SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 5 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The headquarters of the Presidency of the Government in Santa Cruz de Tenerife hosted this Thursday a new meeting of the Advisory Council for Development Cooperation, a body constituted more than ten years ago and revitalized since last November by the Government of the Canary Islands and in which it has realized that the budget is increased this year by 700,000 euros, from 1.6 million in 2021 to 2.3 million today.
The appointment, in which the president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, intervened, served, among other things, for the regional administration to detail the call for subsidies for this year in order to finance international development cooperation projects that lead to Corporal Canary Agents.
The President of the Canary Islands and in turn President of the Advisory Council, although he was unable to attend the entire meeting due to agenda issues, did intervene and highlighted the importance of the signing, in Jameos del Agua (Lanzarote) last December, of the Canarian Agenda 2030, in which this increase for international cooperation is projected this year and next, as well as a growing commitment in this matter in the future.
Despite the difficulties that the world continues to experience after the pandemic and, now, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Torres stressed that “the Canary Islands continue to resist” and fulfill their commitments to international cooperation.
For this reason, he thanked the participants for the contributions they made to the 2030 Agenda and their commitment to fair and balanced human development, again confirmed at this Thursday’s meeting, the Executive reported in a note.
The Council was attended by representatives of NGOs, the public universities of La Laguna and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the employers’ associations of the two provinces, the UGT and CCOO unions, and Fecai and Fecam, as well as external experts in cooperation international.
On behalf of the Government, the Deputy Minister for Foreign Action, Juan Rafael Zamora; the General Director of Foreign Relations, Juan Francisco Trujillo, and the General Director of Research and Coordination of Sustainable Development, David Padrón.
As explained to the media at the end of the session, in the call for grants for this year, published on April 13, each cooperation agent can request support for a maximum of two projects until May 13.
MAXIMUM SUPPORT OF 60,000 EUROS
The maximum aid is set at 60,000 euros and is financed with those 2.3 million.
After the Council, the Deputy Minister for Foreign Action, Juan Rafael Zamora, confirmed the Government’s commitment to hold two meetings during 2022 (one per semester), since a second meeting is planned for next December.
As he stressed, it is “very important” that the NGOs have been able to know from the first semester what budget they can count on.
FIRST CANARIAN WORK GUIDE FOR COOPERATION AGENTS
During the meeting, Zamora explained, the financial contribution to the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID) was also reported in accordance with the collaboration agreement for joint and coordinated action in humanitarian action. For this purpose, 50,000 euros are allocated in a joint agreement signed by 11 autonomous communities.
Likewise, details were provided of the ‘I Monographic Meeting of Autonomous Communities Cooperation-Migrations’, scheduled for the same month of May (25, 26 and 27) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as well as the Strategy Canaria of Education for Global Citizenship and Social Transformation.
The deputy minister considers this last document to be very important “because it is the first time that the Canary Islands have had this work guide for cooperation agents, an initiative born of consensus, the involvement of the NGO Coordinator and the contributions of all the agents” .
The General Director of Foreign Relations, Juan Francisco Trujillo, stressed that, in 2019, “there was no documentation and hardly any economic data on cooperation” and they promised all the Canarian agents “that this would change.”
Now, with the master plan, he stressed, “we have gone from 3.2 million euros in 2021 to four million in 2022, six million in 2023 and eight in 2024, we have removed the Canary Islands from the penultimate position of investment in development cooperation international and we have placed it in the average of the country”.
Like Zamora, Trujillo highlighted the relevance of the documents discussed in the Council as well as the Monographic Meeting on Cooperation and Migration this May in a border region such as the Canary Islands.
