In December 2010, in the centre of the Tunisian capital, a pivotal moment in the country’s recent history occurred. Near the city’s main square, Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year old street vendor of fruits and vegetables, was stopped by three municipal police officers and asked to pay a bribe whilst he was selling his goods. Mohamed refused and the police confiscated his produce and cart. That same afternoon he went to the governor’s office to demand that his property be returned but received no reply. So he decided to buy a can of gasoline and some matches and then lit himself on fire inside the municipal government headquarters.

Mohamed’s flames ignited the tensions of the Tunisian people, and the square filled with shouts of hope. Thousands of citizens took to the streets to demand the rights they had been denied under the regime of Ben Ali. After several weeks of citizen demonstrations, the party was dissolved.

Since then, Tunisia has been undergoing a democratic transition. In 2014 the constitution was ratified and the first free and democratic elections were held, in which Habib Essid of the Nida Tunes party was named prime minister.

European project to support the ministry of justice

The European Union applauded the advances of the Tunisian democratic transition and made a commitment to provide support throughout the process. One example of this commitment is the project to support the Tunisian Ministry of Justice, which began in 2015, is being funded through the European Neighbourhood Instrument and managed by the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP).

The aim of this project is to support the Tunisian judicial system in the democratic transition process and to define the structure of the Ministry of Justice and the General Council of the Judiciary.   The resident project manager in Tunisia, Ángel Llorente, describes the situation at the start of the project, “passing from an autocratic regime to a democratic system with liberties, it was necessary to change the most important laws because, in the Ministry of Justice, a series of competences previously converged that should be exercised by an independent judiciary empowered with autonomy and its own budget”.

Currently the project is at its mid-point. A first phase has already been completed involving a study to learn the prior situation and thereby identify the needs on which to base the design of future implementation of public policies. An advocate in the superior court of justice of Murcia and the project leader, Javier Parra, explained that one of the tangible achievements to date is the preparation of a five-year plan for the insertion of information technologies.

But the results of the project are not just relevant during the two and half years of its execution; it is hoped that these steps taken will be the motor of a much deeper change in the structure of Tunisian judicial bodies. One example of this is the five-year programme of objectives to be achieved in the next five years. The advisor to the Tunisian Ministry of Justice and head of the mission, Najet Ben Salah, explains that “we are committed to getting results; we have objectives that are already included in an overall action plan, and we hope that these results can be achieved in the next five years”.

The 20th is the third Sunday in November and, as every year, it is the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, a date established by the United Nations to commemorate traffic accident victims and their families. Reducing the number of traffic accidents is also one of the goals of the European Union.

In 2010, the European Commission adopted the Road Safety Action Plan with the aim of halving the number of traffic accident victims by 2020. The road safety project in Algeria arose within the framework of this action programme. Carmen Girón, Head of the International Relations Area of the DGT is the coordinator of the Twinning project in Spain.

What is the overall objective of the project in Algeria?

It is a Twinning project funded by the European Commission within the good neighbour policy with other countries. And specifically what it seeks to do is to enhance and support road safety policies through twinning, in this case with our colleagues, the Algerian authorities in charge of promoting road safety in their country.

What are the expected outcomes of this project?

This Twinning can be specifically explained in five outcomes, because that’s how it was designed by the European Commission and subsequently agreed upon reciprocally between Algeria and Spain.

A first macro outcome refers to the organisation, the foundation and the base for making it work to address how this organisation should be structured, what powers it should have, how to coordinate with other bodies at the national level, and what  legislation is to be developed.

A second step is to have reliable information about the number of accidents and the accident rate in the country. Data that can be utilised by the public authority responsible for promoting road safety is fundamental and, this being the case, Spain is playing an important role, because of its experience, in relation to Algeria. And we are working hand in hand with them, advising them on how to collect, process and analyse the data in the case of a traffic accident in order to be able to ultimately establish a policy at the national level.

A third area is everything related to the safety conditions of people who participate in road traffic. In this case, particular attention is paid to drivers, addressing the training they should have in order to obtain driving licenses, covering theoretical and practical content and the methodologies to be used for giving tests.

There is also a very concrete aspect which is driver education extended to the entire population linked to road safety awareness campaigns.

