Emergency.lu

Under the contract signed on 28 April 2011 between the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the private partners HITEC Luxembourg, SES TechCom and Luxembourg Air Ambulance, renewed in 2014 and 2020, the satellite telecommunication platform “emergency.lu” has been operational since 2012. The first deployment took place in January 2012 in Southern Sudan.

Thus, on 22 March 2022, the tenth anniversary of emergency.lu was celebrated at the Luxembourg pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, in the presence of H.R.H. the Grand Duke Henri. At the same time, Luxembourg welcomed the representatives of ETC (Emergency Telecommunications Cluster) for their plenary assembly at the Luxembourg pavilion. For the anniversary, again, a reception was held in Luxembourg on 15 December 2022 in the presence of Franz Fayot.

During 2022, at the operational level, Luxembourg’s humanitarian action continued to provide telecommunication services in support of humanitarian organisations in the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Venezuela and Syria, at the request of the World Food Programme (WFP), ETC, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF. Two emergency.lu terminals were installed in Tonga to reconnect two islands following destruction caused to submarine cables during the eruption of the Tonga-Hunga volcano. Two other antennas were positioned in Dnipro and made available to ETC in the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Within the framework of emergency.lu, Luxembourg provides its support for the work of its partners in terms of capacity-building, organising various training courses in the Grand Duchy. In 2022, five training courses were delivered at the Centre for Training and Seminars of the Chamber of Employees (CEFOS) in Remich, at the request of ETC and UNHCR.

In 2022, as part of its commitment to UNDAC, the UN system for disaster assessment and coordination, which is managed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Grand Duchy deployed experts to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar.