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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 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 »

On Saturday 2nd Dec 2006, a conference entitled ‘Latin America 2006: making another world possible’ was held at Congress House, organised by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, Justice for Colombia, Venezuela Information Centre and the T&G Latin American Workers Association. The conference brought together trade unionists, academics, NGOs and progressive movements from Latin America and the UK to explore recent political and social developments across Latin America. In particular, it explored the effects of US policy on the region and the current wave of progressive changes seen most notably in Venezuela and Bolivia.

 The discussion centered around the ...   more »

La Media Luna is burning. Santa Cruz is at the brink of civil war, is what I have heard more than once in Bolivia, this week. There is a Cabildo Today in the main cities of the area that makes up the Media Luna –with Santa Cruz taking the lion’s share of the media’s attention. Today, the Cristo Redentor Avenue will host hundreds of thousands of cruzenos who will call for Autonomia in defiance of Evo Morales’ government and his authoritarian aspirations. There is no way around it, I am afraid. (I honestly hope Evo’s government is a successful ...   more »

On 30 October, ODI’s Andrew Lawson (Head of the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure) interviewed Guillermo Perry on two recent World Bank reports ‘Poverty Reduction and Growth: Virtuous and Vicious Cycles’ and ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’s Response to the Growth of China and India’ and the discussion focused on key development issues in Latin America.  You can read a full meeting summary and listen to a recording of the meeting here and use this space to continue the debates started at the meeting.

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Last Monday, Overseas Development Institute hosted a public meeting on UK Development Assistance in Latin America: Lessons from Peru. Read the meeting summary here: The meeting comes 18 months on from the closure of DFID’s Lima office and the decision to scale back DFID operations in middle income countries, ODI’s Latin America and Caribbean Group organised an event to discuss UK development assistance in Latin America with a specific focus on lesson-learning from Peru. The event brought together both British and Latin American speakers ...   more »

On January 2006 Chile elected its first female president. Michelle Bachelet, from the Socialist Party, won with 53% of the votes. She is described as a strong woman, charismatic and sympathetic to the needs and rights of vulnerable people. Her campaign slogans were about creating a participatory democracy, government for the people and a commitment that the social needs of Chileans will be recognised and permanent solutions sought. Her commitment to people raised her popularity to 62,1% in April, but the government’s slow response to social problems in it’s first three months saw her popularity drop to 44,2% by June 2006 ...   more »

Three weeks after the presidential elections held on 2 July, the situation in Mexico remains tense and volatile. The race was decided by the narrowest of margins. According to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Felipe Calderón of the Party of National Action (PAN) defeated Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) by 0.58 percentage points, or less than 250,000 votes in an election in which 42 million votes were cast. This result is in the process of being challenged in the courts -- and there will be no official winner until the Federal Electoral ...   more »

Between August and September of 2005, ODI carried out consultations for the Civil Society Partnerships Programme (CSPP) in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. This process helped identify key collaborators in the region: CIES in Peru, ILDIS in Bolivia and CIPPEC in Argentina. The consultations suggested that Latin America is home to a rich and credible academic and research community. Latin American researchers, unlike those in other regions, do not lack research resources and skills and understand the complexities of the policy processes of their countries –probably because, unlike many other developing regions, Latin America has been independent for close ...   more »

ODI’s recently formed Latin American and Caribbean Group consists of ODI researchers with a wide variety of interests in, and experiences of, Latin America.  In particular, Enrique Mendizabal carries out research on civil society and networks, Lauren Philips on financial markets and Alina Rocha Menocal on governance.  You can view members of the group here http://www.odi.org.uk/lacg/pages/who_we_are.html.

 

We have set up a website which will be built up over the next few months to contain a wealth of resources on economics, politics and civil society as well as blogs, events and links http://www.odi.org.uk/lacg/ . 

 

We hosted a ...   more »