Master plan for international cooperation and solidarity 2006-2008

Presented below are the main external referents that have shaped and will shape the development cooperation policy of Barcelona City Council and, consequently, of this Master Plan and the actions that are derived from it.

2.1. The new doctrine and the agenda of development and of development cooperation

The multilateral organisations, the United Nations system, the OECD, many countries of the North and the South, and also most of the private and public actors of the development cooperation system undertook a commitment, not long ago, to an international agenda aimed at reducing poverty in the world. The date set to achieve this reduction of poverty is the year 2015. The commitment is expressed through eight goals, 18 specific milestones to be achieved by the year of reference, with an established system of indicators and of procedures of analysis, follow-up and assessment, including intermediate examinations of the evolution of the commitments (the first one precisely in the year 2005).

Additionally, in addition to the commitments in matters of development and eradication of poverty, the Millennium Declaration includes a series of commitments that also set the agenda of the actors of the international system of development cooperation and of improvement of international relations. Specifically, it includes commitments in matters of: the building of peace (peace, security and disarmament); equity of gender and promotion of women’s independence; environment; democracy; human rights, good governance and management of public affairs, protection of vulnerable persons and groups; special attention to the specific needs of Africa, and strengthening of the United Nations system.

Of course, the Declaration, its Goals and the rest of the linked commitments will be a basic guide for the cooperation and solidary action of the City Council.

In the field of the “doctrine” of development and cooperation that is necessary to achieve it, it should likewise be mentioned that, in the last two decades, the dominant current of the idea of development has given rise to an array of consensuses and of best practices that are taken for granted.

In other words, we possess a series of ideas, concepts and consensuses that work everywhere and for everyone as guides for action, as elements that allow public policies of quality to be shaped in the field of development and cooperation.

For the purposes of this Master Plan, the following may be highlighted among these concepts:

1. The consideration of development as an overall public good and as a right of a permanent structural nature. The consideration of development cooperation as a temporary limited goal, merely aimed at assisting or enabling development policies but marked – in accordance with the conception of the term – by a transformative orientation far removed from asssistentialism.
2. The consideration of development as a multidimensional process centred on the satisfaction of the needs of persons and on the constant improvement of their welfare, a process that may have various models depending on the restrictions, conditioning factors, options and decisions in environmental, Culturel, social, economic and political matters in each case. In short, the consideration of development as a process that seeks to help to resolve the structural causes of poverty, inequalities, exclusion and injustice.
3. The singularisation of international references and standards that allow the planning and making of decisions on public policies, with sectoral and thematic priorities, for the various actors of the system, inter-relating the policies and establishing best practices when defining the basic considerations with respect to planning and performance.

Lastly, it should be recalled that the Master Plan of the City Council, as well as its  development cooperation policy, must take into consideration and adopt the legal and strategic-planning frameworks in matters of Spanish and Catalan development cooperation, specifically the Master Plans 2005-2008 and 2002-2006 and the respective annual applications of both.

2.2. Best practices and international standards, a guide in the quest for quality and coherence

Decades of development aid and cooperation, and the eighth goal of the aforementioned Millennium Declaration (development association strategy), allow the establishment of a catalogue of best practices and international standards that will serve as a guide for action.

Specifically, the following should be noted, from a greater to a lesser degree of specification:

1. The latest goals of the development and development cooperation policies, which are marked by the focus on the promotion of the capacities of persons, communities, cities and nations, a focus especially promoted by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and the UNDP, which incorporates the gender perspective into the analysis and practice of these capacities in order to assure an genuinely universal perspective.
2. The way of conceiving the relationship between the various public policies (with diverse actors) that affect the development and development cooperation process, which are summarised in the quest for coherence, coordination and complementarity between policies and between actors.
3. The orientations relating to the planning and instruments, phases and modalities of performance that are to allow the diverse actors involved to adopt the processes and to become particularly co-responsible.
4. The engagement to the development association strategy (Eighth Goal of the Millennium Declaration), which establishes that development cooperation and aid will be effective to the extent that they are based on or provide support for medium- and long-term development strategies conceived and led by the national authorities or the community organisations of the South, in collaboration or association with civil society or the many political and social sectors and actors of each country. These strategies should allow the preparation of integrated and coherent policies for fighting poverty and exclusion and in favour of social development.
5. The quest for stability, by means of cooperation modalities and instruments that go beyond the annual projects and focus on strengthening and improving the social, economic and institutional capacities.
6. The establishment of specific goals and milestones, achievable in a reasonable specific period of time, the fulfilment of which may be followed up and assessed by means of clear explicit consensuated indicators that allow the measurement of the degree of actual accomplishment, the specific impact.
7. The application, to the greatest possible extent and respecting the existing rules of law (for example, protection of personal data), of practices that assure participation, information and transparency throughout the whole process of planning and performance of the development cooperation policies, as well as the concurrence and equality of conditions between the beneficiaries and between the possible actors with whom an action will be agreed.
8. The fostering and use of assessment, in the twofold sense of analysis of the impact of the policies and actions, and of improvement of the development cooperation policy by means of the lessons learned.
9. The consideration of the development cooperation policies and actions, regardless of the real medium- and long-term impact, as an opportunity to foster inexcusably – in the North and in the South – the empowerment, the participation and the values and patterns of conduct that mark solidarity and internationalism. In short, a conception of development cooperation understood as a bidirectional practice of mutual learning and not simply one of paternalistic assistentialism to the actors of the South.
10. The quest for coordination and synergy between actors.
11. The quest for coherence between policies (development and cooperation, international relations and/or internationalisation, commercial and touristic promotion, human rights, education, etc.), and also for medium- and long-term temporal coherence in the policy of development cooperation.

