New Master Plan for Spanish Development Cooperation. Key Issues for Global Health

The new Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation confirms the continuity of the strategic alliance with ISGlobal to make progress towards health equity.

For Spanish Cooperation and everyone involved in that effort, including ISGlobal, the coming academic year will be marked by an important launch, a true premiere. At the end of July, the Council of Ministers approved the Sixth Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation, covering the next four years, the first such plan to be launched since the approval of Spain’s new Law on International Cooperation for Development and Global Solidarity.

As was the case with the five earlier plans, the purpose of the Sixth Master Plan is to define the objectives and priorities for Spanish development cooperation for the period covered by the plan.

This new Spanish cooperation remains committed to the approaches and principles that have characterised its work and vision to date: “cooperation informed by a feminist perspective and committed to human rights, social, environmental and climate justice, the fight against poverty and inequality, the recognition of diversity, and the eradication of all forms of violence and discrimination”.

Leave No One Behind

The most important innovation in this plan is the incorporation of the promise to leave no one behind as part of a multifaceted approach to transition based on social, economic and ecological change. These three dimensions will underpin the specific actions of Spanish cooperation in the fight against poverty and inequality in partner countries. Starting from this basis—one of the characteristics of the new system—the plan proposes a number of sectoral priorities and, in terms of geography, the focus continues to be on countries that are key for ISGlobal: Bolivia, Morocco, Mozambique and Paraguay.

It is worth noting that the Master Plan also recognises the value of the generation and transfer of knowledge as a fundamental instrument for development cooperation, one of the hallmarks of our work at ISGlobal. 

Global Health in Spain’s Sixth Master Plan for Cooperation

Global health and healthcare is one of the six areas of action identified in the approach to achieving social transition, and the new Master Plan expressly provides for the development of a Global Health Strategy to advance and consolidate work in this sector. Global health was identified by ISGlobal as one of the key areas in the political agenda of the current legislature.

The Master Plan proposes actions in the field of healthcare based on the premise that health is a right of all people and that the goal must be to advance towards health equity. The document also renews Spain’s commitment to prioritising work on sexual and reproductive health and rights as well as actions focussed on the needs of children. It also identifies Universal Health Coverage and Global Health Security as two sides of the same coin. 

All bilateral and multilateral efforts will be concentrated around four lines of action: strengthening national health systems and services; strengthening health systems in terms of preparedness for and response to health emergencies; improving access to sexual and reproductive health and rights; and supporting research, development in and access to affordable vaccines and essential medicines to contribute to Universal Health Coverage (with plans to provide strategic support to GAVI, the Global Alliance for Immunisation and Vaccines, as the initiative that aggregates the efforts of the international community in this field).

In addition to the work related to the health sector, global health must also address the ecological transition, an area in which one of the main lines of work proposed is to support the fight against climate change in partner countries through mitigation and adaptation strategies, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable populations.

In short, the vision of global health described in the pages of the Sixth Master Plan confirms the continuity and strengthening of the strategic alliance between Spanish cooperation and ISGlobal aimed at making progress towards health equity—an alliance that is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary. It looks like we shall have a lot of work in the coming academic year.