EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

• The fight against gender-based violence is a commitment of Spanish foreign action, which is committed to feminist cooperation to combat gender-based violence outside our borders as well.

• FIIAPP, an entity of the Spanish Cooperation, materializes this commitment through the mobilization of public professionals of our institutions to support feminist public policies around the world that close the way to the abusers.

Police officers, judges, doctors and prosecutors are some of the professionals who are mobilized through FIIAPP to cooperate with their counterparts in other countries by contributing their experiences in Spanish institutions to combat gender violence.

Condemning abusers, raising awareness among adolescents, not re-victimizing women, prosecuting aggressors, prosecuting trafficking, ensuring the safety of threatened women, facilitating safe migratory routes, supporting feminist education… These are essential actions to combat gender violence that have one thing in common: they need public institutions to be carried out.

Through public cooperation – a type of cooperation that allows the mobilization of professionals from institutions – FIIAPP mobilizes specialists such as police officers, judges, doctors and prosecutors to work hand in hand with their counterparts in other countries. These exchanges facilitate dialogue and support for regulations, laws and public policies to curb violence against girls and women.

“Gender-based violence is a structural problem that requires cross-cutting approaches. Equality institutions, but also health, interior, justice and education institutions have the capacity to build public policies with a gender focus that protect women, but also focus on prevention and changing social structures,” explains Peggy Martinello, Director of Public Administration and Social Affairs.

Three examples of public cooperation against gender-based violence:

Security: Spanish police train Lebanese police officers against gender-based violence.

Specialists from the National Police work in Lebanon through a European FIIAPP program that provides support to the Lebanese police. The program includes a gender component with the participation of the National Police’s Family and Women Care Unit (UFAM). “With their support, we promote the creation of the Gender Violence Unit within the ISF (Lebanese Security Forces) with policemen trained in victim care and investigation of these types of crimes in the 12 territorial police stations in the country. We also want to ensure that there are female police officers to attend to victims, as currently there are only men, and we aspire to offer more comprehensive care to all victims, institutionalizing the provision of social, health, psychological and legal services to all victims” explains the program coordinator at the FIIAPP, Consuelo Navarro.

For the National Police and project leader, Joaquín Plasencia, the Spanish police officers working on the project not only contribute through training, “they are police commanders, and are a clear example that it is possible and necessary for women to occupy these positions, we must achieve together, setting an example of gender equality so that women can achieve their goals in a modern society such as the Lebanese one.

Justice: Latin American women protected from their abusers across the continent

Two experts from the Spanish Attorney General’s Office and COMJIB have been working for months with Latin American institutions to extend protection to victims of gender-based violence in Latin America. They have done so in the framework of PAcCTO, a European program to fight organized crime, through which the FIIAPP mobilizes Spanish public specialists who cooperate with their counterparts in Latin America.

The result of this joint work has been the approval of the Agreement on Protection Measures for Women in Situations of Gender Violence in Mercosur and Associated States. This milestone promotes the extension of protection for women victims of gender-based violence to any of the countries that have ratified this agreement. “We have worked with the PAcCTO to learn about local legislation on the protection of victims of violence and human trafficking in order to extend this protection not only in the country where the crime occurs but also in other Mercosur countries and Associated States,” explains the general coordinator of COMJIB, Tatiana Salem.

This agreement “helps to homogenize legislation in the region. It is also done with European support, which guarantees a certain capacity for transregional dialogue that should lead to systems that guarantee the protection of women in their countries, in their regions and beyond their regions,” says Mariano Guillén, director of Justice and Rule of Law at the FIIAPP.

Education: Anti-trafficking prevention for more than 500 girls in Nigerian schools

Nigeria is one of the main countries of origin of trafficking of women who are exploited in Europe. Police officers from our National Police Corps work there together with NGO’s and National Centers carrying out training and direct awareness-raising work for women and girls, the main potential victims of trafficking networks.

“The fight against human trafficking in Nigeria has taken on a positive dimension, the country has been placed at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking and irregular migration in Africa thanks to the support of European cooperation programs such as ATIPSOM, which remind us of the importance of putting our cooperation and development efforts into combating human trafficking,” explains Fatima Waziri-Azi, Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

Public policies do not fit in a tweet, they cannot be told in 280 characters, and much more is needed to communicate their scope and action. For this reason, we are launching a series of conversations under the name ‘Hablemos de Políticas Públicas’ (Let’s Talk about Public Policy) in which, through the voice of experts, we delve into the scope of public administrations in different countries to share solutions to global challenges. 

