Costa Rica

In view of the close polit­i­cal and strate­gic align­ment in devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion between Lux­em­bourg and Cos­ta Rica, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has decid­ed to com­ple­ment its region­al efforts with bilat­er­al activ­i­ties in Cos­ta Rica. Those activ­i­ties will be in the region­al strategy’s pri­or­i­ty areas.

A mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing for­mal­is­ing the inten­tion of the two coun­tries to engage in bilat­er­al coop­er­a­tion on these themes was signed by Min­is­ter Fay­ot in Jan­u­ary 2023 dur­ing a work­ing vis­it to Cos­ta Rica. A gen­er­al coop­er­a­tion agree­ment between Cos­ta Rica and Lux­em­bourg cre­at­ing the legal frame­work required in order to imple­ment bilat­er­al projects and pro­grammes and to allow LuxDev to estab­lish itself on the ground was signed on 17 July 2023.

In 2023, a study on dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion in Cos­ta Rica was car­ried out, to take stock of the exist­ing sit­u­a­tion and iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties for sup­port to meet Cos­ta Rica’s needs for capac­i­ty in this area.

Through the Nicaraguan Civ­il Soci­ety Sup­port Fund (FASOC), man­aged by Oxfam, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion sup­port­ed Cos­ta Rican organ­i­sa­tions work­ing with Nicaraguan migrants and refugees, until April 2023. This approach had been adopt­ed fol­low­ing the ban by the Nicaraguan author­i­ties on Oxfam IBIS oper­at­ing in the coun­try. In 2023 the NGO projects sup­port­ed helped to meet the basic needs of Nicaraguan farm work­ers in Cos­ta Rica, to improve the qual­i­ty of life of the Nicaraguan refugee pop­u­la­tion that has set­tled in the north­ern part of Cos­ta Rica, and con­tributed to the sex­u­al and repro­duc­tive health of dis­placed Nicaraguan women. After FASOC came to an end, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion fol­lowed up on these inter­ven­tions through a new project imple­ment­ed by LuxDev.