Belgium will cut its foreign aid budget by 25% over five years under a new coalition deal struck at the end of last month. Yet, despite the drastic reduction, the head of Belgium’s bilateral aid agency, Enabel, said his phone has been quiet.
“You are the first journalist who called me on that,” Jean Van Wetter told Devex late last week, citing a drop in public interest in and understanding of development cooperation.
“For me the movement of international NGOs was born in the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s, where you had a generation very involved. But I think we lost in a way the public support over the last 10 years,” he said. “Even my closest friends … still think that we are helping poor people only by constructing a well, by renovating a school. They don’t understand that we work on climate, on energy transition, on security issues, on governance issues.”