WRITTEN QUESTION E-3168/01

by Fernando Fernández Martín (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(19 November 2001)

Subject: Aid programme for street children and young people in Colombia

The poverty and instability affecting families in Colombia lead thousands of children to seek refuge on the streets, where all they find is crime, disease, sexual abuse, prostitution, ill-treatment, drug addiction and a life full of misery to which there is no way out, given that the street is their only alternative.

Programme COL/B/-3100/97/102, an aid programme for street children and young people in Colombia, was selected in 1997 and officially approved on 13 February 1998. Following the corresponding tender procedure, the programme was awarded to the Asociació Institut Genus on 12 July 1999.

According to my information, four years on this project has still not been implemented, the EUR 475 000 allocated to the programme have not yet reached a single street child and, even worse, there is no specific plan to implement it.

How does the Commission explain the delay in this programme's implementation?

What steps will it take to ensure that this programme geared to prevention, protection and the social and economic reintegration of street children and young people is implemented as soon as possible?

What specific plans does the Commission have to prevent this type of habitual delay between a programme's selection and its implementation?

Answer given by Mr Patten on behalf of the Commission

(11 January 2002)

The Commission is aware of the suffering and poverty of the children and young people living on the streets of numerous cities in Latin America. It is aware of the enormity of the task of remedying the problem and seeks to do everything in its power to meet the challenge through the implementation of appropriate social projects.

The programme in question, set up by a Financing Agreement signed with the Colombian Government, has been confronted by extraordinary difficulties resulting from the country's situation, which has changed dramatically since the programme was selected. The delays in the programme's implementation are thus essentially due to the country's specific political context and not to any administrative inadequacy.

The Agreement states that European technical assistance is to be provided by NGOs. But to safeguard their political neutrality most NGOs have refused to manage any project cofinanced by the Government.

Only two NGOs took part in the call for tenders, including the Genus institute, which was selected. Before the project even started the candidate for the task of co-director resigned and Genus has been unable to find a suitable person to replace her, a further problem encountered in regard to this programme.

The project has also been severely hampered by the climate of violence in Columbia. This has gone from bad to worse, as evidenced by the assassination of a local staff member in our Delegation in Bogota, Mr Torres, the kidnapping of a European expert on the Ciudad Bolivar project, and the intimidation suffered by other European experts in Colombia in 2000. It has therefore been decided to revise the programme for the purpose of tailoring it to local conditions.

The Colombian International Cooperation Agency and the Colombian institute for family welfare, which requested that the revised programme take particular account of the contribution of their experts and of local players, have been asked to propose amendments to the Financing Agreement with the support of the Delegation.

The amended Agreement must follow the decentralised implementation model provided for in the framework convention signed by the Commission and the Colombian Government in December 2000. The project will be managed directly by the recipient and European technical assistance will be made available for targeted measures.

The Delegation has ongoing contact with the Colombian authorities, from which it has not as yet received any proposal.