Our Latin America office

The first development cooperation relations between Nicaragua and Luxembourg were established in 1993. The first general cooperation agreement defining the cooperation relations between the two countries was signed in 2000. The tourism, health and vocational training sectors were the traditional priority areas of Luxembourg Cooperation in Nicaragua.

However, due to the socio-political crisis that started in April 2018, Luxembourg Cooperation adapted its development aid support to Nicaragua. Thus, direct disbursements to the government were frozen and the conclusion of a possible new indicative cooperation programme was postponed. Since then, development cooperation in Nicaragua has been marked, in particular, by multilateral support and strong support to NGOs in the country.

Luxembourg continues to provide significant support to Nicaraguan civil society in the promotion of human rights and democratic values, in particular through a multi-donor support fund for Nicaraguan civil society, FASOC, which involves five donors and is implemented by Oxfam.

In El Salvador, Luxembourg Cooperation ensured the continuity of the main bilateral development cooperation projects, in close collaboration with the new government of President Bukele, who took office in June 2019. Luxembourg's development assistance focused on three key areas, through innovative projects aimed at:

• supporting the Salvadoran government's social policy;
• supporting the civil society through the "Fondo Concursable" managed by the Salvadoran government, and
• supporting the South-South and triangular cooperation.

These projects are directly executed by the Salvadoran government, with LuxDev's role being limited to accompaniment and monitoring.

At the regional level, in the framework of the Central American Integration System (SICA) - a regional organisation based in San Salvador, grouping eight countries of the sub-region - LuxDev supports the Regional Centre for the Promotion of Small and Medium Enterprises (CENPROMYPE) in setting up a regional project in support of women's entrepreneurship for a period of four years (2021-2025). Also, since 2020, LuxDev has been providing technical support to Luxembourg Cooperation partners through a regional technical assistance fund and also through a Covid fund to respond to the health emergency linked to this pandemic in Latin America.

Finally, the regional office is continuing to work with its peers at the Luxembourg embassy to analyse the positioning of our programme in relation to the specific context of the Latin American region and the prospects for the development of Luxembourg Cooperation.