Category: Novedades

Recently, we had the pleasure of meeting with the team from FUSA, an organization committed to comprehensive and quality health. During our visit, we discussed their projects, achievements, and challenges for the upcoming year. We also collaborated in co-creating strategies and actions to strengthen networking and coordination with other development actors.

FUSA has an experienced team in interdisciplinary work with people of all ages and gender identities in the field of health. Their main goal is to improve people’s quality of life through the promotion, prevention, and comprehensive health care from a gender and human rights perspective.

In addition to providing safe health spaces, FUSA works on important issues related to sexual and reproductive health, such as combined HIV and STI prevention, comprehensive sexual education, and the introduction of contraceptive methods.

Learn more about their work by visiting their website.

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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the report on “Strengthening Civil Society,” highlighting the crucial role they play in promoting the Agenda 2030 and democratizing access to rights. This report emphasizes the importance of creating favorable environments for civil society to enhance its effectiveness and continue driving positive changes, especially in the realm of international development and humanitarian assistance.

NGOs are vital agents of change, amplifying the voices of marginalized communities and promoting inclusive development processes. However, they face challenges such as limited resources, legal restrictions, and accountability issues.

The OECD report underscores the need to create environments that respect, protect, and promote civic space, empowering NGOs to maximize their impact. By fostering dialogue, supporting capacity-building efforts, and aligning funding mechanisms with policy objectives, stakeholders can unlock the potential of civil society in driving sustainable development.

Key recommendations:

Respect, protect, and promote civic space. Support and collaborate with civil society. Incentivize effectiveness, transparency, and accountability of NGOs.

The report also highlights practices for measuring success. Strengthening civil society can be measured by the presence of policies supporting NGOs, steps taken to respect and protect civic space, and active participation of NGOs in policy formulation and implementation processes. Furthermore, success entails ensuring that administrative and financial requirements are proportionate, emphasizing learning and adaptation in results management, and promoting transparency and accountability within NGOs.

The OECD’s “Strengthening Civil Society” report urges governments, donors, and civil society actors to prioritize creating conducive environments that empower NGOs.

You can access the full report here.

We visit women in Technology.

Through a virtual meeting, the Women in Technology  (Mujeres En Tecnología) team welcomed us to share their work. Through a virtual meeting, we were welcomed by Soledad Salas, Founder and Executive Director, and Yanina Dominguez, Director of Finance.

MET is an organization dedicated to promoting inclusion and diversity in the technological ecosystem through its courses, workshops, study groups and research. It also helps more women and gender diversity to connect professionally in the tech ecosystem.

MET has a significant reach, with 8,000 community members, more than 6,500 women and diversities trained, and 41,000 participants in its events.

Learn more about his work by visiting his website.

FLOR Foundation opened its doors to us

In our recent visit to the FLOR Foundation we were able to learn about its work in building a network of leaders committed to the goal of building more sustainable, diverse, inclusive and equitable societies.

We spoke with Giselle Petraglia, Executive Director and Victoria Borelli, Coordinator of Institutional Development and Communication, who told us about their projects, programs and new initiatives that they will carry out this new year.

FLOR Foundation invites us to lay the foundations for a more responsible society, where diversity and solidarity are sources of growth, sustainability, respect and peace. Managing diversity is the foundation’s key to achieving the transformation to a more just and inclusive society.

Furthermore, Fundación Flor recognizes and values ​​the impact of numerous organizations that are already walking this path. For this reason, it annually awards the FLOR Awards for Diversity, an initiative that pays tribute to those who are leading the change towards a more inclusive reality.

We are pleased to work with Fundación Flor and Mujeres en Tecnología. Both organizations are pillars for the active construction of a more equitable and diverse future.

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Since 2005, the sole criterion for inclusion of countries on the DAC list of ODA eligible countries is their status as “low- and middle-income” countries in accordance with GNI per capita as defined in the World Bank’s income classification. The threshold for graduation – i.e. exiting the list – is therefore classification by the World Bank (WB) as a high-income country for three consecutive years.

