To put an end to the situation, there are various intiatives that are developing in the effected countries.

The first phase of intervention has been immediate attention, where the international community has supported the national governments in their efforts to attend to the extremely urgent problems. Parallelling this, they have begun to develop other focused initiatives in the areas of rehabilitation/reconstruction.

For one part, the Central American governments presented their proposals before the Conference of the Consultive Group, that took place in Washington, December 10 and 11, 1998, and are currently preparting their project packets for the new Conference that will be celebrated at the end of May in Estocolmo.

In the same way, civil society also has organized themselves in debate and presentation of their alternative proposals. For example, we can point out the coordinations of civil societies of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala or the Civil Initiative for Central American Integration. The axles of the social demands can be resumed as:

• Efficiency in the institutitional fulfillment
• Elaboration and concertation of the politics of the state in consideration with the Transformation Plan of the country
• Inclusion of civil society in the formation and execution of a model that the country needs
• Transparency in the management of public funds and international cooperation
• Profounding and amplifying the process of democratic construction

The objectives of these social networks persue to indentify and propose bases for converting the rehabilitation through the tragedy of Mitch into an opportunity of regional development "where the marginzed and eternally hurt can have their shot at a true opportunity of life".

For its part, the international NGOs also are completing different activities:

There are also different donating organizations that are preparting their strategies, such as the case of functionary missions and experts from the EU to identify actions for rehabilitation in the sectors of Health and Education, or the analysis and elaborated strategy for the GNP.

Before all of this, it is necessary to point out that between the NGOs expressions and the expressions of civil society in the four societies, exist many similarities in the analysis of the situation and the elaboration of proposals for rehabilitation. These general similarities aer those that make up our proposal of strategy for intervention.

In many of the actions carried out by the European Union in emergency support, the signed organizations we consider regrouped in the following two principle phases:

1. First phase

1. After Mitch, in the effected countries, they created "Cells of Coordination" between the distinct representations of the EU (DG1-B, ECHO, Technical and Finance Cooperation, Housing Security, etc.) with the objective of coordinating the interventions and defining a EU strategy of quick intervention; this means constituted an important point of reference for the actors that were operating in the terrain.

 

2. They gave themselves a series of means to permit a quick intervention:  

• The action of ECHO was immediate and reconverted the projects with funds already avaliable and rapidly made two important financial decisions; demonstrating its agility and capability of ECHO to act during situations of this type. Nevertheless, Nicaragua and Honduras, in the second ECHO phase were not considered existing potentialities in the territory that were able to permit a better and more rapid actuation of knowledge of the local reality.

• It gave the possibility to the projects of DG1B of changing up to 15% of the Operative Plan in function of the emergency. This decision was accertated therefore the bureaucratical and administrative delay that concerned these projects have not permitted the occasional application of this means, resulting in the lack of liquidity.

• The Line of Home Security made a quick decision to intervene in Honduras and Nicaragua, confronting the necessity of actuating in the field of productive rehabilitation. For the execution to be effective in the times that the beneficiaries need them, it is necessary to agilize the adminstrative transits and to permit the execution of the projects in quick times. In the case of Guatemala and El Salvador, lamentably have not taken the Line of Home Security made a quick decision of internvention in Honduras and Nicaragua, confronting the necessity of actuating in the field of productive rehabilitation. In the case of Guatemala and El Salvador, they have not made specific decisions that permit an quick actuation in support of the most vulnerable population in damaged regions.

• They assigned funds to Euronain to permit the covering of the emergency funds to agriculture and housing in all effected countries. There was, however, an insufficient coordination between ECHO and Euronaid, and without doubt it would have been more effective the first months of emergency to operate through ECHO, weakening the greater part of the quickness that permits this group, and to open a space for Euronaid to actuate in a previous phase, parallel to the execution of the projects of Home Security.

After the means of characterization of the first phase of intervention, there would have been an opportunity that the European Union would have actuated rapidly and with agility acommpanying the processes of rehabilitation that they initiated in Central American countries after the emergency. However, on the contrary, they made a series of decisions that make forseeing that teh EU would operate in the rehabilitation/reconstruction only within a few months, and furthermore are not as clear as supposing a continuity of the initiated actions in the first phase.

• In December, at the meeting of the Consultive Group in Washington, the European Union manifested its priority in operating in rehabilitation only in the ares of education and health and with a central focus around the reconstruction of infrastructures.
• In February and March, they sent two missions of experts (12 people total) to define actions of the European Union to be realized in the frame of rehabilitation in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicragua, and Guatemala in the next few years.
• The European Union makes a public statement for the creation of a cell group in Central America that continues the activities in the field of rehabilitation. Considering the time that in general needed were for this type of procedure, it is estimated that the cell group will not be operative until the year 2000.

Due to this situation we consider the following:

• The orientation expressed by the European Union of operating in rehabilitation only in the areas of education and health prioritizing the reconstruction of infrastructures, are not understood. However, we understand that there should have been actions with the focus of specific attention to the most vulnerable population, of integral character, in order to guarantee its sustainability.
• The times are not clear (that appear to be very long as well) nor the are the modalities through those which the European Unions will actuate in the field of rehabilitation. They would have been worrying if the executed only the great projects of infrastructure without getting the necessary participation of the organizations of local civil society and national and international NGOs that are already present in the effected regions. 
• They have not thought in a quick action through the already existing instruments but had inverted in expert missions and had prioritized the creation of a specific cell group. The European Union counted the coordination of the cell groups previously conformed in the terrain and references for execution, for those that had appeared most acertained to promote the first series of concrete actions of  quick implementation; to this they add that the experts sent to the field lacking the necessary time to identify priority actions and to elaborate the politics of the European Union in the identified sectors.
• At this time they are reorganizing the internal administration of the European Union. It is important to point out that the administrative and bureaucratic mechanisms do not facilitate an intervention that would occur quickly and actually makes the execution of the current progress in effected regions more difficult.

