Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2016

Dear friends of Luxembourg’s development cooperation,

While 2015 was the year of major UN development summits, our Presidency of the EU and the European Year for Development, 2016 was a year of major humanitarian problems.

There were continuing crises to which the international community had trouble finding responses that adequately meet the challenges faced, e.g. in Syria and its neighbouring countries, but also in Yemen, the CAR, the horn of Africa and Iraq. Some crises, such as the one in Syria, are so long-lived that emergency humanitarian responses have been stretched to the limit. Other crises, such as the one in the Lake Chad region and the crisis in Afghanistan, have been forgotten even though thousands – or even millions – of people are only surviving due to humanitarian aid. 

The London conference on 4 February 2016 attempted to coordinate a humanitarian and development response to the Syrian crisis with a plan of commitments up to 2020. Luxembourg pledged over 37 million euros! We had never made such a large pledge before.

We continued our meetings with the major multilateral actors in the humanitarian field with a visit by the new High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, to Luxembourg in mid-April. With over 60 million people having been displaced from their homes for an average period of 18 years, the challenges are still huge and require all our attention.

All our efforts to respond more effectively to the humanitarian challenges of our time came together at the first World Humanitarian Summit, which took place from 22 to 24 May in Istanbul. Luxembourg was represented by the Prime Minister, whom I had the pleasure of accompanying. We made humanitarian aid commitments and also commitments in the field of international humanitarian law, which we are gradually implementing with our humanitarian partners. In effect, these partners are the Luxembourgish humanitarian NGOs to which we are linked by a charter signed at the end of the Summit and also the multilateral agencies with which we renewed our strategic partnership agreements at the end of 2016/beginning of 2017.

Through its “emergency.lu” tool, Luxembourg also continues to be well-placed to respond to the humanitarian need for satellite communication in natural catastrophes, such as was the case in Haiti following Hurricane Matthew.

Although humanitarian aid attracted special attention in 2016, we have not overlooked our development relationships with our partner countries. After a period of unrest in the country, I was particularly pleased to be able to go to Burkina Faso at the end of February/beginning of March to resume our bilateral relations with a new government with full democratic legitimacy. Over the course of the year, we managed to finalise a new plan with Burkina Faso through a 3^rd Indicative Cooperation Programme, signed in November 2016, which fitted the Burkina Faso government’s priorities perfectly and was presented at the donors’ conference in Paris on 7 and 8 December.

Despite the security issues facing Mali, especially in the central region, we managed to implement the ICP and to take stock of the situation at the beginning of May in Bamako with all this ICP’s actors.

I was very honoured to welcome Cabo Verde’s new Minister for Foreign Affairs to Luxembourg on 2 June shortly after the new government had been formed following elections. For me this was emblematic of our excellent partnership with Cabo Verde.

In October, I was able to visit Kosovo for the first time to sign the new multi-year programme with the country; the programme certainly includes activities in social sectors but also technical assistance to help the country on its path towards joining the European Union.

I would like to emphasise that, since the opening of our offices in Bamako and Niamey in May 2016, my department now has a presence in all our partner countries. This allows us to monitor the implementation of our programmes better and to have more regular dialogue with our various partners in situ.

Over and above our closest partners, I believe it is worth our becoming involved in some of the least developed countries where one humanitarian crisis regularly follows another and for which we are currently looking into making a development commitment. Thus discussions took place with the leaders of the CAR alongside the European Development Days at the start of June in Brussels, while Luxembourg also took part in the donors’ conference on 17 November.

I believe I can also say that in 2016 we made progress on policy coherence for development. The Interministerial Committee for Development Cooperation examined various topics from that perspective in order to see if it was able to give an opinion. As in previous years, readers of this report will find a summary of the work of the Interministerial Committee in this publication. Following a meeting of the Cercle de Coopération of NGOs with the Prime Minister and myself on strengthening our dialogue, it was decided that the Cercle would henceforth attend all the debates of the Interministerial Committee on policy coherence as an active observer.

As was the case following the major multilateral conferences of 2015, my department has, of course, also been involved in implementing the commitments made. It has become clear that the scope of the implementation of Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals requires in-depth work to create a new overall strategy – this strategy is being drawn up. At the national level, this work is the responsibility of the Interdepartmental Committee for Sustainable Development, to which my staff makes active contributions. Due to the excellent level of cooperation between the MFEA and the MDDI in the preparatory phase of Agenda 2030, we can continue along this path in the crucial step of implementing it. There is regular cooperation between Ministers, officials and also within the responsible committees of the Chambre des députés and with regard to civil society.

The Agenda 2030 work stream was also at the forefront of the work on the 2016 edition of Luxembourg’s development cooperation conference. With my colleagues, Ministers Dieschbourg and Mutsch and international guests as well as with parliamentarians, representatives of the private sector and the more traditional cooperation actors, we jointly sketched out new work pathways to attaining the new super-coherence of development policies that Agenda 2030 represents. Following the principles of the Addis Ababa and 2030 Agendas, we strengthened our cooperation with the private sector by launching the first call for tenders for the Business Partnership Facility. Four of the twenty tenders submitted were selected.

This has, therefore, been a year full of challenges. Thanks to the commitment of all my staff and all the development cooperation actors we have been able to respond positively to the demands on us and to make new commitments to a better future. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed, and also all the volunteers and professionals on the ground in humanitarian crises, in partner countries and wherever our solidarity is needed. I can’t tell you how much I respect and appreciate your commitment, courage and devotion.

Romain Schneider
Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs