“Zero Hunger” objective

There is a territory in Central America that resists human action to draw those fictitious limits called borders. More than 600,000 people live in this territory, in 45 border municipalities, 8 in El Salvador, 15 in Guatemala and 22 in Honduras. Reality surpasses fiction in the Trifinio Region of Central America and every day hundreds of people cross these borders to go to neighboring markets to buy or sell, or simply to visit relatives.

The need to undertake common development strategies in this natural territory led the region’s municipalities to create the Río Lempa Tri-national Border Association, registered in Guatemala in 2007 with its own legal personality. This complicated legal process has been somewhat facilitated by the still slow progress and deepening of the Central American regional integration process. The CA-4 (Central American Free Mobility Agreement) and tariff dismantling are simplifying border crossing procedures, although there is still some way to go.

As part of its development strategy, in 2013 the Tri-national Commonwealth launched a project called “Zero Hunger: Cross-border Local Public Policy (PPLT) for Food and Nutritional Security in Municipalities of the Trifinio Region (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras)”, with funding from the European Union. The main objective of this intervention is to promote social cohesion and integrated cross-border management of the territory of the Trifinio region, through the institutionalization of participatory policies and processes that contribute to reducing food insecurity.

One of the partners of the consortium developing this project is the ETEA Foundation for Development and Cooperation, through its office in the Western Region of Honduras, in Santa Rosa de Copán. The Foundation is responsible for the institutional strengthening component of producer associations and for conducting research on Central American integration processes and policies that influence and affect the development of the Trifinio region. For the latter task, it has the essential collaboration of researchers from the Universidad Loyola Andalucía, whose extensive and recognized experience provides knowledge and proposals for solutions to the problems that plague the population of this cross-border territory on a daily basis.

A commitment to the region

The cooperation agreement between the Rio Lempa Tri-national Border Community and the ETEA Foundation for the implementation of the “Zero Hunger” project, with the collaboration of SICA’s Regional Food Security Program (PRESANCA), has been promoting the operation of the Local Cross-border Public Policy for Food and Nutritional Security in 20 municipalities of the Trifinio Region (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) for the past four years.

The Trifinio Region presents different degrees of vulnerability in food and nutritional security, which are expressed in various situations of malnutrition in the municipalities of the region. The municipalities that make up the Rio Lempa Tri-national Commonwealth have a disjointed local food system, both between production and local markets and between nearby municipalities, separated by national borders. The border introduces transaction costs to the food system that discourage its articulation within the region, affecting the economy of both producers and consumers. Therefore, it is essential to contribute to the eradication of hunger, extreme poverty and marginalization through municipal and joint local public management, articulating and harmonizing local, national and regional policies, local public and private actions, through guidelines and direct interventions with programs and projects.