Challenges that can and should be addressed by public policies

We begin this cycle of conversations in collaboration with the Government Delegation for the National Plan on Drugs (DGPNSD) and we talk about #Drugs. A three-way conversation between Joan Ramón Villalbí, Government Delegate for the PNSD; Anna Terrón, Director of the FIIAPP; and Javier Sagredo, Director of the COPOLAD III cooperation programme on drugs.

Why public policies on drugs?

The drug challenge is global, crosses borders and hits people all over the world hard. Moreover, it is predicted that by 2030, the number of people who use drugs will increase by 11%. This is a problem that public policies are taking on board and implementing, with increasing progress, strategies that attempt to respond to it. 

Along these lines, Javier Sagredo stressed the importance of “appealing to the urgency of humanising politics more” and emphasised that a review is necessary, given that “recipes have always been closely linked to being very hard on the weak and very weak with the hard” and “this is part of the review that we have to carry out in order to achieve the opposite”. Furthermore, he stressed that the community responses developed in Latin America and the Caribbean are an inspiration, since they have built models of public policy. 

The truth is that data on drug production, trafficking and problematic drug use show a worrying overall upward trend: 36 million people worldwide suffer from drug use disorders. Moreover, according to some estimates, drug trafficking is worth between $426 billion and $652 billion a year – the equivalent of Sweden’s GDP.  

For this reason, the COPOLAD III programme, led by the FIIAPP in consortium with the Italian-Latin American Institute (IILA) and financed by the European Union, has been working for more than ten years with the DGPNSD and other partners to promote dialogue and cooperation between the European Union and Latin American countries.  

South America is the origin of coca leaf, coca paste and cocaine hydrochloride production worldwide and in some Latin American and Caribbean countries, 80% of women deprived of liberty are deprived of liberty for minor drug offences. 

Women need a specific approach

The approach that has guided public policy on drugs has largely focused on men’s problematic drug use, with insufficient attention paid to women, who also suffer from drug use disorders.  

Feminism has changed some of the parameters for the development of new public policies. “Our cooperation is feminist”, emphasised Anna Terrón, and it is this dimension that has led to the development of new strategies and ways of responding to women’s problematic drug use. 

In the words of Joan Ramón Villalbí, “the reality is that women traditionally have a lower consumption of drugs, but those who have a problem have a more serious problem and encounter barriers in accessing services, which have not been designed for them, but for men”. He added that it is women who encourage many men to seek help when they have a problem with drug use, but “who accompanies women who have a problem? Although this situation is less frequent in women, “it is perhaps more complicated for those who have a problem to find a way out”, said Villalbí.

Sofia speaks before an audience of judges, prosecutors, aid workers, finance officials, auditors and transparency guarantors, among others. The young woman, a student at the University of Valparaíso, visibly moved, interprets the real case of a girl who went to give birth sick with syphilis. The minor had been the victim of a trafficking network for the purpose of sexual exploitation. This criminal organization operated thanks to the complicity of police officers, who received money from the pimps and free sex from the exploited women. “How can someone who swore to protect us be so despicable?” cries Sofia, putting herself in the girl’s shoes and moving with her performance the more than 80 officials from Latin America and the European Union present at the choral and theatrical performance, one of the various activities of the initiative ‘Women and Corruption. Expression of pain and hope’, a set of artistic dynamics integrated in the Meeting ‘Political and social pacts for a new Latin America’, organized by EUROsociAL + last January in Valparaiso (Chile).

Through the action ‘Women and Corruption’, the Governance Area of EUROsociAL + in the FIIAPP has worked to identify, make visible, measure, prevent and combat the effects of corruption on women in Latin America. We have conducted diagnoses and sought solutions with justice system operators, international agencies and civil society organizations, helping to position the issue on national and international agendas, generating tools and promoting regulatory reforms.

The importance of identifying and understanding the problem
Corruption has a differentiated impact on women and girls in Latin America, who suffer from corrupt practices in specific ways due to their gender and vulnerability. Judicial officials who demand sex in exchange for favorable treatment, university professors who proposition their female students, police officers paid by prostitution or human trafficking networks, prison guards who allow girls and women to enter prisons to be sexually exploited…. Some of these behaviors are isolated crimes, but others are part of a systemic phenomenon that must be identified and combated.

