Introduction

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ued to be a major threat to vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions depen­dent on human­i­tar­i­an action through­out the year, with a major impact in areas where health sys­tems are dys­func­tion­al. Thanks to a bud­get increase at the end of the year, Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an action was able to step up its efforts to increase its sup­port in the most urgent or under-fund­ed human­i­tar­i­an contexts.

In 2021 Lux­em­bourg fur­ther strength­ened its net­work of select part­ner­ships. The human­i­tar­i­an affairs depart­ment has thus pre­pared five new strate­gic part­ner­ship frame­works with the fol­low­ing human­i­tar­i­an organ­i­sa­tions: the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Office of the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Pro­gramme (WFP), the Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs (OCHA) and the Unit­ed Nations Office for Dis­as­ter Risk Reduc­tion (UNDRR). These agree­ments will enter into force on 1 Jan­u­ary 2022 for a peri­od of four years and will give even more pre­dictabil­i­ty in terms of fund­ing to these bod­ies, in line with our com­mit­ment in the frame­work of the Grand Bar­gain, one of the main out­comes of the 2016 World Human­i­tar­i­an Sum­mit. The year 2021 also saw the start of Luxembourg’s co-pres­i­den­cy of the ICRC’s Donor Sup­port Group. It will cul­mi­nate in 2022 with the organ­i­sa­tion of the annu­al meet­ing in Luxembourg.

In addi­tion, on 28 June 2021 Min­is­ter Fay­ot deliv­ered the open­ing speech at the launch event for a set of research reports fund­ed by Lux­em­bourg and pro­duced by the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Tran­si­tion­al Jus­tice (ICTJ) on tran­si­tion­al jus­tice and pre­ven­tion. A dis­cus­sion then took place in July 2021 between Franz Fay­ot and Fer­nan­do Trav­esi, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the ICTJ, which led to the sign­ing of a new part­ner­ship agree­ment to strength­en ICTJ tran­si­tion­al jus­tice pro­grammes, notably in Colom­bia, East Africa and Tunisia.

Despite the pan­dem­ic, the annu­al finan­cial envelopes for human­i­tar­i­an NGOs have been main­tained at the lev­el of pre­vi­ous years. The depart­ment also con­tin­ued to place more empha­sis on its dis­cus­sions with human­i­tar­i­an NGOs present in Lux­em­bourg with­in the frame­work of a struc­tured dia­logue. In 2021, one of the inno­va­tions was the intro­duc­tion of new qual­i­ty con­trol pro­ce­dures and a new report­ing sys­tem (8+3 tem­plate), with the aim of har­mon­is­ing our qual­i­ty stan­dards with those of the inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an com­mu­ni­ty. Final­ly, the human­i­tar­i­an affairs depart­ment has also made use of the exter­nal assigned rev­enues instru­ment of the Euro­pean Commission’s Direc­torate-Gen­er­al for Euro­pean Civ­il Pro­tec­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Aid Oper­a­tions (ECHO) on two occa­sions, in the con­text of the crises in Myan­mar and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. This instru­ment facil­i­tates greater involve­ment in the Team Europe approach and in the prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion of joint pro­gram­ming com­mit­ments in order to strength­en aid effectiveness.

Through a col­lec­tive effort by the Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs, a first pilot ver­sion of the new human­i­tar­i­an action strat­e­gy was finalised at the end of the year. This strat­e­gy will make it pos­si­ble to bet­ter for­mu­late the strate­gic and the­mat­ic cross-cut­ting focus­es of Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an action and more close­ly fol­low up its activ­i­ties, by means of spe­cif­ic objec­tives. The doc­u­ment, to be pub­lished in ear­ly 2022, will enable the MFA to address unprece­dent­ed human­i­tar­i­an needs and sup­port the human­i­tar­i­an sys­tem, which Mar­tin Grif­fiths says ​“is being stretched to its limits.”

