News

On 27 May, during the session of Development Ministers of the EU’s General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) in Brussels, in which the progress in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals was discussed, the effort of the new EU Member States to increase funding for Development Cooperation was evaluated positively.

In 2000, at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations, 189 world states, including Lithuania, approved the Millennium Development Goals and committed to implement them by 2015, thus seeking to integrate the developing countries into the process of globalisation.

During the session, Lithuania’s Permanent Representative to the EU Ambassador Rytis Martikonis indicated that the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals was a responsibility shared by the EU, other donors and developing countries.

Lithuania is successfully complying with its commitments and gradually increasing the official development assistance (ODA). Since Lithuania became an EU Member State and a donor country, the official development assistance has increased from 25 million Litas in 2004 to 105 million Litas in 2007.

Ambassador R.Martikonis stressed that Lithuania is continuing to pay a lot of attention to the development cooperation projects in Afghanistan, particularly to those concerning the primary education, the promotion of entrepreneurship and the rule of law. According to the Ambassador, Lithuania is actively implementing projects in the EU neighbourhood countries (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), where Lithuania can add the most value

The efforts of the new EU Member States to respect their commitments regarding the increase of Official Development Cooperation are positively evaluated in the Council conclusions.

During the European Council held on 16-17 June 2005, the EU Member States have undertaken commitments to increase their official aid to the development cooperation up to 0,17% of their gross national income (GNI) by 2010, and up to  0,33% of their GNI by 2015.

In 2007, Lithuania’s Official Development Assistance was 0,11% of the GNI. The Official Development Assistance is comprised of bilateral development cooperation projects that are implemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other state institutions and expenses for development cooperation, humanitarian aid and some share of the fees that are paid into the budget of international organisations and of the EU.

Presently, over one billion people in the world live in absolute poverty - for less than one U.S. dollar per day. Due to the poverty and hunger, more than 16 thousand children less than five years of age die every day, which means that every five seconds a child dies. 852 million people in the world starve daily. Malnutrition leads one third of world’s population to premature death and diseases. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria take away lives of more than 6 million people yearly.