This has been one of the objectives of EUROsociAL+ over the last three years, a period of work that we brought to a close between the 12th and 14th of last January with the aforementioned Meeting in Valparaiso, in which the victims of corruption received special attention. The way to learn about their experiences was through the initiative ‘Women and Corruption. Expression of pain and hope’, an activity resulting from the collaboration between EUROsociAL +, the District Institute for the Protection of Children and Youth of Bogota (Idipron), the University of Valparaiso and the Peruvian artist Aisha Asconiga.

The objective of these initiatives is to use art in its different forms to give a voice to women and girls who suffer sexual extortion and corruption that facilitates trafficking and sexual exploitation networks. We wanted to have a first approach to know who they are, understand their story and share their experiences, to open discussions on the best strategies to fight more effectively against the crimes of which they were victims.

Art to reflect pain
Art is a window, a mechanism for reparation, awareness-raising, social and institutional transformation. It is also memory, an expression of resistance, pain and hope. Art must serve to humanize us, to forge new paths in the search for solutions with a different look.

In this context, through three dynamics, different plastic and musical visions inspired by seven real cases narrated by the victims and compiled by EUROsociAL + that you can see here.

The first dynamic was in charge of Idipron. Under the slogan #QuéCaminoRecorrer, three groups of people in Bogota (Colombia) made drawings based on the stories from three perspectives or paths, from three sensitivities.

The first artistic reflection came from the institutional sphere. Idipron’s communication area produced illustrations as a reaction to the victims’ stories, from a more technical point of view, as an institutional campaign. The second path was the one of the victims, expressed in drawings made by girls who left the Santa Fe neighborhood of Bogota and who are under protection measures after having been victims of sexual exploitation. They have a special feeling for the situations they are painting, because they have sometimes experienced them firsthand. The third vision is that of the street, that of the children who live in the area surrounding the Castillo de las Artes, in the aforementioned Barrio de Santa Fé, a former place of sexual exploitation, which was the scene of abuse and mistreatment for years and which now offers alternatives to young people through art. The boys and girls who made these drawings live in an environment where many inhabitants are captured by criminal structures, sometimes willingly, sometimes by force. Therefore, they understand very well this type of problems and dilemmas.

The objective of the dynamic was that, through the stories and illustrations, exhibited in a stand coordinated by Carlos Marín, Director of Idipron, the public attending the Valparaíso meeting would reflect on what public policies are necessary to address these problems and to make society aware of them. Can we be guided only by the institutional, without consulting the people who experience these types of situations first hand? Victims have a more personal vision, from pain, of what is happening. When it comes to identifying #quécaminorecorrer, we must address the issue not only from the action of the authority, but also from the connection with society. These crimes are often invisible and it is necessary to break the social inaction in the face of them.

The second dynamic was led by Peruvian visual artist Aisha Asconiga. Aisha explores the position of women in society and the violence associated with the mere fact of being a woman. In her work ‘When will I stop being an object’ she shows a female figure that aims to show how women are seen as an object, as a commodity in the collective unconscious, as a payment currency. Specifically, the work shows how women are impacted by the corruption of public agents when extortion or sexual exploitation condition their freedom and rights, and they are forced to pay with their own bodies.

The artistic dynamics culminated with the musical and theatrical performance ‘Women and Corruption. Voices that denounce, songs of freedom’, by the Vocal Camerata of the University of Valparaiso, conducted by Ximena Soto. It was an opportunity to share with the public musical interpretations interspersed with dramatized stories based on the experience of girls, adolescents and women affected by corruption.

Sofía, one of the members of the Camerata and the person with whom we began these lines, explains how she has lived the experience of creating art from traumatic experiences: “They are shocking stories, but we must show them to people because they happen every day. We must remember that this exists. And he continues: “What can we contribute from art to these social problems? When you sing, it’s not just about tuning the notes and making them sound beautiful. It’s also about the message. Music moves you to feel more deeply. There were nerves in the group before we started, but we were very happy because the audience are people who can do something to provide solutions and we did our bit to help those people to do something. There is a social responsibility that we decided to assume as artists; if one can contribute in some way from the culture that fills you, the heart takes you forward, it encourages you to continue”.

Borja Díaz Rivillas, Head of Good Governance, Governance Area EUROsociAL+/FIIAPP Program.

Ana Linda Solano López, expert in corruption and gender, Governance Area, EUROsociAL+/FIIAPP Program.

Technical cooperation between institutions is making headway as part of European foreign action. The exchange of ideas, projects and points of view enriches international cooperation. For years, the FIIAPP has collaborated with Enabel, a homologous institution in Belgium, and they share their experience at various levels of government, administration and public institutions. FIIAPP director Anna Terrón and Enabel director Jean Van Wetter exchange ideas on the future of #PublicExpertise in this joint interview conducted by the Belgian institution.  

