Laos

With a fund­ing enve­lope of EUR 95 mil­lion, its activ­i­ties focus on the four tar­get provinces of Bokeo, Bolikhamx­ay, Kham­mouane and Vien­tiane. The four pri­or­i­ty areas are health and nutri­tion; inte­grat­ed local devel­op­ment; skills devel­op­ment for tourism, agri­cul­ture and forestry; and the pro­mo­tion of the rule of law, access to jus­tice and good governance.

The new health and nutri­tion pro­gramme con­tin­ues Luxembourg’s sup­port for basic and high-qual­i­ty health ser­vices, espe­cial­ly for the most vul­ner­a­ble. While the core area of mater­nal and child health remains at the fore­front of efforts, nutri­tion has been added to ICP V to address the chal­lenges of mal­nu­tri­tion in Laos.

In 2023, the activ­i­ties of the Lux­em­bour­gish NGDO Aide au Développe­ment de la San­té (ADS) in the field of car­diac surgery for chil­dren were incor­po­rat­ed into the bilat­er­al health and nutri­tion pro­gramme in order to pro­mote syn­er­gies and increase the effi­cien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, from now on the health and nutri­tion pro­gramme will sup­port the blood cold chain through the pro­vi­sion of med­ical equip­ment to the Lao Red Cross, which is in charge of the nation­al blood trans­fu­sion sys­tem. Final­ly, the pro­gramme will also sup­port the third edi­tion of the Lao Sta­tis­tics Bureau’s Lao Social Indi­ca­tor Survey.

The sec­ond major pri­or­i­ty for Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion in Laos is local devel­op­ment. The pro­gramme will con­tin­ue to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­to­ry plan­ning and chan­nel pro­gramme resources toward achiev­ing dis­trict and vil­lage pri­or­i­ties. The inter­ven­tions select­ed include access to water, the con­struc­tion of bridges and san­i­ta­tion facil­i­ties and cred­it mech­a­nisms. The pro­gramme will also assist cen­tral, provin­cial, dis­trict and vil­lage author­i­ties in improv­ing pub­lic ser­vices for the ben­e­fit of local com­mu­ni­ties. By sup­port­ing pol­i­cy dia­logue, the pro­gramme aims to mit­i­gate some of the threats fac­ing rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in Laos, includ­ing land inse­cu­ri­ty, defor­esta­tion and poor edu­ca­tion­al outcomes.

In the voca­tion­al train­ing sec­tor, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has tra­di­tion­al­ly focused on hos­pi­tal­i­ty and tourism train­ing. The scope of the new pro­gramme has been extend­ed to include the agri­cul­ture and forestry sec­tors, in order to pro­vide a skilled work­force to help Laos reap the ben­e­fits of these high-poten­tial sec­tors in the near future.

In the area of sup­port for the rule of law, Lux­em­bourg is assist­ing the Lao gov­ern­ment in its ambi­tion to guar­an­tee access to jus­tice for all and to strength­en its legal edu­ca­tion sys­tem in order to train the next gen­er­a­tion of pro­fes­sion­als. An addi­tion­al ele­ment aims to improve deten­tion con­di­tions in a num­ber of pris­ons. In addi­tion, the pro­gramme will pro­mote good gov­er­nance in many author­i­ties and will con­tin­ue to tack­le cer­tain cross-bor­der issues, such as com­bat­ing envi­ron­men­tal crimes and traf­fick­ing in human beings or wild ani­mals. In the con­text of the FATF’s review of Laos, the pro­gramme also pro­vides sup­port for com­bat­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, seek­ing to lim­it the impact of future shocks by shar­ing Luxembourg’s best prac­tices in this area. A deci­sion was final­ly tak­en, in 2023, to include inter-uni­ver­si­ty coop­er­a­tion in the bilat­er­al project in order to cre­ate syn­er­gies and ensure bet­ter efficiency.

It should also be not­ed that the Euro­pean Union and Switzer­land are con­tribut­ing to the financ­ing of two ICP V pro­grammes by del­e­gat­ing siz­able bud­gets to LuxDev.

The mul­ti­lat­er­al projects are com­ple­men­tary to bilat­er­al activ­i­ties and focus on the same pri­or­i­ty sec­tors. The most sig­nif­i­cant mul­ti­lat­er­al pro­gramme is the Unit­ed Nations Joint Pro­gramme (UNJP) on repro­duc­tive, mater­nal, new­born, child and ado­les­cent health, imple­ment­ed by three UN agen­cies: the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO), the Unit­ed Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA) and UNICEF. Efforts to clear land­mines that are rem­nants of the sec­ond Indochi­na War con­tin­ue with fund­ing of EUR 1 mil­lion for the 2022 – 2024 period.

Four Lux­em­bour­gish NGDOs have been active in Laos in 2023: Appui au développe­ment autonome, CARE Lux­em­bourg, Human­i­ty and Inclu­sion Lux­em­bourg and the Fon­da­tion Car­i­tas Lux­em­bourg. Their pri­or­i­ty inter­ven­tion sec­tors are med­ical ser­vices, edu­ca­tion, voca­tion­al train­ing, food secu­ri­ty and agri­cul­tur­al production.