Yemen and the Netherlands have maintained a bilateral development co-operation relationship since 1978. The bilateral development co-operation programme aims at assisting Yemen to achieve sustainable economic and social development.

The focal sectors for the Netherlands development co-operation programmes are oriented towards  Education, Health and Water.

Poverty reduction is the basic underlying objective of Dutch development policy. The sectoral policies are determined by the framework provided by the general development plan and the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) of the receiving country, which should include GAVIM objectives (Dutch acronym for good governance, poverty reduction, gender, institutional development and environment).

The country allocation for Yemen in 2005 were €21.7 m, in addition in addition to money from so-called central fund reaching Yemen including about  € 8.3 m Education, for the whole programme.       

Sector wide approach

In 2000 the development programme between Yemen and The Netherlands steered away from a pro­ject based port­folio towards a sector wide ap­proach (SWAp). The concept of the “sector-wide approach” has emerged to encompass a range of changes in the practice of development co-operation. Much of development assistance in recent years has moved from the modality of the “project” to that of multi-donor support to sector programmes. The focus of assistance has shifted to focus on developing consistent and effective policy frameworks at macro and sectoral level, as a prerequisite for sustainable poverty reduction. In this approach, the receiving government is to control the policies and their implementation in a sector defined by them. However, to change the project based bilateral programme into a few programmes, which also include support by other donors, still requires a lot of patience, convincing and dialogue both with Yemeni institutions as well as donor agen­cies.

In the past the Netherlands government supported a number of projects which intended to create direct benefits for the people in a certain area.  The results of those efforts were mixed: sometimes they created lasting improvements, but often the projects’ benefits disappeared soon after the project itself. As part of a general shift in thinking about how to make aid more effective, the Netherlands government actively supports partner countries’ own poverty reduction strategy.  Three keywords provide direction:

Local ownership: Support should be directed to interventions that are owned by the Yemenis themselves,  as opposed to ‘donorship’ where donors in the past often determined what a country needed.

Coherence: Support should be part of a coherent strategy for sustainable improvements in a sector. 

Coordination: Efforts should be well co-ordinated, preferably by the recipient government. Since 2004, improvements were visible in this respect.
 

Sectors

• Education
• Water
• Health

Crosscutting Themes

• Gender
• Good Governance and Institutional Development