EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

In recent months, the urgent need to manage migratory flows, an issue of vital importance for millions of people, has come to the forefront.

It’s evident that, due to the continual crises of a diverse nature, both on the African continent and in the Middle East, we are currently seeing numerous examples of human beings who have left behind all they had in the hope of finding a better and safer life in neighbouring countries, or even in more distant and hitherto unfamiliar lands. The most recent tragedies in the Mediterranean demonstrate the magnitude of the desperation of these people, and the urgency of finding immediate and effective answers to this serious problem.

Thus we are seeing countries in Europe, Africa, and other regions acknowledging the issue of migration as a central point on their policy agendas. Many of them have initiated actions to adapt and develop their migration policies to contribute concrete responses to the complex current situation. Examples of this are Mali, Morocco and Cape Verde, countries that have recently developed their national migration policies to respond to this phenomenon. This issue is also found at the heart of the European debate. The European Commission has presented its European Agenda on Migration, as well as preliminary proposals for a global intervention that improves the management of this problem.

The FIIAPP is not on the sidelines in these debates. Ten intense years of continuous work in this area are testimony to its contribution through the Migration and Development programme, which supports national and international initiatives to facilitate the exchange of best practices and joint cooperation in this area.

Specifically, the FIIAPP participates in the “Rabat Process”, the Euro-African Dialogue on Migration and Development, which provides a framework for consultation and coordination aimed at promoting the organisation of legal migration, fighting irregular migration and facilitating synergies between migration and development.

Recently, as a consequence of the Fourth Euro-African Ministerial Conference on “Migration and Development” held in Rome in late 2014, the issues of asylum and international protection have taken on special importance and, therefore, today are priorities for the Rabat Process.

Asylum and international protection, a central issue in the current context. 

The multiple crises occurring at the moment are generating massive population movements. The area covered by the Rabat Process (North Africa, Central Africa, West Africa and the European Union) are directly affected both as a result of their own internal crises (the Ivorian, Central African, Malian and Libyan crises, and more recently the crisis in North Nigeria) as well as those of neighbouring countries (Eritrea, Somalia, Syria, etc.).

One of the direct consequences of these crises is the considerable uptick in the number of refugees and asylum seekers requesting protection.

It is in this context that the Rabat Process Support Project consortium, in which the FIIAPP participates, is organising on 15th and 16th June in Rabat a meeting on asylum and international protection, an event that will be co-chaired by Spain and Morocco.

This thematic meeting will include the participation of national and international representatives and experts, and one of its goals is to promote spaces for collaboration and consensus on issues of asylum and international protection. It aims to identify lines of action that will make it possible to develop effective protection systems and strengthen regional cooperation in these areas and in the zone covered by the Rabat Process.

Maxence Defontaine

Communications Officer of the “Rabat Process” project

More information on the Rabat Process and this upcoming meeting on this website: www.processusderabat.net.

When I arrived in Tunisia during the Christmas season in 2011, every aspect of life in Tunisia was political: how women dressed, how men wore their beards or hair, which mosque you went to, which radio station you listened to or newspaper you read… and also the issue of disability. The challenging context of the political transition and the vulnerability of disability policies, previously under the direct supervision of Ben Ali, resulted in disability ceasing to be a government priority. Nevertheless, in this same context of the Revolution, new organisations of young people with disabilities soon emerged that wanted to denounce previous abuses, reform existing institutions and, similarly, there was great dissent within the large classic organisations, new associative leadership structures being built, new demands for participation and transparency…

I left the country a year ago. I lived and worked there for two years and four months as a expert from the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP). I had the tremendous professional and personal good fortune to live through practically all of the political transition from inside the Tunisian government and in direct contact with the country’s civil society, and more specifically with one of the most vulnerable groups: persons with disabilities.

I arrived in Tunisia in a privileged position as a resident advisor of a European Union project: a twinning, in the jargon of the EU. This is an institutional cooperation instrument of the European Commission, managed in Spain by the FIIAPP, which aims to encourage conciliation of government management and public policies among EU neighbouring countries. In my case, it was a question of developing inclusion policies for persons with disabilities in the new framework of the United Nations Convention.

