Regional Strategy for Central America and the Caribbean

The Regional Strategy for Sweden’s development cooperation with Central America and the Caribbean was decided by the Government of Sweden in May, 2000. This strategy includes country strategies for i. a. Nicaragua. Initially, the strategy period was set to be January 2001 – December 2005. However, later the strategy was prolonged on several occasions, and is now due to end in June, 2008.

The reason for the last prolongations was the fact that the Swedish Government decided on a process of concentration of development cooperation, from nearly 70 countries to 33, and also on a reduction of the number of sectors in each country. In August 2007, the Government decided that development cooperation with Nicaragua should be gradually phased out during a period of between two to four years. In December, instructions for the development of a new exit strategy were decided by the Government, and in collaboration with Sida Headquarters and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Swedish Embassy in Managua was charged with proposing a strategy for the last period, June 2008- December 2010. The Sida Field Office will than be closed until June 2011. The Government is expected to decide on the new strategy by April 2008.

When the details of the strategy have been determined, the Embassy will post the document to the ODANIC website. Meanwhile, the current strategy can be downloaded from http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/574/a/21695

Prioritized areas in the current strategy are the following:

- Democratic governance, including participation, the judiciary and conflict resolution
- The Health sector
- Rural development

Important themes to be managed in the cooperation and dialogue are:

- a human rights perspective
- gender equality
- an equitable distribution of resources
- sustainable management of the envireonment and natural resources