No. 4 Year 4
Fourth Quarter 2006

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Featured Contributor: Spain

The government of Spain has been a long-time collaborator with CICAD in building and strengthening the national institutions involved in drug abuse prevention since 1997. Currently, it is working on a decentralization project in the Andean countries to help municipal and regional governments develop locally tailored responses to the drug threat.  Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia have received $1.2 million worth of support since 2003 from the Spanish International Cooperation Agency (AECI) and the National Drug Plan (PNSD). The Spanish government has posted a specialist at the CICAD headquarters as the program manager.

As part of the CICAD/AECI/PNSD decentralization initiative, a field outing for young people in Pereira, Departament of Risaralda (Colombia) was organized for June 25-27, coinciding with the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.  More information online.

This hands-on experience acquired in dealing with the impact of illicit drugs on communities will prove crucial in the new EC-financed twinned city program that will match up local governments in the European Union with peers in Latin American and the Caribbean (See separate story).  

Previously, the Spanish government had backed a large project to consolidate the national drug commissions in Central America and the Dominican Republic, investing over $600,000 for this prupose in 1999-2002. The government has also supported the creation and consolidation of national drug observatories in Central America and the Andean countries.

In addition, Spain has frequently assisted CICAD in training efforts by offering its training centers  in Cartagena (Colombia), Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia) and Antigua (Guatemala) as meeting sites. It also has supported multiple capacity-building efforts, including programs aimed at national drug commission staff, national drug observatory personnel, and prosecutors and judges in money laundering cases. Spain partially underwrote the startup of the Spanish-language online M.A. program for addiction studies, and has continued to provide scholarships and grants for participants, which is currently in its fourth offering.

Spain has also provide substantial support to the Ibero-American Network of Non-governmental Organizations Working on Drug Dependency, known by its Spanish acronym RIOD as a means of broadening its outreach beyond government agencies and international organizations.