Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2013

In 2013, the 95 NGOs accredited by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs pursuant to the amended law of 6 January 1996 on development cooperation and humanitarian action spent 31 176 554 euros on development cooperation activities via these main financial instruments:

• framework cooperation agreements: 19 framework agreements (four of which were signed with a consortium of two NGOs) were cofinanced in 2013 at a total cost of 20 870 030 euros.
• cofinancing of development projects: 111 individual projects by 46 NGOs were supported in 2013 at a total cost of 8 404 466 euros.
• implementation mandates as part of bilateral cooperation: 1 902 058 euros.

Added to this are loans recorded as official development assistance allocated for humanitarian action (emergency aid, food aid, crisis prevention, reconstruction and rehabilitation), subsidies for development education and awareness-raising activities  as well as support for administrative expenses incurred in the preparation and monitoring of the development activities. In total, the ODA allocated to national non-governmental organisations in 2013 was 47 070 919 euros, i.e. 14.46% of Luxembourg’s official development assistance for this budget year.

Luxembourg development cooperation attaches great importance to civil society organisations as fully-fledged development actors. In effect, it is one of the development cooperation systems which has most recourse to civil society organisations to implement development projects and programmes. NGOs are a complementary channel for bilateral aid, enabling intervention in countries and sectors where the Ministry cannot intervene and reaching parts of the population of developing countries which would otherwise not receive the benefit of its actions.

It is important to emphasise that, in spite of a difficult economic context, the funding allocated to civil society organisations in 2013 remained the same as in 2012.

The large number of approved NGOs and the percentage of ODA allocated to NGOs as a result bears witness to the importance that the Luxembourg population attaches to civil society organisations; this is a way of expressing its international solidarity. The Ministry’s strong commitment to Luxemburgish NGOs, supporting both development projects and projects on development education and awareness-raising, thus helps to keep ODA at around 1% of GNI. Indeed, through the NGOs, the Luxembourg population can directly and substantially, participate and be involved in the implementation of Luxembourg’s development cooperation policy.