You can view the full interview by clicking on the image  

Before we dive headfirst into 2022, we would like to look back at what 2021 has been like for FIIAPP. We have worked throughout this year to promote sustainable development, improve public systems and strengthen the bonds that exist between societies. As all this may seem a bit abstract, we want to highlight some concrete, tangible achievements that reflect the great daily work undertaken by the public talent in our institutions, mobilised by FIIAPP in more than 120 countries.  

Latin America, a priority region  

 Social cohesion, gender, justice, security… these are just some of the many areas in which we have worked in Latin America this year. We have supported the start-up of a regional network in the region offering legal assistance to migrants. We also promoted the signing of the Lisbon Declaration, which strengthens dialogue and relations between Latin American and European judicial institutions.  

In Central America, forensic scientists are now working together online to share knowledge on investigative techniques, while in Peru we have succeeded in implementing a new intelligence system to fight against organised crime.  Uruguay, Honduras and El Salvador are developing their own long-term climate strategies. We have also accompanied National Action Strategies for Climate Empowerment in Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Argentina and Panama.
 

Security and development  

At FIIAPP we believe that security and development go hand-in-hand. Stability is an essential requirement for development to take place. We are therefore present in regions like the Sahel, with projects like ECI-Niger. Thanks to this project, it has been possible to dismantle a network trafficking women and migrants in Niger. In Nigeria, we have also created a network of more than fifteen West African countries through the ATIPSOM project in association with over 180 NGOs to strengthen organised civil society that works directly with potential victims of trafficking, both in the prevention of the crime and in obtaining information.  

However, you don’t have to go so far to see international cooperation in action. In Turkey, a country neighbouring the European Union, more than 2,000 judges and prosecutors have received intensive training in key issues such as judicial independence, new technologies in the justice sector and the rights of victims. We have also supported Ukraine in its entry into the common EU airspace, helping the country to integrate its aviation security regulations.  

These are just a few of this year’s achievements. From each project – and we manage more than 90 – we could highlight an action or result that has improved people’s lives. FIIAPP’s commitment to sustainable development, multilateralism and the #TeamEurope spirit will see us continuing to work to take Spanish and European cooperation further and further. Let’s hope for a 2022 with better public systems for people and the planet.   

Ana María Yupanqui did not have it easy. Belonging to the Aymara ethnic group, which she herself considers “very sexist”, she was one of the few rural women who managed to continue with their education. She managed to finish high school and study outside her municipality to graduate as a Contadora (accountant) in Puno. “I wanted to do something for my community, and although basically not even my family supported me, I was confident I could do it, even if I was a woman and a young one“, explains the mayor of Pomata, a municipality of around 20,000 inhabitants. 

At 33 years old, she is one of the 19 women who has managed to become mayor in Peru, the first in the history of her municipality. She believes that she won the elections because people, tired of corruption, chose to give a woman the opportunity to exercise another type of leadership. “There are leaders who can’t accept being governed by a woman. But the peopleput their trust in us and as a woman I can’t let them down, because I can serve as an example for others in years to come”, she stresses.  

“We have many problems, our population earns their living purely from agriculture, livestock and fishing, and gender violence has a very significant impact on the lives of our women. The pollution of the lake is also a key issue”, explains the mayor.   

Ana María Yupanqui comes from a rural area and knows all about the needs of rural women who, in this COVID-19 crisis, have been among the hardest hit. As she points out, in remote villages, especially the most marginalised ones, measures are needed to ease the burden of care and share it out better between women and men. Sufficient basic services and infrastructures are also needed to support women’s domestic and care work that is unpaid, which is exacerbated by the crisis. “We have to empower rural women so they can stand up for themselves”, says Pomata.  

The EUROsociAL cooperation programme, financed by the European Union and managed by the FIIAPP, is working to improve the governance of Lake Titicaca and meet the demands of the main environmental and social challenges of its population, the majority of which are from Aymara and Quechua indigenous communities that live at an altitude of 4,200 metres, with little State presence and high rates of poverty and marginalisation.   

Specifically, the Democratic Governance area of the EUROsociAL+ programme, managed by the FIIAPP, through its Territorial Development line, has accompanied the Binational Autonomous Authority of Lake Titicaca (ALT) in the implementation of a strategy for coordination between various levels of government that also incorporates other non-institutional actors. The ALT has also taken lessons learnt from the European experience, for better management of water resources and sanitation projects that reduce inequality, vulnerabilities and social exclusion.