Convened to reiterate that these elements are not part of a simple elaboration of NGOs but that they are based in our knowledge of elaborations that groups of Central American civil society and other actors have brought about.

• The hurrican effected poor countries, stripping the inequalities of the actual model of development. Nevertheless, if a reconstruction is desired that does not reproduce the same factors and levels of vulnerability, it is necessary to approach the problem from the perspective of chronic poverty and the model of development implemented until now.
• Mitch effected a great percentage of the most vulnerable population, those which were encountered in high-risk areas (hillsides of rivers, marginal lands, high-risk urban areas) and that are shown to leave the actual situation. Nevertheless, a focus is necessary that, although confronting the problem of reconstruction of infrastructures, embarks an integral attention (health, production, education,...) for the population, in particular to the rural population. It will provocate an important migration to the cities. 
• The temporal showed the bad use that it is giving the land by a lack of politics of territorial ordainment. The reconstruction should manifest itself by taking into account the importance of the directed actions to improve the management of hydrographic river basins and the distribution of rural and urban assents. 
• Because of its geological composition and climate, Central America has a greater chance of experiencing natural disasters. It is necessary to instensify the inversions in areas of strategic reduction of vulnerability (planning of the use land, managing of natural resources, disign and planning of infrastructure and technicalities of construction, etc.) to diminish the risk of loss human lives and loss of materials.
• The hurricane showed the scarce preparation of public buildings and of the public before the disaster (alert systems, rapid emergency response, means of prevention...). Due to this, it is necessary to include in the reconstruction strong directed components for the formation of the civil population, to the institutional fortalization (in particular, in the local scope) and works for early alert, prevention, and rapid emergency response.
• Mitch arrived at a moment in which they were impulsing incipient processes of democratization, pacification, and modernization of the states in search of a real decentralization. If the reconstruction operates in a centralized form, it will benefit the politization of help and exclusion from civil society and local powers in the elaboration and execution of reconstruction. This would have supposed a retrograde in democratic scopes.
• In the phase of reconstruction, it is necessary to take into account the organizations of Central American civil society and the national and international NGOs that operate in the region and work in knowledge and relations with the population, institutions, and structures of the states; the existing insertion is particularly imporant  in the local scope.
• The region  is constituted by plurally ethnic and cultural societies with a strong presence of indigenous towns, so that the designed actions should take into account the diverse forms of social, familiar, traditional medicines, tendency of the land and its relation with natural resources.
• Taking into consideration that the natural and social phenomenons have a differentiated impact of gender for reason of inequalities that exist between men and women, it is pertinent that all means and actions orientated at rehabilitation and reconstruction are analyzed, planned, execution, and evaluation with a focus on gender, that which will permit the treatment of specific vulnerabilities and potentials of men and women.
• The and citizen finances form that has managed the aid that immediately arriving aid after the disaster has been questioned by the population; they have noted cases of corruption and of political instrumentalization of the aid. This project requires transperancy in the use of resources
• The politics of structural adjustment (ESAF in Nicaragua and Honduras) and the payment of service of the external debt, constitute factors that augment the difficulties of the states to make an affront to the reconstruction. It would have been condemned the debt and created a counterpart fund that sirves for the reconstruction, in order for the ESAF to rethink in order to not negatively effect social politics.

• For the economic future of Central America the access of their products to the international market is essential. The aid is important but the commercial extension could represent a sustainable manner of improving the socio-economic conditions of its population. It is indispensable to increment the established benefits by the Initiative for the Carribean River Basin as an intermediate effort at obtaining immediate benefits for the battle against the effects of Mitch while pushing along the negotiations of a Treaty of Free Trade with the United States and advancing the process of ALCA. Furthermore, the European Union should have extended the Program of Special Preferences to the products of the countries in Central America.

In this document, we wish to prove that the strategy of reconstruction in Central America should be disigned with these aspects:

• Obtaining the participation plan, felt of appropriation and co-responsibility of all social actors, including the actors and local governments, since the phase of design and its implementation and carrying out.
• To be capable of continuing development of rural regions that have maintained themselves in marginization, contributing to the plan of its agricultural, forestry, industrial, and eco-touristic resources, in a strategy of integral development of potentiality in each country.
• To include the rural people as actors in the first process of development that eliminates the extreme rural poverty, as well as those from poverty stricken urban areas, to contribute to the social, ethnic, and gender equity.

• To be sustainable, that which implies a process of environmental ordainment of the territory, that rationalizes the interventions and inversions, that possibly restore the principle hydrographic river basins and changes in the use of the land, to accomodate the vocations of the same, taking much use and erosion as is unaccomodating. All of this accomodates the concrete objectives of development that makes best use of and optomizes the comparative advantages that the region offers.
• To break the cycle of the disaster, reducing the vulnerability of mitgating the risks with means of prevention and preparation to minimize the loss of human lives. We think that it should also be able to contribute to the mitigation of disasters, fortalizing the role of the local communities and institution through a strategy of systematic education in prevention and preparation.