United Nations (UN)

As in pre­vi­ous years, Lux­em­bourg par­tic­i­pat­ed in meet­ings of the exec­u­tive boards of UNDP, UNF­PA, UNOPS, UN Women and UNICEF. In 2019, Lux­em­bourg served on the exec­u­tive board of UNICEF, in a year that marked the 30^th anniver­sary of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child. At the annu­al ses­sion of the UNICEF exec­u­tive board Lux­em­bourg facil­i­tat­ed the deci­sion on the annu­al report on human­i­tar­i­an action.

Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has also con­tin­ued to fol­low close­ly the process of repo­si­tion­ing the Unit­ed Nations devel­op­ment sys­tem launched by Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Guter­res in July 2017; a res­o­lu­tion on this point was adopt­ed by the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly in May 2018. The repo­si­tion­ing has result­ed in a new gen­er­a­tion of Unit­ed Nations coun­try teams, a rein­vig­o­rat­ed role for the res­i­dent coor­di­na­tor sys­tem, a rede­vel­op­ment of the region­al approach, strate­gic direc­tion, over­sight and account­abil­i­ty to achieve sys­tem-wide results, bet­ter fund­ing and mon­i­tor­ing of action to repo­si­tion the Unit­ed Nations sys­tem at dif­fer­ent levels.

Health remains a top pri­or­i­ty for Lux­em­bourg. The part­ner­ship on uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age with the WHO and the EU is con­tin­u­ing to expand sig­nif­i­cant­ly; Lux­em­bourg has recom­mit­ted itself to a third phase of sup­port for the part­ner­ship, cov­er­ing the 2019 – 2021 peri­od. Uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age, the key objec­tive of its health strat­e­gy, is the back­bone of SDG3, good health and well-being. 

With UNAIDS, Lux­em­bourg has strength­ened its efforts to com­bat HIV/AIDS in the pri­or­i­ty region of West Africa through an annu­al con­tri­bu­tion of EUR1 mil­lion to the catch-up plan in West and Cen­tral Africa. This region­al pro­gramme aims to achieve the 90−90−90 treat­ment objec­tives through increased sup­port from local civ­il soci­ety. Respect for human rights and pae­di­atric care are at the heart of this pro­gramme. The Lux­em­bourg funds have, in par­tic­u­lar, made it pos­si­ble for the West Africa Civ­il Soci­ety Insti­tute and Cen­tre for Health and HIV to be set up, in a region­al approach to knowl­edge-shar­ing and capac­i­ty-build­ing. More­over, Lux­em­bourg has stepped up its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Glob­al Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuber­cu­lo­sis and Malar­ia in order to achieve the ambi­tious goals of end­ing the three pan­demics as pub­lic health threats by 2030. Indeed, Lux­em­bourg was the first coun­try on a glob­al scale to announce its renewed sup­port for the Glob­al Fund at the replen­ish­ment con­fer­ence held in New Del­hi on 11 February.

These top­ics, as well as Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Cooperation’s the­mat­ic pri­or­i­ties and mul­ti­lat­er­al projects, were dis­cussed at the annu­al con­sul­ta­tions with the New York-based UN agen­cies held on 17 – 18 July 2019. The annu­al con­sul­ta­tions with UN agen­cies in Rome took place on 13 and 15 Feb­ru­ary 2019.

Dur­ing the New Space Europe con­fer­ence, on 13 Novem­ber 2019 Lux­em­bourg signed the first financ­ing agree­ment to sup­port the new UNOOSA project enti­tled ​‘Space Law for New Space Actors’. This project offers Unit­ed Nations Mem­ber States an ad hoc strength­en­ing of exper­tise in the draft­ing of nation­al space leg­is­la­tion and/​or nation­al space poli­cies so that they are con­sis­tent with inter­na­tion­al space law, in order to pro­mote the long-term via­bil­i­ty of out­er space activ­i­ties. Such capac­i­ty-build­ing efforts aim in par­tic­u­lar to assist the new and emerg­ing space pow­ers of the South to car­ry out their space activ­i­ties in a respon­si­ble and sus­tain­able man­ner and to give a voice to a greater num­ber of states in this field.

Dur­ing 2019, Lux­em­bourg con­tin­ued its long-stand­ing part­ner­ship with the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Office (ILO), one exam­ple being the ​‘Decent Jobs for Youth’ ini­tia­tive. Anoth­er Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion pri­or­i­ty is the exten­sion of its com­mit­ment to the social pro­tec­tion project with the ILO to cov­er an entire region in South-East Asia, start­ing with Laos, Myan­mar and Viet­nam. Also in 2019, the project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ILO in Tunisia on social and sol­i­dar­i­ty entre­pre­neur­ship start­ed and the intro­duc­tion phase was completed.

Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion remains com­mit­ted to UNRWA’s efforts in the Near East, despite the struc­tur­al dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing the organ­i­sa­tion. The UN agency con­tin­ues to be the main part­ner in the region.

The Inter­na­tion­al Fund For Agri­cul­tur­al Devel­op­ment (IFAD) Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil ses­sion (14−15 Feb­ru­ary 2019) was one of the most impor­tant ses­sions not only for Lux­em­bourg, because of the ABC Fund’s offi­cial launch at a fringe event at this con­fer­ence, but also for IFAD as a whole fol­low­ing the adop­tion of the deci­sion to work on a strat­e­gy for col­lab­o­ra­tion with the pri­vate sec­tor. This is a com­plete­ly new approach that will change IFAD’s inter­ac­tion with oth­er bod­ies and cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties in the future for more effec­tive mul­ti-stake­hold­er engage­ment in imple­ment­ing the 2030 Agen­da and the 17 SDGs. With the launch of the new ABC Fund, Lux­em­bourg has once again been able to posi­tion itself as a pio­neer in the devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able financ­ing mechanisms.

In 2019, new mul­ti­lat­er­al projects were con­clud­ed with UNDP (Cabo Verde, Ethiopia), UNF­PA (Iraq), the WFP (Nicaragua), the ILO (Tunisia) and UNICEF (Niger, Syria/​Jordan and Cen­tral African Repub­lic). At the nation­al lev­el, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has con­clud­ed a new part­ner­ship with the non-prof­it Lux­em­bourg Income Study Data­base and renewed its sup­port for inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment aware­ness by sup­port­ing the annu­al organ­i­sa­tion by the Lux­em­bourg Athénée of the sec­ond Lux­em­bourg Mod­el Unit­ed Nations (LUX­MUN).