El Salvador

El Sal­vador has been one of the Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion coun­tries with projects since it joined the cat­e­go­ry of mid­dle-income coun­tries in 2015. The year 2022 saw the clo­sure of the main bilat­er­al projects. The Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has focused on three key areas, through inno­v­a­tive projects targeting:

• sup­port for the El Sal­vador government’s social pol­i­cy (FOCAP);
• sup­port for youth employ­a­bil­i­ty through civ­il soci­ety via the Fon­do Con­cursable, man­aged by the El Sal­vador government;
• sup­port for South-South and tri­an­gu­lar coop­er­a­tion (FOS­AL).

These projects were imple­ment­ed by the El Sal­vador gov­ern­ment with sup­port and fol­low-up from LuxDev. The last activ­i­ty by the Fon­do Con­cursable, imple­ment­ed in 2022, sup­port­ed the cre­ation and strength­en­ing of enter­pris­es set up by young peo­ple in risky sit­u­a­tions. The last rem­nants of FOS­AL have been used to finance two grad­u­ate train­ing cours­es, one in the man­age­ment of inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion and the oth­er in the man­age­ment of South-South and tri­an­gu­lar cooperation.

At the end of 2022, the Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion launched a new project with its long-stand­ing part­ner Fun­dación Nacional para el Desar­rol­lo (FUNDE). This project, which runs until 2025, focus­es on strength­en­ing civ­il soci­ety, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion and trans­paren­cy in El Sal­vador. The project’s over­ar­ch­ing objec­tive is to con­tribute to the strength­en­ing of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance and the rule of law in El Sal­vador through civic par­tic­i­pa­tion, the cre­ation of alliances, the strength­en­ing of the capac­i­ties of cit­i­zens’ organ­i­sa­tions and the pro­mo­tion of dialogue.

The Lux­em­bour­gish NGO Action Sol­i­dar­ité Tiers Monde (ASTM) received co-financ­ing from the Min­istry of For­eign and Euro­pean Affairs in 2022 and con­tin­ued the imple­men­ta­tion of projects in the human rights area in El Salvador.