International Development written question – answered at on 15 March 2006.
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development
(1) how his Department is working with local communities in Latin America on the (a) aims, (b) design, (c) implementation and (d) evaluation of development projects;
(2) what steps his Department is taking to strengthen civil society in Latin America through co-operation with local communities.
The Department for International Development (DFID) supports local communities in Latin America through its work with the International Finance Institutions (IFI), particularly the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank (IADB), and through direct support to non-governmental organisations (NGO)s. The range of community involvement in IFI supported and civil society programmes is illustrated by the following examples.
Through engagement with the IADB and the World Bank, DFID is supporting greater involvement of civil society and local communities in IFI programmes and processes, such as consultations around development and evaluation of IFI country strategies. In Brazil, the UK is helping local communities give their own assessment of the impact of the Federal Government's conditional cash transfer programme, the Bolsa Familia. This programme provides a monthly cash benefit to a current total of 8.7 million poor families across the country, which is conditional on children attending school and immunisation programmes. The UK is also contributing to a programme to enhance the capacity of indigenous people's organisations throughout Amazonia. Indigenous leaders meet regularly, receive training together, and consider how to promote their entitlements to services and to strengthen social cohesion in Amazon communities.
DFID supports the IADB to promote community participation in the design and implementation of its programmes in Central America. For example, support was recently provided to local communities in the remote cross-border area between Honduras (El Paraiso) and Nicaragua (Nueva Segovia) to strengthen cross-border development plans.
With civil society in Brazil, the UK is working with local communities to raise awareness of how institutional racism can be a barrier to poor people in the Afro-Brazilian population receiving the public services to which they are entitled. This work has been implemented through new partnerships between municipal authorities and civil society organisations in two states in the poor North East of Brazil, Pernambuco and Bahia, through the Programme to Combat Institutionalised Racism.
In the Andes region, DFID is working to strengthen awareness among civil society and community groups of their right to information about policy processes and to engage with policy makers, both within Government and donors. In Peru, DFID's rights-based approach to development put working with local communities central to its purpose. The substantial partnership between Oxfam and DFID through the Derechos, Inclusion y Desarrollo (Rights, Inclusion and Development) programme has taken DFID's support on these issues right down to the community level.
In Nicaragua, DFID contributes to the multi-donor civil society fund in Nicaragua administered by the local in-country offices of Oxfam Great Britain and Trocaire. This fund is designed to provide direct grants to local grassroots civil society to help them build governance from the bottom up and engage in development planning processes as well as social auditing of Government development programmes. DFID has supported the IADB to strengthen civil society through co-operation with local communities.
DFID also provides direct support to civil society in Latin America through Partnership Programme Arrangements with six international NGOs and through the Civil Society Challenge Fund. Many of the activities supported through these channels would involve local communities.
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