Development studies represent a permanently innovative perspective because they enable us to analyse and understand all the causes that explain the evolutionary processes of the different societies that make up our global world. Analysis is carried out through a multidisciplinary approach, which means focusing not only on traditional economic growth, but also on the distribution of wealth, the eradication of poverty, protection of the environment, governance and human rights, in both their local and global dimensions.

The programme starts from the premise that development is a continuous process of improving the quality of life of men and women and reducing the existing inequalities between people. This is achieved not only by covering basic needs, but also by broadening human skills and freedoms. We aim to contribute to this process by promoting thinking and research, and by opening up spaces for reflection and learning. To this end, we adopt a perspective based on the individual, through which we transversally analyse power relations, sustainability, equality and social justice, democratic participation and human rights, and the culture of peace.

Through this programme, we aim to tackle the main aspects of the international development agenda, in both its fundamental axes, consolidated through the process of international conferences in the late 20th century and transformed into the development objectives of the millennium, and in its instrumental axes, covered and under full revision during the first decade of the 21st century. Particularly important topics in this last aspect are the funding of development and the new architecture of international cooperation.

The programme's areas of work are centred on collaboration with public and private institutions in different actions designed to stimulate debate for formulating of public development policies and new cooperation strategies, with the aim that they should contribute more efficiently to development processes. The programme also continues the process of reflection on the Barcelona Development Agenda, maintaining the discipline of macroeconomic policies, as well as achieving a substantial improvement in same to create a new, more inclusive and fairer global governability in the Latin American context. The programme will pay particular attention to sub-Saharan Africa, in accordance with the international priority that it has been granted by not only the development agenda but also by the most global agenda of international relations. Other subjects to be dealt with by the programme include emerging themes in the agenda of development and cooperation such as environmental sustainability, the relationship between migrations and development, and the new actors in international cooperation.

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