With a 7.9 score on the Richter scale, the earthquake which struck Peru on the 15th August 2007 shook up the country’s entire natural disaster response system. The magnitude of the event revealed the institutional and logistical limitations of Peru’s crisis response system particularly at the regional level.

The international community has been seeking to improve the capacity, predictability and accountability of humanitarian response processes through the implementation of the cluster approach. Approved by the IASC in 2005, it seeks to concentrate expertise, coordinate action and foster partnerships by grouping humanitarian organisations of the same field under the leadership of ...   more »

 Por Antonio Cicioni, director del Programa de Instituciones Políticas de CIPPEC (Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento)

 

Las elecciones presidenciales argentinas del 28 de octubre son, antes que nada, un motivo para celebrar. Se trata de la sexta elección consecutiva desde la restauración de la democracia en 1983, algo que no deja de ser auspicioso si se tiene en cuenta las décadas de violencia y gobiernos dictatoriales que caracterizaron a la Argentina del siglo XX. La democracia logró incluso sobrevivir a la trágica crisis de 2001, que sumió en la pobreza ...   more »

Comercio y Pobreza en Latinoamérica (COPLA) aims to use research based evidence to strengthen and promote an improved dialogue between policymakers, researchers and those institutions that represent the poor to incorporate new issues into the policy debate.

 

 A couple of years ago, when the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Peru was still being negotiated, a friend who had worked in the Peruvian Ministry of Trade and had been involved in the negotiations told me that studies about the effects of the agreement on poverty had been commissioned but not been made public. Why? Because they ...   more »

Amid announcements that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is seeking indefinite terms for the presidency and thereby further undermining what remains of Venezuelan democracy, comes more moves to shore up support from leftist / anti-American leaders the world over… this time, very close to home, in London.   more »

Tough Times Ahead for Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

Aaron Goldfarb 8 August 2007

After presiding over an impressive fifth year of economic expansion in Argentina, President Nestor Kirchner could have easily won a second term in the upcoming October elections. Instead, Kirchner is stepping aside to let his wife, Cristina Fernandez, seek the presidency. Cristina, who has often been compared to Hilary Clinton, has been a leading figure in the Senate for the past four years. Though her approval rating is not as high as her husband’s, Cristina (as she likes to be known) is still heavily favoured ...   more »

Costa Rica switched diplomatic relations from Taiwan to Mainland China earlier this month, citing economic reasons as the deciding factor. Costa Rica’s realignment is a small example of how Chinese "checkbook diplomacy" is reshaping Latin American politics. By financing multi-billion dollar infrastructure and public works projects in Latin America, China is receiving contracts for raw materials and foodstuffs that will feed the appetite of its ever expanding economy. On his 2005 tour, President Hu Jintao spoke of a US$100 billion investment in South American infrastructure over the next ten years. Clearly, China is laying the path for a long-lasting presence ...   more »

The stadium shook as the passionate crowd seemed to unite in one resounding voice at the US-Argentina Copa America soccer match in Maracaibo on June 28. A chant was taking hold, and it grew louder and louder as people joined in, clapping and stomping their feet at the same time.   more »

Argentine president Nestor Kirchner announced this month that he would not run for re-election in order to put forward his wife, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, as a presidential candidate. Unlike the wives of Juan Peron, Kirchner is an accomplished politician who has served both in the lower house of Congress and now the Senate. Many are comparing her to Hillary Clinton – both are lawyers, both were involved in policy making during their husbands presidency and both are notable politicians in their own right.   more »

The World Bank released its annual “governance indicators” yesterday – a set of six variables which is designed to measure governance globally.  The project has many critics, broadly falling into two camps – those that oppose the idea on principle and argue that the World Bank should not be in the business of rating countries on governance or any other metric, and those that find fault with the indicators methodology, which could accurately be described as a “kitchen sink” approach to measuring corruption, political stability and other categories of governance with surveys and other imprecise metrics....   more »

After US President George W. Bush’s long trip to Latin America this spring, the US has announced a number of very small humanitarian and aid initiatives for the region which appear like buy-offs to the uninitiated. Dedicating just $20 million (the cost of a single day of the continuing Iraqi war), the US has put a large hospital ship off the coast of several Central American cities in an effort to buy popularity. One can’t help but notice how much this mini-mission has in common with the itinerant Cuban doctors working in Venezuela.    more »

