The beginning (1996-2001):standing up to respond to countries’ needs

In the 1990s, violence and crime were very serious concerns in many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean (see Section 5.1 in Chapter 5). The issue then began to emerge in countries’ discussions with donors. At that time, with the eighth General Capital Increase (GCI-8) that took place in 1995, the IADB had become the largest MDB in LAC with more than 50 per cent of multilateral financing.82 The regional bank then took the lead in consultative groups with other donors in many countries in the region. In the same year (1995), violence appeared in negotiations for a loan in El Salvador. However, internal resistance within the IADB led to a restructuring of the loan into a Justice Reform project. It was eventually approved in 1996, and nonetheless included a citizen security component. That was the first lending component explicitly targeting violence prevention, but it was somehow hidden within a less controversial Justice Reform operation (OVE 2014).

At the same time, in Colombia, public authorities manifested their will to reach out to the international community to respond to violence. As described in Section 5.1.2 in Chapter 5, at the end of 1990s, the Andean country faced high homicide rates, with important differences among cities. 83 The experience of Bogotá under the first Mockus Administration (1995-97) showed that preventive and multi-pronged interventions could be effective, with a reduction in homicides rate from 58.8 to 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants between 1995 and 1997.84 _{The Colombian Government wanted to pursue and} expand the experience, and implement it in other cities. The National Department for Planning (Departamento Nacional de Planeación) worked together with the three main cities of the country (Bogotá, Medellin and Cali) to develop local strategies to address violence. They organised consultations with experts, academics and donors, including the                                                                                                                

82_{IADB, Review of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Ordinary Capital and Fund for Special}

Operations Requirements, March 10, 2009: 1, 4, available at:

http://IADBdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=2019020, accessed June 17, 2012.

83 _{There were, for example, 248 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in Medellin and 112 in Cali in 1995}

(IADB 1999:1).

84 _{Mockus, A. (undated). Advancing against violence in Bogota, Creating Civic Agency and ‘Cultural}

Change’: The Case of Bogotá, available at: http://www.paho.org/english/ad/fch/ca/BogotaViolence.pdf, accessed June 2012.

IADB and the World Bank. They eventually raised the question as to who would be willing to finance the strategies. The IADB stood up to support the initiative despite the novelty of the loan and resistance within the Bank. 85 In fact, the reputational risks associated with working on violence were considered to be very high for a development organisation (see Section 7.1 for a detailed explanation). The then IADB President, Enrique Iglesias, however, supported the initiative. His frequent travels to the region made clear to him how important the issue was, and the multi-pronged, negative impact it had on development.86 In 1999, President Iglesias declared:87

‘Violence is not inevitable, but to reduce it we need to act right away. Governments should take the initiative and work in a concerted effort with civil society, the private sector, and the mass media to assure the rights, health and economic welfare of citizens. The IADB supports these efforts.’

But even with the support of IADB’s President, approving the first loan on violence prevention had not been easy according to the IADB’s staff (Interview, Washington, D.C., July 2011). Senior Managers advised the President to let the Board decide on whether or not to approve the loan. The Colombia project was therefore presented to the Board that eventually approved it in 1998. The voting majority at the Board belonged to the Latin American and Caribbean countries88 that were more sensitised to the issue because most countries in the region faced challenges in terms of violence and crime (Interview with IADB Executive Directors, Washington, D.C., June 2011, see Section 7.1 in Chapter 7 for further analysis). They therefore supported the initiative. A door was opened.

85 _{When capitalised, ‘the Bank’ is a common appellation used within both the IADB and the World Bank to}

call their own organisation. It is used as such in the text. Without capital letters, the bank or the banks refer to the generic name, i.e. the short version of multilateral development banks.

86 _{Interview with an Executive Director at the IADB who was very close to President Iglesias (Washington,}

D.C., July 2011).

87 _{IADB News Release: Initiative to support citizens’ security and peaceful coexistence, July 30, 1999,}

available at: http://www.iadb.org/en/news/news-releases/1999-07-30/IADB-presents-video-and-statistics-on- violence-in-latin-america,355.html, accessed June 17, 2012.

88 _{Voting powers are determined by the amount of shares each member country holds. See Section 7.1 for}

Following the Colombia project, another loan was approved the same year, 1998, for Uruguay. Both projects took an average of two years to prepare. The IADB facilitated access to international experts89 to support national teams to design the operations, but as one adviser in Colombia recalled, the in-house expertise was weak on violence prevention and the IADB’s technical contribution to the first projects was minor (Interview, Medellin, May 2011). According to interviewed staff members, IADB’s position was to ‘learn by doing’ and to support the clients, even with lack of knowledge of what would work and what would not in developing countries. All the interviewees I met in Colombia generally acknowledged this: all of them appreciated the courage of the organisation to take the risk to support the initiative, but also highlighted that the IADB did not have enough technical capacity to provide substantial contribution to the design of the first citizen security projects (see Chapter 9 for the case study on Colombia and further discussion on counterparts’ perception on MDBs’ relevance in violence prevention).

Following these projects, a group of Colombians inside the Bank decided to take the principles applied in Colombia (as reflected in IADB’s project in Colombia) and adapt them to other contexts, in particular to Central America and the Caribbean where violence and crime were most severe, and where the IADB played a leadership role among donors. In 2001, IADB’s Board approved the first Jamaican Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP). Based on these examples (Colombia, Uruguay, Jamaica), demand increased from other countries in the region (see Table 15). Such demand led IADB’s Management to ask for greater clarity on how the Bank could effectively support its clients in improving efforts to confront the challenge of violence and crime. At the same time, the third Summit of the Americas strongly called for Multilateral Development Banks to support Governments of the region to develop strategies to prevent violence and crime.90 All those external and internal messages converged, resulting in the preparation of the Preliminary Guidelines for IADB Violence Prevention projects.

89 _{Until then, public policies had been developed more on a political basis than on a scientific and evidence-}

based one, according to an adviser who contributed to the design of the Medellin project. (Interview, in Medellin, Colombia, May 2011)

90 _{http://www.summit-americas.org/eng-2002/quebeccity-summit.htm, accessed December 25, 2011. See}

6.2.2 Trying to operationalise a preventive, multi-sector approach (2002-2007)