Netherlands

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts peer reviews of individual members once every five to six years. Reviews seek to improve the quality and effectiveness of members’ development co-operation, highlighting good practices and recommending improvements. The Netherlands continues to focus on its strengths and drives internal reforms to achieve sustainable impact. It stays engaged in fragile contexts, providing long-term and flexible financing. It is highly valued as a champion for gender equality, provides strong support to local civil society and takes action to tackle spillovers from its economic footprint. This peer review provides recommendations to enhance the Netherlands’ engagement in partner countries by putting its ambition for locally led development into practice, ensuring its thematic approach is adapted to context, and clarifying its risk appetite. Reversing the trend of decreasing budgets was a significant achievement, but effects of in-donor refugee costs on the broader Dutch development programme need to be managed.

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts periodic reviews of the individual development co-operation efforts of DAC members. The policies and programmes of each DAC member are critically examined approximately once every five years. DAC peer reviews assess the development co-operation performance across government of a given member and examine policy, finance and implementation. They take an integrated, system-wide view of the development co-operation and humanitarian assistance activities and seek input from a wide range of stakeholders – civil society, parliament, private sector and partner countries.This review assesses the performance of the Netherlands, including looking at its integrated aid, trade and investment policy focus, and its approach to partnerships.