In December 2005, Switzerland, France and Spain put forth a proposal to negotiate a humanitarian exchange between hostages kidnapped by the guerrilla group FARC-EP and members of the group being held in prisons by the Colombian government. The proposal sets out a period of 45 days for discussions to be held and the exchange carried out, during which security guarantees would be provided through the ICRC and the UN. But since the proposal was made, neither party have been able to come to an agreement. This has been due to the FARC’s insistence on the demilitarisation of two municipalities ...   more »

     The bill that proposed a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States now lays dead on the Senate floor, where it will likely stay until after the 2008 presidential election.  Latin American leaders expressed their disappointment, with Mexican President Felipe Calderon calling the Senate’s defeat of the bill, “a grave error” and Salvadorian President Elias Antonio Saca labelling the bill’s demise, “a pity”.  Yet a much more incensed tone arose from the Latin American press.  An op-ed in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada placed responsibility on the shoulders of President Bush, ...   more »

Last week, after 11-days of street protests, Venezuelan students opposing Chavez’ decision not to renew the license of the private television channel RCTV were allowed to speak in the National Assembly, an unprecedented event that was also broadcast on Venezuelan television. This video posted on Youtube shows student leader Douglas Barrios giving an impassioned speech in defence of democratic rights, as well as at one point stripping off his red T-shirt. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, it’s worth watching for the expressions of members of Congress and the pro-Chavez students, who far outnumber the protesters.

 

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hw91wKfN2g

Chavez is getting ever bolder.  As he consolidates all instruments of state power into his hands, undermining Venezuelan democracy in the process (as commented on previous posts on this blog), he has also struck out in a new direction in the international realm: independence from the international financial system. 

Chavez’s government announced during the first week of May that it planned to withdraw its membership from the International Monetary Fund, a first for a major emerging market country.  The announcement created a momentary panic amongst financial analysts because many of Venezuela’s sovereign bonds contain clauses which stipulate ...   more »

When DFID withdrew their bilateral programmes in Honduras, Peru and Bolivia, civil society was fast to point out that, among other things, there were many poor Latin Americans who needed urgent assistance. DFID should have stayed to look after them. There are other reasons too for supporting DFID’s direct involvement in Latin American countries. DFID left a space in policy debate that was not filled by other donors (or by the government) and many of the progressive ideas it had supported have suffered to remain in the policy and research agendas.

 

ODI’s mid-term evaluation of DFID’s RAP...   more »

On Sunday 1 April 2007, the Zapatistas launched the second phase of the movement known as La Otra Campana (The Other Campaign).

 

La Otra was originally initiated in January 2006 in the wake of the Zapatista National Liberation Army’s (EZLN) new strategy spelt out in a document famously known as La Sexta (Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle). This proclaimed the need to open a space for the millions of ‘otros y otras’, i.e. the most marginalised sections of the Mexican population – indigenous Indians, maquiladora (sweatshop) workers, the low-paid, women workers in both the country and the ...   more »

Working at the regional level poses a series of challenges for donors. DFID’s Regional Assistance Plan (RAP) in Latin America aims to influence regional policy by working with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, two of the main IFI’s in the region. Without a bilateral programme (except in Nicaragua) DFID faces organisational and contextual challenges which pose a series of fundamental questions -addressed in an ODI evaluation of the RAP. Their answers could potentially inform a process of regional strategy design; but also of global thinking about donors as part of a network of partners and ...   more »

Recent announcements from President Bush on prioritising the biofuels agenda have fuelled the debate on the possible implications for developing countries and one of the main concerns is the impact it will have on food security. This issue is of special concern for Mexico, which experienced its first shock in the rise of food prices in January, when the price of tortillas more than doubled. Facing popular discontent, the government’s immediate solution was to authorize the import of 650,000 tons of corn free of tariffs from the US and intervene in the regulation of prices until May, when the new harvests in the North of Mexico are    more »

The volume of remittances hit the headlines last week on the BBC and One World websites.  The BBC reported that remittances to Latin America are now $62bn, more than aid and foreign direct investment combined. 

This figure has attracted the interest of development policymakers. How, they ask, can remittances be harnessed as an effective development tool? The answer is as yet unknown. What we do know is that the majority of migrants send home small amounts, around $100 to $150 a month.  Charges are incurred per transaction meaning remittances are big business.  One current line of inquiry is what governments ...   more »

To date, the Juntos programme has been the most ambitious and innovative government attempt at tackling childhood poverty in Peru, a country where two out of three children live below the poverty line and many lack access to basic services. Strange then, that the programme has received so little attention; in fact, debates on child protection in Peru have been more preoccupied with how to punish child molesters and kidnappers and fathers who evade child support than with the state’s responsibility for child well-being. However, according to a recent report to which ODI researchers contributed, Juntos has made ...   more »