The Diplomat in Spain

Eduardo González

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is going to reallocate 70 million euros from funds for peace missions to strengthen development aid through the AECID and voluntary contributions to multilateral organizations.

This was announced last Friday by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Fernando Martín Valenzuela, during his appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress to explain the part concerning his department of the draft General State Budget for 2019.

According to Valenzuela, the Secretary of State will have a budget of 403.8 million euros in 2019. 99% of this amount will go to multilateral organizations, 356 million of them in the form of compulsory contributions (including 141.35 million euros for peace operations). In total, the budget will experience a decrease of 6.64% compared to 2018, but this reduction, he said, is mainly due to “reallocations of resources”.

An example of these reallocations is the transfer of 70 million euros from the funds earmarked for peace operations to “recover levels of development aid“. Specifically, Valenzuela explained, 30 million will go to the Secretary of State for Cooperation to finance the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID) and the other 40 million will be allocated, within the budget of its own department, to voluntary contributions for multilateral organizations, which “can be considered as development aid”.

This announcement was harshly criticized by the deputy and executive secretary of International Relations of the PP, José Ramón García-Hernández, who accused the Government of “fattening” the departure to the AECID and of raising from four million to 40 million multilateral contributions at the expense of the peace missions, which, in his opinion, “is not to understand the world, a world in conflict” in which many Spanish soldiers risk their lives in peace operations.

In his response, Valenzuela said that the reallocation of 70 million euros is related to the reduction of funds for peace missions being carried out by the UN itself after the closure of operations in Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia and with the plan of reforms being developed by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who “will have results in the management of peace operations to make it more effective”.

“I am the first to bear in mind the importance of peace missions, I was the head of a peace operation myself”, recalled Valenzuela, referring to his appointment in 1999 as the political leader of the Preventive Deployment Force of the UN for Macedonia (UNSPREDEP).

“We decided to do with those 70 million what was most useful within our priorities” in favor of multilateralism and development aid, he explained. “For multilateral organizations, voluntary contributions account for three times the obligatory contributions and with them pay salaries and current expenses, with voluntary contributions the World Food Program feeds five million people, UNHCR hosts refugees and the UNRWA builds hospitals and schools”, said Valenzuela.