Important: making sure that a country’s graduation from the list is well-prepared and based on the notion of ‘smooth transition strategies’.  Recently, the DAC decided that in the future countries anticipated to transition to the higher income category will be informed by the OECD Secretariat about the ODA criterion and timeframes in the first year they reach the high-income threshold, rather than only a year in advance as previously practiced. Countries will thus be alerted earlier, giving them more time to prepare for ODA resources being phased out as a form of external financing.

The DAC members further confirmed their commitment to contribute to smooth transitions. This message was reaffirmed in the recent Communique from the DAC high level meeting on 14-15 November 2023, which stated: “We will anticipate countries’ transition to other sources of domestic, and where applicable, external finance, and explore options together with partner countries to continue co-operation through other avenues”.

The challenge of preparing countries whose GNI per capita trajectory indicates their upcoming graduation from the ODA list is one that DAC members will need to  address before the next triennial review of this list in 2026. At present, Guyana and Panama are on a trajectory to graduate following this review. Net ODA to these two countries was USD 139 million and USD 91 million in 2021, respectively.

In this context it is clearly a constraint that most donors do not have funding streams beyond ODA. A recent report from a Norwegian expert group has offered some ideas in this direction, suggesting that countries could make available non-ODA funds for this purpose – at the same time stressing that such funding streams should not be at the expense of ODA within the 0.7% target, but additional to it.

Another issue of concern to the DAC has been managing situations where a country graduates from the list, but afterwards falls below the threshold, in some cases due to sudden onset crises (e.g., Covid-19, natural disasters).

That risk prompted the DAC in 2020 to simplify and expedite the process of reinstatement, so that if in July of a given year, WB income data for the previous year reveal that a graduated country has fallen below the high-income threshold, that country can be re-instated immediately, retroactively effective to the first of January of that same calendar year. This happened recently for Palau which graduated in 2021 but was reinstated on the list in 2022.

Read the full report here.

We are pleased to announce that we are now members of Catalyst 2030, a global movement committed to the advancement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. We inaugurated our alliance by participating in a welcoming event that marked the beginning of a collaboration to address global challenges and build a more sustainable future.

Catalyst 2030, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020, is a rapidly growing global movement led by social entrepreneurs and innovators. It was created in collaboration with organizations such as Ashoka, Echoing Green, the Schwab Foundation of the World Economic Forum, and the Skoll Foundation.

The foundation focuses on supporting cultural changes towards equity, collaborating with concerned parties to balance power in decision-making. What sets Catalyst 2030 apart are its strategic pillars to drive its mission. The foundation is built on a solid network of leaders and movements working for social change, prioritizing both impact and the well-being of its members.

Together with Catalyst 2030, we embark on the mission of implementing sustainable strategies and solutions to boost a positive change.

The year 2023 presented significant challenges in matters of human rights, especially due to repression and atrocities in places with armed conflicts. The selective outrage of governments and transactional diplomacy came at a cost for those not included in
international agreements.

To contemplate the challenges of 2024, it is important to look at the present and recent past, finding clues and trends that can guide us in building a more just, peaceful, and democratic world. In this quest, Human Rights Watch invites us to recognize the challenges and pending debts from the previous year.

Key themes: Loss of rights, armed violence, and the climate crisis. Renewed conflicts between Israel and Hamas, as well as in Sudan, caused much suffering to their populations, along with ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and the Sahel.

Governments faced the challenge of the climate crisis, dealing
with the warmest year on record and a series of natural disasters in Bangladesh, Libya, and Canada, with catastrophic consequences.

Economic inequality increased globally, generating outrage over political decisions that left many people struggling to survive. In this context, the rights of women, girls, and LGBT individuals faced harsh reprisals in various parts of the world. A notable example was the disproportionate gender-based violence driven by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Faced with these challenges, the landscape offers the opportunity to explore alternative paths and work towards a fairer future.

Consequences of transactional diplomacy The causes of these human rights crises and their consequences often transcend borders and cannot be resolved by governments acting alone.

There is an interconnection between these crises that goes beyond borders and requires a response based on the universal principles of human rights and the rule of law.

Some governments choose to ignore the principles that underpin universal agreements on the respect for human rights, undermining trust in institutions responsible for enforcing and protecting these rights. In this context, transactional diplomacy has played a crucial role in rights violations, as governments of the most influential countries have sacrificed principles for short-term benefits in trade or security.

Read the full report here.