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 »

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 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 »

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 »

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 »

The Overseas Development Institute invites you to contribute to our Latin America and Caribbean Blog!  This blog is written by ODI researchers and provides a forum for discussion and debate on politics and development in Latin America and the Caribbean from contributors all over the world. We also provide information about events, publications or web resources on Latin America. We are particularly keen to encourage the participation of those of you in the region, and welcome your comments, which can be in English or Spanish, as well as your posts. So if you have a specific issue or news story you’d like ...   more »

To those who, like myself, had assumed that Telesur was merely an outlet for pro-Chavez propaganda, this talk by James Painter of the BBC World Service revealed some surprising and some not-so-surprising facts about this Caracas-based pan-Latin American TV network. In fact, Telesur is not owned exclusively by Venezuela, but a joint project in which a number of Latin American governments are stakeholders - although it is all paid for by Venezuela’s oil wealth. Claiming to provide an alternative to CNN and other Western media, it follows the example of other ‘counter-hegemonic’ news channels like Al-Jazeera, which ...   more »

In this conference organised by LSE’s Peruvian Society, speakers reflected on how the new political map of Latin America is influencing Peru’s integration into transnational markets and what this tells us about the opportunities and challenges facing developing countries when interacting in the global economy. Speakers were Dr. Ricardo Luna (Peruvian Ambassador in the UK), Dr. John Crabtree (Centre for Latin American Studies, Oxford University) and Mr. Richard Ralph  (former British Ambassador in Peru (2003-2006) and current chairman of a UK mining company working in Peru). The conference was chaired by LSE’s Dr Evan Killick....   more »