brand in the social context, something that also says a lot about us as a country and as a caring and committed society.

In my opinion, this project has allowed Tunisia to progress along a path started some time ago, but which is at the same time based on a focus on the rights of persons with disabilities and, for the first time, oriented towards strategic planning and coordination.

It should be remembered that Tunisia has been creating disability policies for some time; in fact, it has a law on attention to disability dating back to the 80s, similar to our old LISMI. In addition, Tunisia was one of the first countries to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and was the first to voluntarily undergo examination by the monitoring committee for this international treaty. On the other hand, Tunisia has quite an extensive network of assistance and, certainly, is exceptional in terms of its geographic region.

I believe that, in the first place, this project has allowed Tunisia to advance in an approach based on rights and the autonomy of persons with disabilities. In the second place, it has allowed it to take a step forward in its disability support system and start working on the issue of quality, planning and priorities. One example of these two dimensions can be found in the pilot projects carried out in schools and special education centres, promoting a truly inclusive education and providing possibilities for making equal opportunities for children with disabilities a concrete reality.

Lastly, I believe this project reached Tunisia at an excellent moment, just after the Revolution and the establishment of a democratic regime, as in this context it was possible to promote the collaboration between the State and civil society, between the administration and associations, and between the State and companies, in an environment of freedom. One example of this can be found in the activities for occupational integration we carried out which led to several agreements between the Tunisian employment service (ANETI) and various companies.

This project, besides collaborating in the reforms of disability policies being undertaken by Tunisia, has also had a direct impact on citizens, an aspect we were very careful with in order to increase visibility and support and commitment on the ground. Therefore, in addition to the pilot projects in the La Manouba province mentioned previously, which allowed us to work with 10 educational centres, there was field work with associations, companies and persons with disabilities which made it possible to guarantee employment to dozens of persons with disabilities in the private sector in six different regions. This, along with the holding of the first two recruitment drives for persons with disabilities, has changed the situation and job perspectives of persons with disabilities in Tunisia.

Undoubtedly there is still much to be done, but this project was another step on a road that is a great challenge for all countries and in which we have much to contribute and learn.