Intro
Development Cooperation has become one of the main pillars of the new Spanish foreign policy. PSOE’s electoral programme of 2004 assigned priority to development policy. When asked about his main foreign policy concerns in 2006, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero cited the increase in development finance as one of them. Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the first foreign minister in Spain also to bear the title of Development Minister, stresses that he wants to be judged on his capacities to deliver on the promise of poverty reduction. Leire Pajín, State Secretary for Development Cooperation, has become the public face of this commitment, reiterating that not only is the quantity of aid the concern, but also the durability of aid institutions and solid instruments.1
Without caveats, the long-term vision of reducing poverty through the use of development instruments has become an explicit objective of the current Spanish government. It has also made a U-turn as regards the declared aims of its development policies. In contrast to the former government, which used development cooperation to promote economic interests (through tied aid), accompanied by a narrow understanding of cultural heritage or a neo-conservative political agenda, the current government is working to integrate development cooperation within multilateral frameworks, be they European or of the UN.2 The Master Plan 2005-08 affirms this political ambition in various ways, such as in alignment with human rights frameworks, MDGs, Good Humanitarian Donorship, and aid effectiveness measures. The Annual Plans reiterate these normative linkages. The aid volume has increased, and further increases have been announced. On the domestic front, in place of confrontational deadlock, consensus with interested civil society and academia has been sought.
In that respect, one could argue this change represents the “normalization” of Spanish development cooperation: in development policy, Spain, an ugly duckling for some time, has returned to the international fold. “Effective multilateralism” is starting to be translated from an aspiration into practice, as development policies are aligned with internationally agreed standards and funding to and cooperation with UN agencies increases. Spain has pledged to reach the 0.7 percent goal of aid as a percentage of GDP in 2012, three years earlier than the international commitment. And it is one of the only countries that gives a detailed roadmap to reach this objective. On this basis, Kemal Dervis, administrator of the UN Development Programme, has applauded “spectacular progress” in the Spanish aid system.3
The analysis below will enter into the details, in order to assess how action has followed on from these declarations. One of the most important questions is whether the institutional conditions are being prepared to deliver on the promises, i.e. whether financial means are being managed in an effective way that fits in with the dynamics of international development cooperation system. If not, the political will, as important as it is, will not produce any impact for the world’s poor, even if the commitment to a long-term vision of poverty reduction as part of global governance remains a necessary precondition for progress.
High level interest in issues of international cooperation might, however, have a problematic side. There have been a number of landmark initiatives promoted by the Government of Spain, namely by Prime Minister Zapatero or Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega. Amongst these are the “Alliance of Civilizations”, “Spanish and African Women’s Network for a Better World”, the “International Initiative against Hunger and Poverty”, and some initiatives in the context of the Ibero-American Summits. All of them have served once again to emphasise the multilateral stance and soft-power approach of the government.4 But there are concerns over whether these declarative, partly publicity-oriented initiatives are being translated into effective action. From a technical point of aid effectiveness, development cooperation planners fear interference in their programming by senior politicians intent on satisfying domestic audiences. The Council of Development, the consultative organ of Spanish development cooperation, has reported accordingly: “In order to supervise better policy coherence, all state actors are advised to increase their coordination efforts, so that relevant international initiatives (…) that require development cooperation, are interwoven within the rest of the development policies, are reflected in the Annual Plan, and do not entail any dysfunction in terms of planning.”5
- 1
El Pais 15/01/2007 Entrevista
con el presidente del Gobierno José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero:
“Para mí, eso [duplicar la ayuda al desarrollo] forma parte
de una prioridad de la política exterior. (...) Para mí,
el que España sea dentro de poco el país que más
va a avanzar en menos tiempo en el camino de ser un gran donante de
la ayuda al desarrollo tiene un altísimo valor ético.”
Moratinos en diario de sesiones 11 marzo 2007, No 788 “sé
que mi gestión será juzgada en relación con este
nuevo imperativo moral y político [la reducción de pobreza],
que es una de las señas de identidad de nuestro país.”
Leire Pajín en la Comisión Internacional de Desarrollo diario de sesiones 19 marzo 2007, No 808 “La meta no es alcanzar el 0,5 de la AOD a cualquier precio, sino hacerlo de una manera que permita garantizar la sostenibilidad y calidad del compromiso solidario de España, calidad reclamada por la sociedad que trabaja en la cooperación.” - 2 See Jose Antonio Alonso 2005: la cooperación española al final de un ciclo, en: Plataforma 2015 y Más: La palabra empeñada - Los Objetivos 2015 Y La Lucha Contra La Pobreza - Segundo Informe Anual De La Plataforma 2015 Y Más, Madrid 2005 [Catarata].
- 3 See canalsolidario 10/11/2006 “El Gobierno destaca la reducción de los créditos FAD reembolsables en la ayuda oficial al desarrollo”
- 4 Web-page of Alliance of Civilisations; The Spanish and African Women’s Network for a Better World; and its Madrid conference; Both the “Alliance of Civilisations” and the “Quintet against Hunger” were explicitly contrasted with the former government’s “realist” foreign policy.
- 5 Consejo de Cooperación 2006: Informe del Consejo de Cooperación al Desarrollo Sobre el Plan Anual de Cooperación Internacional 2007 (21.12.2006), Madrid [own translation] [Con el objeto de velar por una mayor coherencia de la política de cooperación, se insta a todos los agentes de la administración a que redoblen sus esfuerzos de coordinación, de manera que iniciativas internacionales de la relevancia, (...) que comprometen la acción del Estado en el ámbito de la cooperación, estén imbricadas con el resto de políticas de cooperación, tengan un reflejo en el PACI y no supongan ninguna disfunción respecto al ejercicio de planificación.”]