I took advantage of the Christmas 2011 break to move and bring my family over. By early January, all five of us were there with the sensation of embarking on an adventure in all senses, despite being only two hours away from Madrid by plane. During those weeks we lived through the worst winter weather on record since Tunisia started collecting meteorological data, including the biggest snowstorm in the interior of the country in 40 years. It would turn out to be an omen that things were not going to be as easy as we thought.

After a very rough start in which we really couldn’t establish effective communication with our partners in the Tunisian government, little by little we were able to start orienting the work through a series of pilot projects in the areas of inclusive education and employment programmes. The progress we made was mostly thanks to the action of a group of civil society organisations which, following the model of the Spanish CERMI, formed a powerful lobby. This made it possible to regularise the employment situation of the workers in the nearly 300 assistance centres for persons with disabilities in Tunisia and make a pact with the Ministry of Social Affairs regarding a new stable financing structure based on quality objectives and indicators.

That moment was unquestionably the turning point in the project, as it made it possible to create a new environment because, despite the difficulties and discussions, a new basic structure had been generated.

Nevertheless, the overall context again made things difficult when the first wave of political violence hit in 2012. This would end six months later with the assassination of Chokri Belaid, a human rights lawyer and secular left politician, although perhaps in international terms the best known episode was the attack and destruction of the United States Embassy.

Personally, these experiences brought back memories of my childhood during the Spanish political transition. Seeing my children enjoying days off from school as a result of these situations reminded me of myself enjoying similar moments in Spain in the seventies. I wasn’t able to see the worry in my parents’ eyes then, as I hope my children didn’t see mine in these moments.

Finally we managed to create a national strategy document on disability; we formed a group of some 30 people to address the reform of special education, and we carried out pilot projects for this reform in five schools in Tunis and its metropolitan area. We included inclusive education for parents, mothers and teachers, educational inspectors in the pilot projects, and we gave opportunities to many people, like Kauser.

In the case of employment policies for persons with disabilities, we tried to break their marginalisation in the labour market by putting them in contact with companies, improving vocational training programmes, and raising awareness among business owners about the advantages of diversity in the workforce. The experience of Spain’s Inserta Foundation was key in this sense. And we trained a small socio-occupational team in each province to assist persons with disabilities in a coordinated manner.

Despite all of this, many things were left undone, but I left Tunisia with the satisfaction of knowing that I had done all I could in a very difficult context that the Tunisians shared generously with me and my family.

I left Tunisia with a great love of the country, of its people, its climate, its culture, its streets… And with the bittersweet feeling of wanting to participate even more and better in this spirit of reform that filled me two years and four months ago when I first arrived in the country. The future of Tunisia is the future of all of us who live on the shores of the Mediterranean. That’s why I suffered along with the Tunisians when the marvellous El Bardo museum was attacked. And that’s why I want to use these lines to invite everyone to support the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution by getting lost on its beaches, in it mountains, on its deserts this summer. Sharing its archaeological and natural riches. Drinking a glass of Kurubis wine or Celtia beer while watching the millenarian blue of the Gulf of Carthage, and in this way to help consolidate the liberty and dignity of our neighbours in addition to our own.

Diego Blázquez is an expert from the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP). You can also read this article in Planeta Futuro.

A European citizen takes an average of 15 minutes to reach a doctor, but in Colombia territorial dispersion represents a barrier to ensuring access to healthcare services. The city of Tambo, the country’s second largest in surface area, is one such example. There, in an area of 3,280 km2 with some 60,0000 inhabitants (94% in remote rural areas), there is one doctor for every 7,500 inhabitants, well below the national average (15 per 10,000 inhabitants). And from one community, it can take several hours, on horseback or in a car, to reach the closest medical centre. Under these conditions, reaching the hospital in Popayán, the capital of the department, can turn into an odyssey costing up to 100,000 pesos (€35), according to Eduardo Villa, physician and manager of the hospital of Tambo. A luxury beyond the reach of most of the inhabitants of one of the poorest departments of the country, in which the average per-capita income is 250,000 pesos[ii] (€100).

