EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

We talk about this with Mario Germán Sánchez González, expert in monitoring and evaluation of cooperation programmes and project technician in the area of Justice and Rule of Law at the FIIAPP.    

Why is it so important to measure results in public technical cooperation for development?

There is a global consensus outlined for sustainable development, to which all cooperation actions must respond and contribute, seeking to increase the impact on the reduction of poverty and inequality and the improvement of public systems. In this field, defined, measurable and traceable results are a necessary starting and finishing point to achieve the desired impact.

We are talking about aid effectiveness and the commitments and progress of states in this area, but we are also talking about carrying out an exercise of responsibility in technical action and in the investment of the economic resources with which it is financed.

What is the importance of results in European cooperation?

Results orientation in cooperation programmes has become a hallmark of European cooperation. The European Union’s major regional programmes have been an example of progress in this area. The Directorate-General for International Partnerships is increasingly demanding the application of the results approach in programmes and projects. 

Along these lines, in 2015 the European Union created the European Union International Cooperation and Development Results Framework (EURF) to align the results sought and financed by European cooperation with the 2030 Agenda.

Furthermore, in January 2022, a new revision has taken place in which the known results framework is renamed the Global Europe Results Framework (GERF), which seeks to align with the 2020-2024 Strategic Plans of DGs INTPA, NEAR and FPI that were developed under the policy priority of a ‘Europe Stronger in the World’.   

How do the results relate to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) evaluation criteria?

The results, understood as guiding intervention guidelines, have a direct relationship with DAC evaluation criteria that are used to monitor and evaluate interventions.

The results of the intervention, in their different stages, are the object and content of the evaluation criteria, whose report tells us, among other things, about the degrees of achievement, contribution and/or attribution of the results, their relevance, pertinence, coherence and impact.

What challenges and opportunities exist for the effective implementation of the results approach in cooperation?

The main challenge, but at the same time an opportunity, is to be convinced that it can and should be applied throughout the project cycle, starting with the formulation itself.

It is a challenge because it requires a proper understanding of the results chain and its different links. At the same time, it is an opportunity, because it is an instrument we work with every day in cooperation projects, and if used correctly, it can lead not only to coherence, but also to the effectiveness of the intervention. 

Question: What is the Practitioners’ Network?

Answer: The Practitioners’ Network is an informal and voluntary network of European cooperation agencies accredited for delegated cooperation. In other words, we are agencies that implement cooperation projects financed by the European Union. This network was created in 2007 and currently has 22 members. It serves to pool all member agencies. In the end, we realize that, as we are dedicated to the same thing, we have common challenges to which we can look for solutions together, which is very useful for all of us and also allows us to foster a relationship of trust between agencies, as we are all regular partners in European Union projects. We often work together.

Q: Why is it important for FIIAPP to be part of this network?

A: At a strategic level for the daily work of the FIIAPP it is very important to be in this network and it is an opportunity because this network is a forum, a strategic and privileged platform for dialogue for the cooperation agencies, not only among the agencies as we were mentioning, but also vis-à-vis the European Commission, since it is an observer member of the network. Let’s say that it is a privileged space for exchange among us. In addition, as AECID is also a member, together we strengthen the position of Spanish cooperation in European cooperation, which at a strategic level is also very important for us and also allows us to give visibility to the work that FIIAPP does, especially our strengths or our areas of specialization. In the end, this helps us to position ourselves as an agency in issues that are a priority for us and in which we have experience and a lot to contribute.

Q: This 2022 is a very special year for FIIAPP in the network, because we are taking over the co-presidency together with the Dutch agency SNV…

A: Yes, the network has a rotating presidency and just this year we took over the presidency with the Dutch agency, which is called SNV. We started the chairmanship on May 11. This implies that we will have the representation of the Network before the European institutions, especially with the European Commission, which is very interesting because we will have the direct and periodic dialogue on behalf of the network with the Commission for a whole year.

In addition, the agencies that hold the Presidency convene and chair both the network’s governance meetings, as well as represent the network in major forums and events of interest, such as the European Development Days, as will be the COP 27 in November, or the Paris Peace Forum. In addition, the Presidency sets the annual priorities of the network, the issues on which all the agencies will work together in the Network forum and also has a special role in organizing activities and events. The presidency will be responsible for ensuring the strategic continuity of the network.

Q: What will be FIIAPP’s priorities for the co-presidency?

A: Within the general objective of developing and promoting the role of the NP as a key driver for strengthening better European development cooperation, this year we want to continue to emphasize at the European level the importance of cooperation agencies within the European development architecture. We also want to work on the operationalization of the Team Europe approach and the spirit of Working Better Together, of which we have been talking so much lately, since in the end we realize that the NP is the materialization of these two principles.

