Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák (source: TASR)
The largest shares of assistance were channelled to Ukraine, Kenya and Moldova, according to a report submitted by the Foreign Affairs Ministry to the Cabinet at its session on June 8. Slovakia’s development aid increased by 27 percent year-on-year due to increased contributions to international organisations and to humanitarian assistance programmes.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry faced three main challenges – active participation in transforming the architecture of development after 2015; effective implementation of specific development aid programmes and projects and humanitarian aid under the auspices of SlovakAid organisation; and the implementation of important systemic changes regarding the provision of development aid.
The transformation of development aid architecture after 2015 – the so-called Agenda 2030 – aims at eliminating hunger and poverty and the creation of dignified living conditions for everyone. Agenda 2030 was approved at the UN Sustainable Development Summit that took place in New York in September 2015, the TASR newswire wrote.
Apart from the Foreign Ministry, also others – finance, interior, education, agriculture, environment and defence ministries – participated in development aid, according to the SITA newswire.
In March the Slovak government approved information material on Agenda 2030 for sustainable development, outlining possible steps for its implementation. Slovakia continues to increase contributions to humanitarian assistance, in particular relating to the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, the Ebola outbreak in Africa, the El Nino climate phenomenon, earthquakes in Nepal and floods in Georgia. The ministry also continued implementing strategic documents for SlovakAid programme countries – Kenya, Moldova and Afghanistan – from 2014 that are valid until 2018.
Cooperation with programme countries was boosted by the presence of development delegates operating in Moldova and Kenya in 2015. One of the key events of 2015 was the approval of a new law on development cooperation in November. The law was designed to provide more effective and sustainable results of development cooperation via new tools, entering into force on January 1, 2016.
The ministry also states in the report that despite the increase in ODA to 0.103 percent of GDP, Slovakia still lags behind the goals stipulated after its EU accession – the ODA should have been 0.33 percent of ODA by 2015. Moreover, the finances for ODA compared to the previous year have been increased mostly by the larger contribution of Slovakia for humanitarian aid and contributions to international organisations, SITA wrote on June 8.
