Attention to refugees, is development aid?

Coinciding with the crisis of refugees from the war in Ukraine, the largest exodus in Europe since the Second World War, it has become known that those responsible for Spanish Cooperation are consigning a very high item as Official Development Assistance (ODA) of expenses considered as care for refugees in the donor country.

Among them, some of them are controversial and are not even contemplated in the international regulations that regulate the accounting of these funds in terms of ODA.

Since in 1988 the donor countries, through the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, agreed to incorporate as ODA the subsistence costs of the refugees during the first year in the host countries, this criterion has been maintained with few changes.

It was in 1992 that they agreed to include such expenditures within the accounting system for ODA goods and services used by the OECD.

Under the name CRS (

), they precisely identified these funds under the heading of Care for Refugees in Donor Countries, with the CRS code 93010.

The paradox of Spain

The case of Spain is somewhat particular, to the extent that it combines a low profile as an ODA donor with a historically low level of recognition of asylum and international protection over the total number of applicants in Europe as a whole.

However, these items of development aid spending for attention to refugees in our territory have reached one of the highest levels in the set of items of Spanish cooperation in recent years.

Precisely when the rest of the Western countries have sharply decreased this heading.

To the point that Spain has been declaring in recent years an amount close to 285 million euros in this concept,

However, the Spanish Cooperation has never offered detailed information on these expenses, nor on the criteria applied and disbursements made.

In fact, the only detailed study on the subject has been published in the chapter

from the book

, signed by this researcher and published by the University of Alicante.

The refusal to offer information by the Spanish Government

As a continuation of my research on this matter, I was able to access for the first time a detailed official report from the OECD DAC.

It explained the nature of the expenses consigned by Spain in attention to refugees, as well as the breakdown and amount of all of them, referring to 2019. To the extent that some of the disbursements collected did not comply with the established criteria, I decided officially request detailed information on these items by virtue of

, which recognizes the right to obtain the requested public information and the obligation to provide it.

Thus, on October 13, 2021, I processed a formal request before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation (MAUEC).

In my letter I requested the disaggregated data of Spanish ODA between 1999 and 2020. The MAUEC, which centralizes all the expenditure of the Official Development Assistance of Spain from all the others, as well as from the executing agencies, also prepares the official reports that are they provide to the OECD Development Assistance Committee, of which we are a member.

On November 23, 2021 I received your reply, signed by the general director, Eva del Hoyo, in which, along with other disquisitions that have nothing to do with what I was asking, I was sent to the Secretary of State for Migration, dependent on the Ministry of Social Security.

The answer is totally inappropriate because the recording of expenses is centralized by the MAUEC, through its PACI (Annual Plan for International Cooperation).

This ministry is also the one that prepares the official documents on ODA in Spain.

However, to exhaust procedures, on December 2, 2021, I requested the data again from the Secretary of State for Migration, as I had been summoned, also using the Transparency Law.

The response by the general director of international protection and humanitarian assistance programs of the Secretary of State for Migration, Miriam Benterrak, could not have been clearer and more forceful.

He pointed out to me that, legally, according to RD 644/2020 of July 7, it is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation that is responsible for the calculation, monitoring and accounting of the Official Development Assistance of Spain, as well as your communication.

It was the MAUEC that should provide me with the information.

What is striking is that the data that the MAUEC did not want to provide to this researcher and university professor, thus disobeying the provisions of the Transparency Law, is in the possession of the Development Assistance Committee (CAD).

So much so that I have had the official report from the OECD –

(Spain. Refugee costs as a donor in Official Development Assistance, 2019) – whose details he intended to confirm with the authorities of the Government of Spain.

Expenses for Development Aid destined to care for refugees in Spain in 2019 amounted to 267.82 million euros;

is the second largest item of bilateral cooperation

But what information does this official document contain that those responsible for Spanish Cooperation do not want to spread?

Well, some frankly striking data.

On the one hand, the total expenses for Development Aid destined to care for refugees in Spain in 2019 rose to 299.83 million dollars (267.82 million euros);

It is the second most important item of Spanish bilateral cooperation that year, only behind the decentralized one carried out by autonomous communities and city councils.

As for the expenses imputed by Spain, some of them are surprising that, according to international regulations, could not be included.

Among them, we find 586.91 thousand dollars in maritime rescue (560 thousand million euros, at current exchange rates);

167.92 thousand dollars (160 thousand, in euros) in soup kitchens for refugees in Greece;

286.14 million dollars (272 euros) allocated to asylum, shelter and health care expenses of the CETI (Temporary Stay and Internment Centers) in Ceuta and Melilla, along with another 7.73 million more (7.36 million euros) allocated to CAR (Refugee Reception Centers) and the CETI.

All this together with sponsorship and mediation programs carried out by NGOs, as well as a donation for a vehicle and support for an organization that works in a refugee camp in Greece, among others.

The list seems to obey more to the sum of aggregates of a very diverse and contradictory nature, than to coherent and coordinated initiatives.

However, some of these disbursements are not included in the official CAD regulations, failing to comply with the basic principle that they are payments intended for the care of refugees in Spanish territory during their first year of stay.

In any case, it is inadmissible that, in the midst of the process of reforming the Law on International Cooperation for Development currently in Parliament, nothing substantive is included on this important chapter of Spanish Cooperation.

Nor is it that information is not provided when it is officially requested, by virtue of the Transparency Law, by researchers and university professors who have demonstrated decades of work on the matter.

All of this is, if possible, very relevant insofar as we are now going through a transcendental moment in refugee policy, due to the war in Ukraine and the pressure that Spain is experiencing from people from other countries.

At the same time, all this vicissitudes expose considerable weaknesses and breaches in terms of transparency and access to public data on the Official Development Assistance carried out by Spain, as has been highlighted for years and has been pointed out by different international reports.

Something that is not corrected in the draft of the new Law on International Cooperation for Sustainable Development and Global Solidarity, approved by the Government and currently undergoing parliamentary proceedings.

Carlos Gómez Gil is

a professor and researcher in Development Cooperation at the University of Alicante, academic coordinator of the Interuniversity Master's Degree in Development Cooperation at this University.

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