These factors explain, in part, the city’s dramatic perinatal mortality rates in recent years: 34 per 1,000, double the national average and nearly 10 times greater than in Spain. When he arrived at the hospital in 2012, Dr Villa decided to address this problem by seeking the support of key stakeholders in this mainly indigenous and rural territory: traditional doctors and midwives. This meant adding the experience of Western medicine to the experience and ancestral knowledge of midwives. Dr Villa created groups for exchanges and training with the aim of improving monitoring of pregnant women, and prevention and detection of high-risk pregnancies. Luis Amaro, midwife and traditional doctor, was a member of one of these groups. He’s been attending births in isolated indigenous communities, day and night, all his life. Since he’s started participating in the midwife group, he now quickly identifies high-risk pregnancies and sends the patients to the hospital.

Another initiative launched by the hospital was the opening of a “hotel for pregnant women”, to facilitate early admission of women with high-risk pregnancies at no charge. The result of these two measures combined is noteworthy: in less than three years the perinatal mortality rate in the city fell decisively, approaching zero.

This module represents a new paradigm for Colombian health policies and aims to achieve “quality access to healthcare services”, in the words of Fernando Ruiz, the Deputy Minister of Health, “so that problems are mainly resolved at the primary healthcare level”. The model is focused on family and community medicine, for care that is closer to patients, understands their social context, and puts the accent on pro-health and preventive healthcare. To do this, 5,000 family doctors will be trained over the next 10 years. The model also aims to reduce territorial gaps in healthcare through the opening of clinics closer to the population, the creation of “mobile health brigades”, and a system of incentives for family doctors in remote areas. Implementation of the new model is already underway in the department of Guainía after a three-way negotiation with the local authorities and indigenous representatives. In 2015 it will be implemented in other departments to achieve full coverage in the territory by 2016. The opening of another 15 university programmes in Family Medicine is also anticipated.

EUROsociAL, the cooperation programme of the European Commission with Latin America for social cohesion, supported the Colombian Ministry of Health in designing the model, sharing the experiences of France and Brazil in the area of healthcare in remote areas, and that of the United Kingdom, Spain and Mexico in the area of family medicine. The aim is to ensure the right of all citizens to healthcare so that in within a few years the success of El Tambo is not the exception in Colombia.

Peggy Martinello, Senior FIIAPP Expert in the EUROsociAL Programme

[ii] Source: Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics, 2013Principio del formularioFinal del formulario

Since April 2014, we have been managing an EU-financed cooperation project, also referred to as a twinning, in Ukraine which aims to address the market for pirated and counterfeit goods there. The country is plagued by intellectual property crimes ranging from illegal downloading of movies to counterfeiting of medicines.

Under the umbrella of this project, Spanish and Danish experts on the subject will show their work protocols to the Ukrainians. The ultimate objective is to provide greater security to citizens of the country and reduce the current levels of impunity. Results are being achieved already. One of them is the draft law on “Copyright protection on the Internet”.

Learn about the project in detail by listening to our weekly radio show on Radio 5 (RNE), ‘Public cooperation around the world’. Our two cents worth in celebration of World Intellectual Property Day.

Contra la piratería y la falsificación

“We’ve seen another communication method which is very important: language with pictogrammes that lets children communicate on their own. Also adaptation activities, for example for materials: notebooks, furniture… It’s the first time I’ve received this type of training, and so it was tremendous. It’s opened up new horizons for me, and now we can offer our children an appropriate work method.

We’ve also talked about the importance of inclusion into mainstream schooling and adaptation of the school curriculum. Before we only worked on integration in schools, that is, on providing a special education class for persons with disabilities in an ordinary school; but that’s not the same as inclusion, that’s segregation. Adaptation of the curriculum is very important for educating children with disabilities, whether physical or mental, because it gives each child a special system for learning.

In my daughter’s case, she didn’t know the Arabic alphabet or the numbers. We had tried various methods, but none had worked. She was in school and was promoted to the next grade level automatically. After the exchange with the experts from the project, I thought of bringing my daughter here because I could see that this was very professional work. We started to work with her, and I discovered that my daughter was happy and that she also wanted to move the letters to spell out her name”.

Kouser is a beneficiary of the project ‘Support for socio-economic integration of persons with disabilities’ in Tunisia. Over its two years of duration, it was managed by the FIIAPP and had a budget of two million euros. Hear other voices from the project on our radio programme ‘Public Cooperation Around the World’ (Radio 5, all news)

One year ago “Public Cooperation Around the World” started broadcasting on Radio 5, telling the stories of our projects, our experts on the ground and our day-to-day work to improve public systems in the countries where we work.