Emergency aid

In prepa­ra­tion for pos­si­ble nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and human­i­tar­i­an emer­gen­cies and also to respond to grow­ing human­i­tar­i­an needs in the con­text of pro­longed crises, Lux­em­bourg reserves about 75% of its human­i­tar­i­an aid bud­get for emer­gen­cies. This aid is allo­cat­ed accord­ing to need and with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, tak­ing account of sev­er­al indi­ca­tors such as the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of human­i­tar­i­an crises, risk man­age­ment indices (INFORM) and the indi­ca­tors for for­got­ten crises pub­lished by ECHO and OCHA. In 2020, EUR8,150,000 mil­lion was allo­cat­ed to respond to human­i­tar­i­an emer­gen­cies worldwide.

In view of the com­plex­i­ty of the crises and the wors­en­ing of the human­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion, in 2020 the Sahel remained the pri­or­i­ty region for Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an action. Thus, Lux­em­bourg sup­port­ed human­i­tar­i­an respons­es in Burk­i­na Faso, Mali and Niger with a bud­get of approx­i­mate­ly EUR8,858,000 mil­lion. Lux­em­bourg also con­tin­ued to pro­vide a human­i­tar­i­an response to the Syr­i­an cri­sis and the impact of this pro­longed con­flict on the region, the cri­sis of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and the con­flict in Yemen, which has been rav­aging the coun­try since 2014. In addi­tion, in the face of a new era of glob­al vulnerability,

Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an response in 2020 cov­ered many oth­er frag­ile and com­plex con­texts, includ­ing South Sudan, Sudan, Soma­lia, Ethiopia, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go, the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, Iraq, the Occu­pied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ries, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Colom­bia. Final­ly, in the human­i­tar­i­an sphere, the year 2020 saw not only the cri­sis linked to COVID-19 but also the explo­sion in the port of Beirut in Lebanon, the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the con­flict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the dis­as­trous impact of the Eta and Iota hur­ri­canes in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, and the emer­gence of a new con­flict in the Tigray region in Ethiopia. The imple­men­ta­tion of emer­gency human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance in these coun­tries and regions was achieved through con­tri­bu­tions to the UN agen­cies, the ICRC and the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross and Red Cres­cent Soci­eties (IFRC), and projects by Lux­em­bour­gish and inter­na­tion­al NGOs.

In addi­tion to the finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions, the Min­istry also pro­vid­ed in kind con­tri­bu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly through emer​gency​.lu, as well as tech­ni­cal assis­tance from experts. In this con­text, fol­low­ing the explo­sion in the port of Beirut in August 2020, a co-work­er from the Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs was sent to Lebanon as part of the mis­sion of experts for the Unit­ed Nations Dis­as­ter Assess­ment and Coor­di­na­tion (UNDAC) to help with the work to coor­di­nate nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port and rescue.