The poorest are given a voice

Poverty is increasing in Central America. Photo: Jan Kjær.

WHILE GROSS NATIONAL INCOMES are rising in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, more and more people in the region are becoming poor, and the gap between rich and poor is widening.

The countries are plagued by political crises; corruption is widespread. In the parliaments, the Free Trade Agreement with USA is discussed, but the 16 million poor people in the region are given no special attention.

Debate on trade agreement

A bottom-up approach to advocacy is becoming the most important tool for MS, the Danish Association for International Co-operation, in Central America (MS Central America).

We see this, for example, in our collaboration with the Farmers’ Organization UNAG in the northern part of Nicaragua. It has put the Free Trade Agreement with the USA and the government’s strategy for rural areas on the agenda of the villages.

When UNAG presented the central political strategies that will affect the peasants’ lives, only few had ever heard of these strategies. Now large debates are being organized, with the participation of local and national politicians, as well as hundreds of peasants from the northern part of Nicaragua.

Poor peasants in Central America have to compete with farmers in Europe and USA.  Photo: Jan Kjær.

Municipal leaders go to school

Two other MS partners in Nicaragua, Coordinadora Civil and Red de Dearrollo Local, are training 21 municipal leaders in how to teach the citizens to keep an eye on how the municipality spends money on health and education.

They learn how to plead their cause to local politicians, how to get organized in work groups, and how to conduct a poll. They are also taught how to work with the media, and how to produce articles and radio programs themselves. In this way, MS Central America is trying to give civil society a voice.

Collaboration with Africa

National partners often organize regional activities across country borders. This can, for example, be seen in the ”Central America is not for sale” campaign, which attempts to limit multi-national projects in, e.g. tourism.

This regional collaboration has led to an experiment in which Africans and Americans are trying to couple the ”Central America is not for sale” and ”Africa is not for sale” campaigns. This is why the program in Central America has, for the first time ever, had an African partner, the Kenyan anthropologist Matildah Musumba.