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Luxembourg Cooperation Annual Report 2020
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South-East Asia

Regional cooperation

Introduction

In South-East Asia, Luxembourg has continued its financing of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in order to support, among other things, the production of an environmental adaptation strategy for the countries bordering the Mekong basin. Another sub-regional project that Luxembourg has continued to implement in 2020, in cooperation with Switzerland and Germany, was the Mekong Region Land Governance - Phase II project, with the aim of good land management in the Mekong region.

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The pro­to­col for the tri­an­gu­lar project designed to build capac­i­ty and raise aware­ness in the finance sec­tor, involv­ing Laos, Viet­nam and Lux­em­bourg, was signed in 2020 by the two gov­ern­ments, but the offi­cial launch had to be post­poned to ear­ly 2021 because of the COVID-19 health cri­sis. How­ev­er, prepara­to­ry work has pro­gressed well, with the appoint­ment of a nation­al project coor­di­na­tor, induc­tion train­ing ses­sions and the draft­ing of a work plan and an annu­al budget.

The Inter­na­tion­al Labour Office (ILO) has also con­tin­ued to imple­ment a project in three coun­tries in the region (Viet­nam, Laos and Myan­mar) relat­ing to the cor­ner­stones of social pro­tec­tion. The project aims to expand social secu­ri­ty sys­tems in the region, with the goal of achiev­ing uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age in these three coun­tries. In 2020, the region­al asso­ci­a­tion Con­nect deliv­ered its first results, includ­ing the set­ting up of an advanced uni­ver­si­ty cur­ricu­lum in Thai­land and knowl­edge trans­fer between the coun­tries in the region. In addi­tion, the ILO has focused more on reach­ing mar­gin­alised and remote groups, as well as women’s unions. In 2020 the project received a six-month exten­sion with no addi­tion­al costs until 31 Octo­ber 2021.

Since 2015, Lux­em­bourg has been sup­port­ing the part­ner­ship for uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age (UHC) by 2025, in order to pro­mote UHC by encour­ag­ing polit­i­cal dia­logue on the strate­gic plan­ning and gov­er­nance of health sys­tems. This glob­al pro­gramme is imple­ment­ed by the WHO and pro­vides tech­ni­cal sup­port for the imple­men­ta­tion of a nation­al strat­e­gy to reform the health sec­tor in Laos (EU-Lux­em­bourg-Ire­land-WHO Uni­ver­sal Health Cov­er­age Part­ner­ship). Togeth­er with the EU, Lux­em­bourg is one of the two founders of this uni­ver­sal programme.

In South-East Asia, Lux­em­bourg has also con­tin­ued its sup­port for the pro­mo­tion of inclu­sive finance. Thus, the Lux­em­bour­gish NGOADAis sup­port­ing pro­fes­sion­al micro­fi­nance asso­ci­a­tions in Laos (LMFA), Cam­bo­dia (CMFA) and Myan­mar (MMFA). The NGO is also par­tic­i­pat­ing in trans­form­ing infor­mal vil­lage banks into for­mal micro­fi­nance insti­tu­tions as part of the bilat­er­al pro­gramme imple­ment­ed by LuxDev in Laos. In addi­tion, through the mech­a­nism for respon­si­ble inclu­sive finance (RIFF-SEA), the Social Per­for­mance Task Force (SPTF) runs train­ing cours­es in social per­for­mance man­age­ment in var­i­ous coun­tries in South-East Asia (Cam­bo­dia, Indone­sia, Laos, Myan­mar, Philip­pines, Viet­nam) and co-finances projects enabling micro­fi­nance insti­tu­tions (MFIs) to improve their social per­for­mance. Final­ly, since 2020 the ATTF/​House of Train­ing (HoT) has been offer­ing train­ing in finance to finance sec­tor pro­fes­sion­als in Laos.