Lastly, there is the outcome that addresses legislation and the technical procedures for inspection for upgrading vehicles, that is, to ensure that they meet the necessary technical requirements for safe driving, and treatment of the risks associated with road infrastructure.

What is the action framework for the project?

At the international level, it is under the reference framework of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, which is always understood as an umbrella of a policy for promoting road safety within the scope of the EU’s international cooperation.

Are there any outcomes to be highlighted?

We have now reached the midpoint of the Twinning project, and training and technical assistance missions have been carried out by expert Spanish civil servants, mainly professionals working in the Directorate-General of Traffic and the Civil Guard Traffic Group. Moreover experts from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, the Ministry of Industry and city halls will be joining in.

What is the work of the Directorate-General of Traffic internationally?

It participates actively in all the international technical groups for improving road safety. In the WHO global status reports on road safety from 2013 and 2015, Spain is ranked in the top tier of countries with the best road safety in the world, which is no obstacle against continuing to work to achieve even better levels of road safety.

Additionally, in international cooperation it is responding to the request of the UN Secretary General that the countries with the best road safety situations lend other countries a hand, as other countries did with us in the past. And so, for example, in 2011, the UN specifically highlighted the protective work of the DGT with other countries, particularly in Latin America, to promote and improve road safety.

It also should be remembered that we are not just working in Latin America or within the scope of the EU. We also respond to bilateral requests from countries that are identified as priority and strategic for Spain’s external action, something that is set by our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

No country or community can function peacefully if its inhabitants are unable to assert their rights in an established system of justice or defend themselves against accusations brought against them. Access to justice by citizens is based on legal guarantees that take into human rights consideration.

Nonetheless, in reality we face numerous difficulties in applying them in a practical and effective way. And, regrettably, when this is the case we see the natural consequences – greater levels of social inequality or high rates of violence – which are often attributed to other factors, such as poverty, when in reality poverty is not a cause but rather an effect, and precisely an effect of the fact that, among other factors, many people are excluded from justice.

The mechanisms for accessing justice should be designed for citizens in general, they should be properly contemplated at the legislative level, and they should also be given the necessary resources to function adequately. Some countries have a more pressing need for cooperation in order to address these needs.

For those of us working to defend the rights of citizens, it is very difficult to not see the tremendous challenges worldwide facing people with disabilities, displaced people and refugees, minorities, victims of trafficking and exploitation, persons deprived of their liberty, and people living in endemic poverty. We are talking about hundreds of millions of people.

The General Council of Spanish Lawyers, through its participation in cooperation actions, often focuses on working to ensure that the most vulnerable groups have access to protection of their rights through the justice system under the same conditions as their neighbours.

We have successfully undertaken numerous projects of this type in some European countries and, above all, in Latin America. We might highlight, for their representativeness, some implemented in collaboration with FIIAPP within the framework of European cooperation programmes such as EUROsociAL.

We have several long months of hard work behind us. Numerous meetings, agreements and negotiations for achieving our objective: to bring Latin American experts to our Spanish institutions to share, through our experts, our know-how, experience and knowledge.

But, what does this incredible exchange of experience really do?

After attending several opening and closing sessions for a variety of seminars – such as the ones on property law, wastewater treatment, social innovation, international taxation and the fight against tax fraud  – one comes to appreciate the enormous utility of these types of activities.

Activities that we could call specialised cultural exchanges and which have resulted in the creation of networks of experts that extend well beyond simple know-how. They end up leading to inseparable personal bonds and institutional links that turn into professional and cultural exchange networks.

This conclusion reconciles us once more with our work, if we were ever in doubt about what can be achieved by dint of effort and great determination.

It renews our faith in our small contributions in the context of international development cooperation, always focused on institutional strengthening through technical cooperation and mobilization of experts.

It also confirms that these actions are important, as they demonstrate, once again, that those who share experiences and knowledge are the people we manage to bring together for weeks at a time around a specific, always important, issue for Spanish Cooperation.

But we don’t leave it at that. We can go even further and be more ambitious with our expectations, as they demonstrate that, with these initiatives, we promote the sharing of a dose of culture and confidence in the institutions of different countries.  Because at FIIAPP we work for people, and thus we improve citizens’ quality of life which, in the final analysis, is our ultimate objective.

