The Diplomat
The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) has announced the upcoming launch of a special Spanish Cooperation program to renew democracies in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The announcement was made this Thursday in Montevideo by AECID Director Antón Leis during his participation in the debates Por un Nuevo Contrato Social; renovar la democracia sin dejar a nadie atrás (For a New Social Contract; renewing democracy without leaving anyone behind), inaugurated at the end of April by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and which continued its programming this week in Uruguay before moving on to other Latin American and Caribbean countries.
“We will establish a new Spanish Cooperation program to renew democracy and to help partner countries to build, together, this new social contract, a social contract that will not be the same in all countries, since each society will have to decide its own,” said Antón Leis during his speech at the event, in which he coincided with Laura Oroz, AECID’s Director of Cooperation with Latin America and the Caribbean, and Enrique Iglesias, former Ibero-American Secretary General.
“Ibero-America has changed, it is younger, more feminine, it is less white, and the idea is to bring together the representative actors of social organizations and, in this case, the media, whose participation can result in the construction of a better democracy in the countries,” he continued. “It will be an old-new program, because the Spanish Cooperation is working on these issues now, and it already did so in its beginnings, in the 80s and 90s, very much from its democratic experience”, he added.
Before arriving in Uruguay on Wednesday, Leis visited Chile on May 2, where he held several meetings at the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including a meeting with the Technical Committee of the Spanish-Chilean Joint Cooperation Fund. The V Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation, currently in force, includes Chile as an advanced cooperation country.
