Central America

This is a key project dedicated to gender equality and the promotion of women’s economic rights. As part of this project, CENPROMYPE and Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation have identified the need for a dedicated investment fund for female entrepreneurs in Central America. Work to establish such a fund domiciled in Luxembourg began in 2023 and Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation declared it was interested in contributing to the financing of the fund, following the European Microfinance Week in Luxembourg in November 2023.

The “Forestry and Climate Fund” (FCCF) impact investment fund, launched in 2017 at Luxembourg’s initiative as a public-private partnership, continues to promote the sustainable exploitation of wood and associated value chains in Central America. Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation supports the FCCF through technical assistance from LuxDev as part of a project focused on sustainable forest management. The project’s objective is to rehabilitate secondary or degraded forest areas and make them economically, ecologically and socially viable. Particular emphasis is placed on promoting youth employment, as well as social inclusion in forest management.

Since 2019, Luxembourg has been supporting the NGO Front Line Defenders (FLD) in support of the emergency protection and security of human rights defenders (HRDs), initially in Nicaragua only and subsequently, since 2023, also in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The project’s current phase runs until the end of 2025 and supports personal and professional security measures, emergency relocations, legal fees, medical expenses, family support and information technology and communications equipment for HRDs who are at risk.

At the sub-regional level, in 2023 the MFA also continued to support the NGO ADA in its work to promote youth entrepreneurship and the structuring of forest value chains, as well as regional microfinance and micro-insurance. In the same vein, in January 2023 Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation launched a regional project with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) in Latin America and the Caribbean, which aims to implement innovative financial inclusion strategies in the region and foster knowledge sharing in this field, with a focus on digital financial services, inclusive fintech, national inclusive finance plans (especially in Costa Rica), green inclusive finance and gender-inclusive finance.

Additionally, there are development cooperation projects with the IMF’s Regional Technical Assistance Centre for Central America and the Dominican Republic (CAPTAC-DR) aimed at strengthening national capacities, with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for migrant women in Central America, with UN Women to work on the financial inclusion of women in the Northern Triangle, and with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), seeking to reduce pregnancies among disadvantaged teenagers in communities along the Caribbean coast.