Intro

NGOs rep­re­sent a com­ple­men­tary chan­nel for bilat­er­al aid, enabling Lux­em­bourg to be active in coun­tries and sec­tors where the Min­istry does not inter­vene. Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion thus con­tributes to strength­en­ing the role of devel­op­ment NGOs as the spokesper­son for the most vul­ner­a­ble and to pro­mot­ing inclu­sive gov­er­nance, account­abil­i­ty and respect for human rights. In this con­text, it is worth remem­ber­ing that NGOs are part­ners of Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion in the fight against pover­ty and social inequal­i­ty, and are not gov­ern­ment officials. 

In 2019, 94 asso­ci­a­tions were approved the Min­istry of For­eign and Euro­pean Affairs under the amend­ed Law of 6 Jan­u­ary 1996 on devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion and human­i­tar­i­an action. Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion can thus draw on a large num­ber of strong part­ner­ships on the basis of close col­lab­o­ra­tion with NGOs.

In 2019 the NGOs dis­bursed EUR 47 mil­lion for devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion activ­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the main finan­cial instruments:

• Devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion frame­work agree­ments: 26 frame­work agree­ments were co-financed in 2019, includ­ing two frame­work agree­ments car­ried out as a con­sor­tium at a total cost of EUR 29.03 million.
• In 2019, sev­en new mul­ti-year frame­work agree­ments were signed, includ­ing two on a con­sor­tium basis at a total cost of EUR 36.6 million.
• Co-financ­ing of devel­op­ment projects: 74 indi­vid­ual projects by 42 NGOs were sup­port­ed in 2019 at a total cost of EUR 8.44 mil­lion: of these projects, 31 were new projects imple­ment­ed by 29 NGOs.

In total, the ODA allo­cat­ed to nation­al NGOs in 2019 was EUR 67.04 mil­lion, i.e. 22% of Luxembourg’s offi­cial bilat­er­al devel­op­ment assistance. 

This amount also includes the ODA allo­cat­ed for human­i­tar­i­an action (emer­gency aid, food aid, cri­sis pre­ven­tion, recon­struc­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion), sub­si­dies for pub­lic aware­ness-rais­ing and devel­op­ment edu­ca­tion in Lux­em­bourg, and sup­port for NGOs’ admin­is­tra­tive expenses.

Luxembourg’s civ­il soci­ety also stands out in terms of the high lev­el of involve­ment by vol­un­teers who work at NGOs to imple­ment devel­op­ment projects in coun­tries of the South or aware­ness-rais­ing and devel­op­ment edu­ca­tion cam­paigns tar­get­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic in Luxembourg.

The num­ber of approved NGOs and the high per­cent­age of ODA allo­cat­ed to NGOs bear wit­ness to the val­ue placed by the peo­ple of Lux­em­bourg on civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions as sep­a­rate devel­op­ment oper­a­tors. The Ministry’s strong com­mit­ment to Lux­em­bourg NGOs is thus enabling ODA to remain at around 1% of GNI. The Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs cul­ti­vates reg­u­lar, con­struc­tive dia­logue with the NGOs, rep­re­sent­ed by the Cer­cle des ONG of Lux­em­bourg, seen in par­tic­u­lar in the meet­ings of the MFA-NGO work­ing group, which met on five occa­sions in 2019.