Consequently, in accordance with the limited capacity of a municipal actor in matters of development cooperation and the internationalist, solidary and sponsoring commitment of the United Nations system, of the city and of the City Council, this Master Plan makes its own the commitments, goals, milestones, orientations, agenda and dominant doctrine of the conception of development and of development cooperation, and it undertakes to incorporate them into every part of its development cooperation and solidarity policy.

2.3. Local governments and development cooperation: local responses to global problems

There is also a local framework of reference that centres on the cities as international actors and on fostering municipalism, which must be kept in mind and incorporated. Specifically, we must consider at least the following elements and factors:

One: By calling and experience, the local government can help to correct some of the negative effects that are Januaryated everywhere by the globalization process, effects that make themselves felt especially in the urban sphere.

Two: The local governments – by their legitimacy, representativity, flexibility and capacity for adaptation – are in many cases the most efficient administrative tool for solving problems of the citizenry. Hence the principles of proximity and efficiency, together with the importance of the participation processes, are an added value for the actions of local authorities.

Three: For some time now the cities have been international actors of a growing importance. This emergence onto the international scene is linked to complex processes of change in international and institutional relations which have caused the network of cities, on a universal scale, to be led by a model of city and of local authority that is characterised by:

1. the promotion of public policies to answer the problems of global dimensions, but with clear local repercussions.
2. the presence of an active and engaged citizen movement that demands, from its authorities, actions that are consistent with the challenges posed.
3. a system of relations based on the creation of municipal networks and of city-to-city commitments which, in turn, establish relations and commitments with the supra-state bodies.

This is why local governments’ international development cooperation has an evidently specific nature that is structured round such concepts and practices as decentralisation, subsidiarity and the inclusion of the various agents operating in the system.

This specific nature is enhanced in a constructive vision of the proximity policy which, in view of the complexity of the powers in an increasingly globalised world, obliges the solutions to problems to be drawn as near as possible in order to solve them.
In short, it is vital for cities to equip themselves with resources to cope with contemporary challenges, and to state their will to address them.
Making conflicts rise to the surface, identifying them and being able to channel solutions is also a working method that can only be applied from the front line.

2.4. The framework of reference and the commitments of the city of Barcelona

In the specific case of Barcelona, it may be observed that all three elements are fulfilled.

More specifically, the importance and significance of two of them should be emphasized. Firstly, Barcelona has categorically opted for integration in the various structures, networks and organisations that the cities have established, assuming in them an acknowledged and accepted leadership. Secondly, the open cosmopolitan character of the people of Barcelona has favoured the process of opening up to the international context.

It may thus be observed that the citizenry of Barcelona looks favourably upon the exterior projection of the city and has clearly and explicitly expressed its will for local government not to remain passive to matters of global justice, as has been shown by the campaign to allocate 0.7% of GDP to development cooperation, the mass movement of solidarity with the city of Sarajevo, or the huge demonstrations on the streets of the city against the military intervention in Iraq and against the negative impact of globalisation. These movements have had a great influence on the design of an international policy of our city and on the shaping of our city’s international character.

The end result is a clear commitment of the City Council in terms of contents, forms and procedures, which may be summed up as follows:

1. The assumption of a facilitating role in the building of a citizenry defined by the culture of peace, human rights and solidarity. This is an informed, aware and engaged citizenry that maintains and strengthens the participative and associative dynamics, and that has the capacity to incorporate the new realities present in the city, which often bring us face-to-face with problems brought about by unfair international relations that have prevailed in recent years.
2. The conception of development cooperation as a political option and a strategic course of work, which is enhanced in bilateral and multilateral projects, in programmes of direct cooperation from the City Council, or in subsidies for the projects of diverse bodies, and so on. This was strengthened in the decision to devote 0.7% of the direct municipal taxes to the financing of cooperation and solidarity actions. This commitment will be strengthened and expanded during the period of effectiveness of the Master Plan.
3. The development, corroborated by years of on-site work, of formulas of city-to-city collaboration and of collaboration between local governments, which have demonstrated their effectiveness.

With this Master Plan, the city of Barcelona seeks to revindicate and echo the ideological and political heritage that the municipalist movement has created, through the assumption of the commitments, declarations, agreements and treaties of both international scope and of the municipal authorities themselves, assuming the terms and responsibilities of the Charter of Local Self-Government, the Charter of Educating Cities (Declaration of Barcelona, 1990), the Barcelona Commitment proclaimed at the Universal Forum of Cultures of 2004, the Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City, the Agenda 21 for Culture, the constituent Bylaws of the Network of United Cities and Local Governments, the Agenda 21 of Barcelona and others.

No city is an island. The network of cities covers today’s world and makes it a living, agile, permanently connected organism. The future of the world looks to be eminently urban, with cities that are linked by reciprocal duties of solidarity and that preserve a common Culturel heritage: local autonomy and democracy, which should revert to the building of a globality based on solidary values.