Cooperation in Extremadura: space for conventions

After years of teamwork and dialogue with organized civil society and citizens, Extremadura has just risen Approval of a new law on international cooperation and solidarity. This regulation aims to place our region at the forefront of legal cooperation and to strengthen Extremadura’s presence abroad. Its text is the result of an extensive consultative process through which organizations and citizens of Extremadura define the international cooperation policy they feel recognized for. The university, NGOs, trade unions, employers, members of civil society and more than 6,000 individuals participated in it.

“You get out of crises through cooperation”He reassured Guillermo Fernández Vara, president of the Junta de Extremadura, to explain the need and opportunity for this legislative advance. This new law crystallizes the work of the past eight years, in which, jointly and by consensus, the Extremadura Agency for International Development Cooperation (AEXCID) NGOs in the region have been able to make room for this new regulatory and institutional framework. “The collaboration in Extremadura has achieved something extraordinary by opening up to a great variety of actors”This was stated by Gonzalo Fanjul, a development expert, during his appearance on the debate on the new law. The text, which replaces a standard approved 20 years ago, will allow all cooperation agents to have a framework that provides answers to current challenges to the planet, such as growing inequality or climate change.

«This policy that was previously weakened and dismantled, today, thanks to the drafting process that we carried out and supported unanimously in the Assembly, we can say that it is a general policy of agreements and consensus that the Extremadura community supports in the way of the majority »concluded Angel Cali Suarez, DirectorAEXCID. Extremadura is the third region in Spain, and the fourth in the world, to invest more in the policy of cooperation per inhabitant, after only the Euskadi and Navarra regions.

With its own identity and determination to move forward and build together, Solidarity in Extremadura has just fostered work and learning over the past eight years, thanks to its commitment to do so within a space of agreements.