Senegal

Fol­low­ing the news of the death of his Roy­al High­ness Grand Duke Jean, Min­is­ter Paulette Lenert had to post­pone her par­tic­i­pa­tion in an offi­cial work­ing vis­it to Sene­gal in April 2019. Nev­er­the­less, the tech­ni­cal aspects of the vis­it took place, enabling the foun­da­tion stone to be laid in the treat­ment cen­tre for vic­tims of sex­u­al vio­lence in Zigu­in­chor in part­ner­ship with the Lux­em­bour­gish NGO SAN ACCESS and the region­al NGO ENDA San­té. The cen­tre aims to pro­mote a favourable envi­ron­ment for the improve­ment of the health and well-being of young vic­tims of vio­lence, and in par­tic­u­lar sex­u­al vio­lence, in Casamance (Sene­gal) and neigh­bour­ing coun­tries (Gam­bia, Guinea-Bissau). 

The year 2019 also saw the start of activ­i­ties by the Unit­ed Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA) designed to improve access by the most vul­ner­a­ble groups to basic health ser­vices, with a spe­cial empha­sis on pro­mot­ing access for young peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly young girls. Thanks to financ­ing from Lux­em­bourg, the UNF­PA has been able to scale up the ini­tia­tive of the young female lead­ers club for girls, with more than 480 young girls and ado­les­cents enrolled to date in the project’s focus area. In the regions where near­ly 30% of girls under 19 are already moth­ers, the young lead­ers club aims to strength­en the lead­er­ship of ado­les­cents and girls in com­bat­ing young preg­nan­cies and child mar­riage, pro­mot­ing gen­der aspects, school enrol­ment for young girls and their employability. 

Lux­em­bourg has also con­tin­ued its long-stand­ing com­mit­ment to the World Food Pro­gramme (WFP) and its flag­ship ​‘school feed­ing’ ini­tia­tive in Sene­gal and in the sub-region. In Sene­gal, the WFP pro­vides healthy and nutri­tion­al meals dai­ly to 106,000 school-chil­dren in 516 pri­ma­ry schools in the six regions with the high­est lev­els of food and nutri­tion­al inse­cu­ri­ty, pro­mot­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, school atten­dance by young girls, and good nutri­tion­al prac­tices. Pro­duced local­ly, the school meals stim­u­late agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and the local economy. 

In the areas of health and food, once more, Lux­em­bourg has con­tin­ued its sup­port to the Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Nations (FAO) for the improve­ment of mon­i­tor­ing and response capac­i­ties in food safe­ty emer­gency sit­u­a­tions in Sene­gal. Some ini­tial, encour­ag­ing results are now avail­able, includ­ing Senegal’s adop­tion of its nation­al food safe­ty emer­gency response plan. In line with Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Cooperation’s wish to sup­port South-South coop­er­a­tion, Sene­gal, with a wealth of expe­ri­ence, is now in a posi­tion to sup­port Burk­i­na Faso, in turn, to pro­duce and oper­a­tionalise its nation­al food safe­ty emer­gency response plan. 

Final­ly, eight Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs (Stop Aids Now/​ACCESS, Lux­em­bourg Red Cross, Guiden & Scouten, Frères des Hommes, PADEM, ECPAT, Phar­ma­ciens sans fron­tières, SOS Vil­lages d’Enfants Monde) have run projects in 2019 in Sene­gal in the sec­tors of health, nutri­tion and basic social ser­vices, edu­ca­tion and voca­tion­al train­ing, rur­al and agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment, emer­gency aid and the elim­i­na­tion of vio­lence against women.