Development Assistance

• Objectives
• Bilateral Activities
• Partnership Programs
• Multilateral Programs
• Success stories
• Other Sites

Objectives

a. Canadian foreign and development policy

The main objectives of Canada's foreign and development policies focus on contributing to sustainable development and prosperity and on reducing poverty and social inequalities. Canada wants to contribute to the implementation of a program that transfers Canadian know-how and technology to assist in the modernization of governments in areas such as governance, public sector reform, social development, regional integration and the environment through bilateral, multilateral, partnership and regional projects.

b. CIDA's Mandate

The purpose of Canada's Official Development Assistance (ODA) is to support sustainable development in developing countries, in order to reduce poverty and to contribute to a more secure, equitable and prosperous world. To achieve this, the aid program concentrates on the following six priorities: (1) basic human needs, (2) women in development, (3) Infrastructure services, (4) Human rights, democracy, good governance, (5) private sector development and (6) the environment.

c. CIDA development strategies

Based on the Government of Canada's Statement of Foreign Policy, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) released on February 16, 2004 its CIDA's Sustainable Development Strategy 2004-2006: Enabling Change, which sets out a number of key directions for the Agency to address sustainable development. It will facilitate the implementation of Canada Making a Difference in the World: A Policy Statement on Strengthening Aid Effectiveness (2002). In addition, CIDA produced a development framework for the Americas, Closing the Gap, which explains our interest in Colombia and the reasons for our presence in this strategically positioned, medium-sized country in South America.

CIDA's commitment to gender equality underlies all of its development work. In its present form, CIDA's gender equality policy reflects international consensus concerning the correlation between sustainable development, especially poverty reduction, and equality between women and men. For more information, please see CIDA's policy on Gender Equality.

d. Cooperation with Colombia: goal and purposes

Canada's aid program, an important tool in the implementation of Canada's foreign policy, was first applied in Colombia in 1969.

CIDA's present program in Colombia has been defined as follows:

Goal: To support Colombia in building peace and enhancing human security

Purposes:

• To increase Colombian capacity to meet the basic human needs and protect the human rights of people affected by the armed conflict
• To support equitable participation in establishing the foundations for peace
• To improve Colombian capacity to address some of the key causes of violence.

Other Sites

• Canadian International Development Agency
• Canadian Indigenous Peoples Partnership Program
• IDCR
• Canadian Non Governmental Organizations: Web Networks provides a general listing of Canadian NGO's involved in human rights.
• Colombian Non Governmental Organizations: Colnodo has a website bringing together information on a wide variety of Colombian NGOs active in the development and human rights fields. It has a section in English.
• Canadian University Students Overseas (CUSO) is a Canadian organization which supports alliances for global social justice. It has a section in Spanish describing Latin American programmes.