Andalusian budgets were already falling year after year when, in 2023, Cádiz hosted a decentralized cooperation meeting within the framework of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union. “Fewer meetings and more budgets,” shouted members of the Andalusian ONGD coordinator, denouncing on site the junta to host an international development aid meeting while cutting funds. But what is coming to Seville now is a top meeting: the IV International Conference on Financing for Developmentorganized by the United Nations and which will be held in the capital between June 30 and July 3, 2025 after those in Monterrey in 2002, Doha in 2008 and Addis Ababa in 2015.
The date of the previous international conference reflects its importance, the same, but in the opposite sense that the Andalusian leaders give to the solidarity issue in light of the budget decrease year after year. The ceiling of the Andalusian Government’s financing for development cooperation was reached in 2009 and, in 15 years, 90% of the official development aid from the Junta has been lost in percentage terms in relation to the overall budget figure. . “Andalusian rulers willing to appear in photos while dismantling their international cooperation policy,” the CAONGD denounces.
The commitments set out in the regional cooperation plans are being breached. The well-known 0.7%, whose proclamation by the UN has just completed half a century, began to be ‘drawn’ twenty years ago in the Andalusian budgets, but, after the items have been falling, especially since The arrival of the PP to San Telmo, instead of bringing it closer, has been moving away in recent years. “We no longer know how to denounce it year after year,” said the president of the CAONGD, Zaira Mesa, in a recent parliamentary appearance, where she visually explained the evolution of solidarity by the Andalusian Government. Official development aid in Andalusia has not stopped suffering setbacks until it remains at a tenth of what it once was, going from having 0.34% of the budget in 2009 to barely remaining at 0.04% in the investment forecast for 2025.
Governments and social movements from around the world will meet in Seville to increase and improve the effectiveness of funds allocated to development processes in southern countries, among other purposes. There is still no program for the international event. Although the role of the Board will not be main in this forum, it is expected that it will be present as host. The profile of those attending will be mainly heads of ministries of Economy and Finance at an international level.
The Government of Spain has already expressed its satisfaction that our country is hosting this event, which “evidences Spain’s leadership in achieving consensus, openness to dialogue, building bridges between multiple actors and the support and solidarity of Spanish citizenship.” Meanwhile, as published by SevillaelDiario.es, the City Council governed by the PP has agreed, at the request of Vox, to reduce the funds of the development cooperation program, diverting 100,000 euros to develop a direct aid plan for families to promote birth rates. .
Official development aid is not that it does not grow at the level of the global figures in the Budget Law of the Government of Andalusia for 2025 (which increases by 4.4% compared to the previous year) but that it continues to plummet since Moreno He is president. The item allocated to the Andalusian Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AACID) in the budget drops to 18,805,199 euros, almost three million less than in the 2024 law (21,750,080 euros), which translates into a cut of 13.54%. The main agent of Andalusian cooperation, the NGDOs, absorbs practically all of the expected setback, since the call for aid will have a provision of 12,130,816 euros, compared to 14,865,816 in 2024. These 2,835,000 euros less imply a new snip of almost 19%.
The Junta de Andalucía finalizes the new Development Cooperation Master Plan for the period 2025-2028, in the review phase after work to which the rest of the agents were called: NGDOs, universities, multilateral organizations and counterparts from countries in which Andalusian cooperation develops. Last summer, the Moreno Government changed international counseling cooperation, going from that of the Presidency, Interior, Social Dialogue and Administrative Simplification to that of Social Inclusion, Youth, Families and Equality. According to the CAONGD, this transfer entails “eliminating from its natural place a social policy with international projection, where its relationship with other foreign action policies of the Board was facilitated, including the necessary coherence of policies for the implementation of the Goals of “Sustainable Development and the 2030 Agenda in the Junta de Andalucía, a competence included among those of the Secretariat of Foreign Action.”
Andalusia is still in line
On the other hand, the report of the Network of Autonomous Coordinators of NGOs for Development on the recently presented regional cooperation funds once again brings out the colors of the Andalusian Government. In the 2024 analysis, the community once again remains at the bottom of those that invest the least in official development aid: 0.05% of the budget, less than three euros per person per year. The forecast for 2025 reduces this percentage to 0.04%. The report singularly highlights the Andalusian case as an example of the most drastic reduction in recent years, both in global investment volume and percentage. In 2009 it was a benchmark in Spain, with an investment of 0.34%. Also from the perspective of comparing ODA with GDP per capita (0.03%) it is relegated to the last positions among the 17 autonomies. As the CAONGD has been denouncing, from “taking off its hat” to being “a waste” in Andalusia: the NGDOs believe that “the cooperation policy does not matter to the Board.” So much so that the coordinator staged her funeral back in 2021.
According to a latest report, Andalusian NGOs supported 14.4 million people from 60 countries around the world in 2023, according to a CAONGD report, which details that aid was provided through 514 projects – approved or in execution –, with an increasing role for Africa, but maintaining its broader work in Central America and the Caribbean and South America. The report documents 489 interventions in Andalusia aimed at 1.75 million people – 52.5% women –, the majority “of social action, focused on serving the population in vulnerable situations.”
As in the previous three years, the report ‘The work of NGDOs and Andalusian universities during 2023’ is offered in a double format, publishing and interactive web. One of “the main attractions” of the website is that “it allows geolocation and offers information on almost a thousand international cooperation projects and in Andalusia framed in 2023.” The global investment for the former has reached 92 million euros (21% less than in 2022), while in Andalusia the amount has reached 161.2 million. Around 80% of this figure corresponds to the work of the Red Cross, whose inclusion for the first time has “notably” increased some figures.
The CAONGD points out that behind all the investment reduction figures “very serious effects are hidden for the population of the countries with which Andalusia cooperates”, from the victims of the Israeli genocide in Palestine and the rest of the current armed conflicts, the refugees or displaced people (who are currently reaching record numbers) or those affected by the extreme effects of climate change who see their fundamental rights violated in a framework of inequality and poverty.
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