South-East Asia

The Inter­na­tion­al Labour Office (ILO) has also con­tin­ued to imple­ment a project in three coun­tries in the region (Viet­nam, Laos and Myan­mar) relat­ing to the cor­ner­stones of social pro­tec­tion. The project aimed to expand social secu­ri­ty sys­tems in the region, with the ulti­mate goal of achiev­ing uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age in these three coun­tries. In 2019, mid­way through the project, at the close of the project, a region­al asso­ci­a­tion was cre­at­ed to con­sol­i­date coop­er­a­tion between the par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries and to build capac­i­ty among local operators.

Togeth­er with oth­er part­ners, Lux­em­bourg sup­ports a glob­al pro­gramme imple­ment­ed by the WHO which aims to sup­port the estab­lish­ment of uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age by 2025, by pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port for the imple­men­ta­tion of the nation­al strat­e­gy to reform the health sec­tor in Laos (EU-Lux­em­bourg-Ire­land-WHO Uni­ver­sal Health Cov­er­age Partnership).

In South-East Asia, Lux­em­bourg has also con­tin­ued its sup­port for the pro­mo­tion of inclu­sive finance. Thus, the Lux­em­bour­gish NGO ADA (Appui au développe­ment autonome) is sup­port­ing the Lao micro­fi­nance asso­ci­a­tion (MFA), and the trans­for­ma­tion of vil­lage banks into for­mal micro­fi­nance insti­tu­tions. In addi­tion, through the mech­a­nism for respon­si­ble inclu­sive finance (RIFF-SEA), the Social Per­for­mance Task Force (SPTF) runs train­ing cours­es in social per­for­mance man­age­ment and co-finances projects enabling micro­fi­nance insti­tu­tions (MFIs) to improve their social per­for­mance, and find a good bal­ance with com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty. Final­ly, since 2019 the ATTF/​House of Train­ing (HoT) has been offer­ing train­ing in finance to finance sec­tor pro­fes­sion­als in Laos.