They are agencies that work together, looking for synergies according to their expertise in areas in which they have experience. It will also be especially important for the FIIAPP to continue to position the value of public sector knowledge or public technical cooperation, that is, the value of the knowledge of our administrations as a form of cooperation, since we are convinced of the importance of this cooperation for the improvement of public systems and the development of institutional capacities to provide services to citizens.

In short, this presidency is, of course, a challenge, but also an opportunity for us. We are delighted to be able to contribute in such a direct way to the construction of the European cooperation architecture. And we are looking forward to implementing the work plan that we have prepared and that we believe will be of great added value, not only for the agencies of the network but also for the citizens.

The nature managed by these communities is declining less rapidly than in other areas, as they work to protect the environment over the long term through sustainable use of biodiversity management and governance. However, they are the most affected by the effects of climate change.  

The lands they manage account for 28% of the carbon stored in forests globally. Annually, they sequester an amount of CO2 equivalent, on average, to 30% of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru’s 2030 targets. These countries store 28% of the world’s carbon, but account for only 5.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns of the loss of ecosystems and the decrease in food production and access to food, which has led to an increase in malnutrition and has seriously affected the economy of these indigenous communities.

Climate policies have traditionally ignored the ancestral knowledge and wisdom of indigenous peoples, which is why 141 governments committed at COP26 in Glasgow to recognise the rights of these communities and their lands as a fundamental element in ending deforestation by 2030.  Now Peru is launching an Indigenous Peoples’ Platform to address climate change.

It thus becomes a pioneer country in the recognition of indigenous knowledge and practices that contribute to the comprehensive management of climate change, as established in the Paris Agreement.

FIIAPP supports this Platform

We spoke with Teresa Aguilar and Álvaro Ovejas, Project Technicians in the European programme Euroclima+, co-led by the FIIAPP, which has supported the formation of this Platform. They tell us about the challenges in the implementation of this proposal and the great benefits it brings. This is the first time that the Peruvian Ministries of Culture and Environment have come together with the country’s indigenous peoples.

How was the Platform of Indigenous Peoples of Peru born to confront climate change?

Teresa: This Platform was born out of the indigenous people’s own demand and brings together the seven registered and legalised indigenous organisations in the country. It is a milestone on the Latin American continent because it brings together indigenous peoples of different casuistry, ethnicities and origins.

Álvaro: The Platform gives indigenous peoples a voice in climate governance bodies, such as the National Commission. In addition, Peru is a ratifier of ILO Convention 169, which establishes the obligation to consult indigenous peoples in all political and legal measures that could directly affect them.

What have been the main challenges in setting up this platform?

Teresa: The first challenge has been linguistic. The different indigenous peoples cannot understand each other, because not everyone speaks Spanish, only the political leaders.  They speak five native languages such as Quechua, Aymara, Shipibo and Awajún. We have also faced the territorial challenge. It is not easy to move around in a country like Peru, and these are people who do not have access to digitalisation either.

How does climate change affect indigenous women the most?

Teresa: The indigenous population, because of their origin, is a rural population and their livelihoods depend on natural resources. Therefore, climate change directly affects their economic activity.

The impact of climate change is aggravated and is more disproportionate for women, who are already discriminated against and vulnerable. They are socially responsible for food and household health and, living in rural environments, their livelihoods are based on fishing, livestock, agriculture or agroforestry management. The impact of climate change degrades their economy, and we are already seeing climate migration in the face of environmental disasters caused by climate change.

What has been the role of the European programme Euroclima and the FIIAPP in the construction of the Platform?

Álvaro: Euroclima has been involved from the beginning of this process. It started with the prior consultation with indigenous peoples on the Framework Law on Climate Change, which agreed, among other provisions, on the creation of this Platform. It was during the development of the Framework Law on Climate Change that direct collaboration between Euroclima and the Peruvian Ministry of Environment began.

On the one hand, we have supported the development of dialogues between the Peruvian Ministry of Environment and national organisations. And on the other hand, we have supported the process of creating the entire legal, regulatory and institutional framework that gives the Platform its place.

Why are indigenous peoples known as guardians of diversity?

Álvaro: The way of life of indigenous peoples is not only very rural, but does not require the same infrastructure that is used in cities. Their routine is much more adapted to the environment.

Teresa: I think that the guardians of nature are undoubtedly the people who have originally grown up and lived in it. It is their ecosystem and they know it perfectly, it is what is called ancestral knowledge.

Is this initiative in Peru a reference for other Latin American countries?