It is always gratifying to be able to see first-hand, through direct experiences narrated in the first person by our guests and collaborators, that the effort has paid off, that the reward is talking to you and asking you to continue working in this same direction and that, with great effort butnot much money, great and ambitious objectives can be achieved.

All of this encourages us to keep making an effort and working day after day to improve our institutions through people. Through this, we also progress and become better people and institutions.

By Isabel Ramos, Director of the Information and Special Programmes Area

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)

Soledad Becerril, the Ombudsman since 2012, was the first woman to hold the office in Spain.  In this interview, she tells us what the work of the Ombudsman’s Office consists of:

Do all citizens have access to the Ombudsman’s Office?

All citizens have access to the Ombudsman’s Office, on a non-discriminatory basis and, we hope, without any type of difficulty. Because, for submitting their complaints, they have toll-free numbers they can call, they can write to us directly by sending a letter, come into the Ombudsman’s Office physically to explain their problem and, of course they can also do so via Internet, using e-mail or through our website.

What types of complaints does the Ombudsman handle?

Complaints about public administrations. The Ombudsman does not handle complaints between private citizens or private institutions or businesses.

We also act through the corresponding ministry in the case of large companies that provide public services, such as telephony or transport, or, for example, matters related to banks, through the Bank of Spain. But we handle all types of situations and problems. In relation to disabled people, problems with local taxes, matters involving the national tax agency, waiting lists in hospitals, etc. In short, all types of problems and circumstances.

Are all of the complaints in Spain brought before the Ombudsman handled in Madrid, or are there also branch offices in the self-governing communities?

We cover the entire Spanish territory. There are also Ombudsman’s Offices in ten self-governing communities which have the capacity to act within the jurisdiction of the particular community.

How many complaints are received each year by the Ombudsman’s Office?

Around 20,000. And, a great number of them are submitted by individuals. Although groups, associations and institutions can also contact us.

In 2015, in the annual report we present every year to parliament, we realised that 50,000 people had submitted documents requesting action from the Ombudsman.

Are there priority issues for the Ombudsman’s Office?

We don’t have priority issues. What we do is to try to identify situations that are more urgent than others. For example, if there is a person in an irregular administrative situation who is about to be deported and we are aware that there are also circumstances of vulnerability involved, very unique or very special ones, we act rapidly before the person is deported.

If we are aware that a minor’s situation is very dramatic or very difficult, these situations are handled before other ones, but all issues are addressed.

What are the main challenges facing the Ombudsman’s Office?

The greatest challenge is to reach the greatest possible number of people and to ensure that the greatest number of people with a problem know how to contact the Ombudsman and can do so. That’s why the website is so important. To make us visible and make the population understand what we do, to be appreciated. This is fundamental, having the trust of citizens.

What are the greatest difficulties?

The same difficulties that all administrations, local governments, regional community governments or the national government have; budgetary problems related to getting more money allocated to assistance, social or health services.

What is the role of the Ombudsman in other countries?

Most countries in the European Union have ombudsman’s offices, as well as Ibero-American and some Mediterranean countries. We have helped them and assisted in training the teams working in these ombudsman’s offices.

Most recently we were in Turkey for two years (through a project managed by FIIAPP and financed by the European Commission). We showed them how we work in Spain and collaborated in training the staff there. In addition, we have an ongoing relationship of collaboration with the Ibero-American ombudsman’s offices, which follow the Spanish model.

 What has the Spanish Ombudsman’s Office contributed in Turkey?

We provided part of the necessary training to its teams: how to handle matters, which areas they can take action in, how action can be taken, how to contact administrations, monitoring of legislation in force, respect for human rights… in sum, all of these fields.

How are Turkish citizens benefiting from this project?

Turkey is a very large country, with 80 million inhabitants; extending the action of the Ombudsman throughout the entire geography and to all Turkish citizens is going to take some time and a great deal of effort. But I hope that little by little they achieve it.

Are there plans to work on more projects in other countries?

If other projects come up, yes. We’ll do it based on requests for our help.

What is the role of the Ombudsman in refugee issues?

This is a very complicated issue because the procedures are quite convoluted, but the position of the Ombudsman is to carry out monitoring to ensure that Spain fulfils its commitments in this area. From the Ombudsman’s Office we speak out in favour of receiving, welcoming and integrating the people arriving in our country.