The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, participated yesterday in Madrid in the second and last session of the Conference of EU Humanitarian Cooperation Agencies, organized this week by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) in the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU, which called for greater coordination between actors to maximize the impact of official development assistance (ODA) of the Union and the Member States.
During his speech at the meeting, which was held at the IFEMA-Madrid fairgrounds under the slogan Global Crises: the role of European Development actors, Albares highlighted Spain’s commitment to development cooperation and humanitarian action and advocated strengthening coordination between the actors of the so-called Team Europe to address global crises and promote a fairer and more sustainable development model in line with European values. In the Minister’s opinion, the EU, as the largest international donor of ODA, has the responsibility to face global crises and challenges, such as climate change, post-pandemic recovery, new health challenges or the proliferation and growing complexity of conflicts, such as Russia’s aggression in Ukraine or the war in Sudan, among others.
The meeting was inaugurated on Tuesday by Antón Leis, Director of the AECID, and closed yesterday by Pilar Cancela, State Secretary for Cooperation, and brought together the main representatives of European development cooperation and humanitarian action agencies and organizations, as well as executives from the European Commission, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), UN Women, the World Food Program, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Participants at the meeting reaffirmed the commitment of all European actors to address the impact of the global crises facing the world’s population and concluded with a call for greater coordination among actors to maximize the impact of ODA from the European Union and its Member States, as well as to assist vulnerable populations in emergencies and promote sustainable solutions to their problems.