Teresa: Peru is now a country that others look up to. There are countries that could replicate it because the Peruvian experience is scalable. All of Latin America has an indigenous population, but political will is needed. It all depends on the nature of the country and how this indigenous figure is received by governments.

There is also talk of indigenous associations at the regional level, such as those in the Amazon. The Amazon Basin has great value in terms of forests and the environment; it is the lungs of the planet and touches several countries. Therefore, we are no longer talking about a national platform, but a transnational one. When you talk to regional indigenous associations, their dream is to have a platform that unites them at the regional level.

Question: Looking back, with everything that has happened: the COVID crisis, the war in Ukraine… How is the EU handling the current global context? 

Answer: The pandemic was one of the crises that pushed European integration forward. The pandemic was the high point because the EU managed to get member states to agree for the first time to borrow together to deal with the consequences of the socio-economic crisis caused by COVID.

In the external action dimension, the birth of “Team Europe” as a joint reaction of European cooperation actors to the needs of partner countries to address the pandemic and the exit from it. In line with the objective of the current Von der Leyen Commission: “A stronger Europe in the world” in the face of such a dramatic situation as the war in Ukraine, Europe, with the sanctions against Russia, has once again shown that unity in adversity, which is what defines and distinguishes it as a project and a space for consultation and regional integration.

Q: You mention that the current Commission has given the EU a more geopolitical focus, how has this affected development cooperation?

A: It has resulted in a paradigm shift from development cooperation to international partnerships, reflecting the change in the name of the Commission service from DG Development Cooperation to DG INTPA. It responds to the need to build international partnerships to leverage resources other than public resources to implement the 2030 Agenda and achieve its development goals. I think it is an opportunity to think about how these partnerships can be more strategic and how it can be an opportunity for the EU to project what distinguishes us, which are our values. This more geopolitical outlook also raises the level of cooperation policy and brings it closer to the EU’s external action priorities. I think this can be positive, as long as we do not lose the ultimate goal for which we work with our partners, which is to improve the lives of people and the planet.

The European Commission in Brussels on Europe Day

Q: It is precisely this holistic approach that is most reflected in the Team Europe logic, how would you define it?

A: As the joining of forces that can achieve more impact than if European actors work individually and in an uncoordinated way. I think it is showing the potential of our diversity as Europeans on the international stage, how we can be stronger if we join forces both in terms of talent from our administrations and from the private sector, the banking sector, civil society.

Q: In addition to this Team Europe strategy in recent months, there have been big projects and framework strategies such as the Global Gateway, but sometimes it feels like these documents don’t reach the people on the ground, what is the real impact of these documents on day-to-day life?

A: It is a framework, like a branding exercise. It is a strategy that we are moving towards together, and the big challenge is how to make it concrete and make it a reality without losing sight of the shared priorities with our partner countries. It is the joint look at how we want to achieve more impact to address challenges that we share with the other partner countries.

Q: What are the EU’s sectoral and geographical priorities for development cooperation?

At the geographical level we see that the region where the focus is clearest is sub-Saharan Africa and the neighbourhood, but Ukraine is also drawing attention to the importance of not losing sight of Latin America, which is our neighbour in every sense except geographically.

At the sectoral level, the two big priorities are the green and digital agenda. What COVID has taught us is that a just transition is needed, that the transition cannot only be green and digital but also has to be social, and although this part is not so marked, I think it is the distinctive feature of Europe, our social model.

Q: In all the work that the FIIAPP does in Brussels, one of the key areas is the Practitioners’ Network, what does this network consist of?

The Practitioners’ Network is an informal European network that brings together most of the European cooperation agencies. It has 15 years of experience, FIIAPP has been a member of the network for 8 years and will take over the co-presidency in May. It is the platform for strategic dialogue with the European Commission. It is a key space because it is where we can share realities that we encounter on a day-to-day basis in programmes and projects, it is the place where we can highlight the most relevant lessons learned when we work together and how we can improve in this regard. It is the platform where we can, from practice, and from our ideas, nourish the agenda of European cooperation, especially at this time of reflection or challenge to achieve coordinated joint work through the spirit of Team Europe and the new European development architecture that is under construction, with the challenge of making it more structured and inclusive.

Q: The FIIAPP will take over the co-presidency in May. What are the priorities you intend to promote?