In view of the com­plex­i­ty of the crises and the wors­en­ing human­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion, in 2021 the Sahel remained the pri­or­i­ty region for Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an action. In con­flict-affect­ed areas, civil­ians have faced an increas­ing­ly seri­ous pro­tec­tion cri­sis. In Burk­i­na Faso, mil­lions of peo­ple have had to flee their homes as vio­lence has inten­si­fied in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try. The cri­sis in Syr­ia and the impact of this pro­tract­ed con­flict on the region, the Rohingya refugee cri­sis in Bangladesh, the con­flicts in Ethiopia and Afghanistan and the con­flict in Yemen, which has been rav­aging the coun­try since 2014, were once again pri­or­i­ty areas.

In addi­tion, Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an response pro­vid­ed sup­port in 2021 in oth­er frag­ile and com­plex con­texts, too often over­looked by the donor com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, Colom­bia, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go, Nige­ria, Pales­tine, the Philip­pines, Soma­lia, South Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela. Final­ly, on the human­i­tar­i­an front, 2021 also saw the earth­quake in Haiti in August, the dis­as­trous impact of Typhoon Rai/​Odette in the Philip­pines and the migra­tion cri­sis in Cen­tral America.

On 8 Sep­tem­ber 2021, Min­is­ter Fay­ot met with Alain Délétroz, Direc­tor Gen­er­al of the NGO Gene­va Call, in Lux­em­bourg. In par­tic­u­lar, the dis­cus­sion was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stress the impor­tance attached by Lux­em­bourg to the rel­a­tive­ly new but high-qual­i­ty part­ner­ship with Gene­va Call, espe­cial­ly in Mali, and to dis­cuss pos­si­bil­i­ties for enhanced col­lab­o­ra­tion in the com­ing years and the areas in which the NGO oper­ates, includ­ing Afghanistan, Colom­bia, Mali and Ukraine.

At the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross and Red Cres­cent Soci­eties (IFRC)’s Dis­as­ter Relief Emer­gency Fund (DREF) Pledg­ing Con­fer­ence, held on 18 Octo­ber 2021, Franz Fay­ot announced that Lux­em­bourg would con­tribute EUR500000 to DREF in 2021.

Dur­ing his work­ing vis­it to Jor­dan from 14 to 16 Sep­tem­ber 2021, Min­is­ter Fay­ot was able to vis­it sev­er­al ongo­ing projects and oper­a­tions, includ­ing the Azraq Syr­i­an refugee camp and a Pales­tin­ian refugee camp in Amman. The min­is­te­r­i­al vis­it sought specif­i­cal­ly to engage in dia­logue with key part­ners of Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an action active in the Mid­dle East region. For exam­ple, the min­is­ter was able to hold dis­cus­sions with UNHCR offi­cials in Jor­dan, the Unit­ed Nations Res­i­dent Coor­di­na­tor in Jor­dan, the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Euro­pean Union in Jor­dan and the Com­mis­sion­er-Gen­er­al of UNRWA.

On 8 Decem­ber 2021, Min­is­ter Fay­ot par­tic­i­pat­ed in the high-lev­el vir­tu­al con­fer­ence to announce pledges for the Cen­tral Emer­gency Response Fund (CERF), organ­ised by the Unit­ed Nations Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs (OCHA), at which he announced Luxembourg’s inten­tion to main­tain its finan­cial sup­port for CERF in 2023 and 2024 at the same lev­el as for the peri­od 2021 – 2022, with a sum of EUR10 mil­lion spread over two years (EUR5 mil­lion per year). Through CERF, Luxembourg’s human­i­tar­i­an action there­fore sup­ports not only urgent crises but also pro­longed and ​“for­got­ten” crises. Dur­ing his vis­it to New York, Min­is­ter Fay­ot also held dis­cus­sions with Mar­tin Grif­fiths, Unit­ed Nations Under-Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al for Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs and Emer­gency Relief Coordinator.