Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2012

In 2012, Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation allocated 126 million euros, the equivalent of 29% of its total ODA, to multilateral aid. Luxembourg thus supported several pillars of the multilateral system: 36 million euros to United Nations organisations, 24 million euros to the European Union, 22 million euros to World Bank programmes and 3 million euros to Regional Development Banks.

On 5 and 6 July 2012, the Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, Ms Marie-Josée Jacobs, attended the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF 2012) in New York. The main topics on the agenda were the future of development cooperation, the mobilisation and allocation of aid, mutual responsibility, South-South cooperation, the role of philanthropic organisations and the decentralisation of cooperation, sustainable development and Rio+20, partnerships for the future of development, and lastly the future of the DCF. The minister gave a speech entitled “Mobilising private capital flows to aid development”, in which she emphasised the growing awareness of sustainable development as a shared global cause and the absolute necessity of an imaginative and innovative approach in bringing together financial and other means of support in order to carry out this work effectively. She highlighted current challenges including poverty, economic crises, climate change, growing physical insecurity, pandemics and migratory flows and explained that only collective and coordinated responses would be successful. She made three observations in this regard: the need to review partnerships between donor countries and recipient countries in light of a recognition of our shared problems; a need for the “traditional” donor community to acknowledge new actors to ensure greater coordination and efficiency; and finally the usefulness of a multidisciplinary approach between all actors involved in development. The minister also recognised the vast potential of public-private partnerships to help ensure the sustainability of development initiatives.

In 2012, several visits by directors of UN agencies and other partners took place in Luxembourg. On 16 February 2012, the minister received Ms Carol Bellamy, Chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), who pointed out that even though major progress has been achieved in the education sector, particularly for basic education, the work is far from over. The main emphasis is now on supporting fragile States, improving educational achievement and the quality of education, along with the continued promotion of girls’ education.

On 10 December 2012, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Margaret Chan, came to Luxembourg on a working visit - her first since taking office in 2006. She met the Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs as well as the Minister of Health. During her meeting with Ms Jacobs the discussions focused on the post-2015 development agenda and the revision of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the current reform of the WHO, non-infectious diseases, sexual and reproductive health, and the growing problem of anti-microbial resistance that the WHO needs to address. Dr Chan declared that Luxembourg was a major and influential donor, despite its small size, and applauded the importance it accorded to the health sector in its development cooperation.