A: Above all, to promote the potential of the network as a guide for the incipient European development architecture or European cooperation system, coordinated and inclusive. How the network can contribute to the construction of a stronger narrative around Team Europe, as a milestone towards the construction of a European architecture for development, and how it can help us to reflect internally as agencies. Another issue is how it will be done: what are the methodologies and lessons learned from practice that can help us to work together in a more strategic, inclusive and participatory way, with the 2030 Agenda and its 17 SDGs as a frame of reference. In that sense, to continue work that has been of great added value, such as the reflection on the potential of public talent in our Member States, for a distinctive European cooperation around our values and interests.

On February 24, the worst forecasts were confirmed, also for the FIIAPP team in Ukraine, which has been working there since 2010, currently with the projects “Strengthening the State Aviation Administration” and “Supporting e-Government and Digital Economy in Ukraine”.

Adrian Perez, from the EU4DigitalUA project, told the FIIAPP team that “we continue with our commitment and work to move forward with the project and thus contribute our bit to Ukrainian society”.  So much so that Computerworld has echoed the importance of the European project co-led by the FIIAPP, and has talked to us about how the country’s digital future could be diminished after the tough situation in which it is immersed. Its manager, Pablo Ródenas, tells us about it.

What are public ethics?

There is no doubt that ethics are needed to be able to live in society. Further still, we need ethics to be able to coexist in society justly. Public ethics seek a minimum agreement that can be generalised to be able to live together justly. This guarantees long-term stability in societies. 

Public ethics therefore refers to ethics that seek to establish a moral standard common to societies, morality of a universal and generalisable nature, which also respects private and reasonable conceptions of goodness. 

Public ethics are different from public sector ethics, since the former are the ethics of an entire society, free of fundamentalism, and which allow everyone to live together while respecting our differences. For its part, public sector ethics are also referred to as political ethics, a type of professional ethics, and consist of firmly defined and established standards of behaviour, which prescribe what public employees must do, in terms of public service duties, principles, virtues and benefits for society. 

How was the need for a guide to ethical dilemmas for public administration identified?

Since 2020, the National Civil Service Authority of Peru (SERVIR) has been working on a model for improving integrity in the Peruvian Public Administration with a massive impact and a practical approach. With this strategic approach, the need for a self-learning guide document was identified to provide concept, reflection and action instruments for dealing with the typical ethical problems and risks to integrity facing the Peruvian public sector. It would be a document on which to base strategies and training actions with wide coverage. Both its content and the cases included in the guide are associated with the real situation in Peru, but it has other uses. It can be applied to other situations in Latin American countries. 

The guide is based on the belief that public employees want to do things well and ethically. This is crucial, although unfortunately, despite their good intentions, inappropriate administrative practices, habits and rituals are rooted in our organisations, which are not analysed with the moral thoroughness expected of a good public service. Because of this, it persists and leads to the ethical stagnation of the public sector. Therefore, the guide also contains elements to analyse and question this type of practices from a moral standpoint and to strengthen the ethics and integrity of the public service through analysis and moral confrontation, based on a pragmatic approach and associated with the moral development of our institutions. 

Could you give us some examples of cases where this guide would be useful?

The guide is designed to offer tools to strengthen the moral behaviour of public officials, with case studies, and guidelines for action in ethically challenging situations. There are numerous examples. In extreme situations where it is necessary to correct the course of unethical administrative routines and practices such as dealing with unclear and biased public procurement processes; personnel and people management policies without the human factor and integrity; in cases where position and authority lacks effective control or supervision and may lead to bribery and other corrupt practices; or nepotism and favouring family members, friends or third parties for profit, making key administrative decisions without  due process, objectivity and impartiality. 

The guide includes a selection of 78 cases classified by policy area, type of administrative activity and type impact on ethics and integrity. 

How did EUROsociAL+ work with Peru to publish this guide?

One possible approach to the fight against corruption is the regulatory-sanctioning approach, based on closer regulation, strict enforcement and firm prosecution, however, recent studies have shown it to be of only limited value in preventing corruption. 

Based on these observations, a strategic approach has been devised in addition to the previous one, based on encouraging public integrity understood as adherence to and compliance with shared ethical values, principles and norms, to maintain and prioritise the public interest above private interests, in the public sector. 

Faced with this complex problem, SERVIR asked the EUROsociAL + programme for support to strengthen the Peruvian public integrity system in the field of human resource management by introducing values, standards and guidelines in the Peruvian regulatory framework for the implementation of a new culture of integrity; and developing civil servants’ skills, with emphasis on management personnel, to manage a culture of integrity in the civil service. 

As a result of this collaboration and based on different diagnoses, EUROsociAL+ advised on the preparation of the guide and final consultancy reports, a tool that was also shared through virtual seminars and workshops. 

To see the full guide: 

Practical guide to deal with ethical problems and dilemmas: strengthening integrity in Peruvian public management