Masar Programme Presentation

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, José Manuel García-Margallo, attended the official launch of the MASAR Programme at the AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation) headquarters.

During the presentation, the Minister was accompanied by the Secretary General for International Development Cooperation, Gonzalo Robles, the Director of the AECID, Juan López-Dóriga, and Ambassadors from the Arab world in Spain.

Masar means path

The MASAR Programme, “path” in Arabic, is a Spanish cooperation programme aimed at assisting with democratic governing processes in the Arab world. MASAR will support democratic processes in the region, helping modernise and strengthen institutions and key agents in the development of a State of Law so public authorities may meet society’s needs. To do so, the programme will be allocated a budget of 5 million euros for the 2012-2013 two-year period.

MASAR opens up cooperation for democratic governance in the Arab world: countries in North Africa and Middle East like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories.

Spanish Cooperation has experience in Arab governance given its background in this field in recent years supporting modernisation processes and capacity building for public institutions, strengthening social organisations and supporting the mechanisms for their interaction with the institutions.

The programme will focus its efforts on public institutions and civil society stakeholders. The programme instruments include transferring technical resources, human resource training, technical assistance and consulting on the public policy cycle, exchanging best practises and fostering networks, political research and incidence and seminars, conferences and other awareness activities.

On the other hand, the exchange of experiences will be fostered among Arab countries in different phases of their democratic construction processes.