Other Ministries

Crosscutting cooperation between the Danish ministries and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes Danida’s development work more effective. Acute and long term interventions require coordinated political cooperation that cuts across the ministries.

African soldiers receive instruction before starting out on a peacekeeping mission. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence work together  on “civil-military cooperation”.
Photo: Klaus Holsting

Development assistance alone is not enough to create development. Other areas such as trade policy, climate and energy policy and environment policy have consequences that are at least as great — positively or negatively — for development in a country. The term ”Policy Coherence for Development” is often used to describe this relationship.

Danida works together with other Danish ministries to support the goals concerning poverty reduction and sustainable development in the developing countries. Danish interests and goals in the area of development are best safeguarded by means of cooperation between policy areas.

It is therefore necessary to examine the connection between the different policy areas. In recent years Danida has collaborated with a number of ministries, for example in the fields of security, migration, environment and climate. Coordination of development policy thus involves several ministries:

• The Ministry of Defence, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Justice on Danish interventions for peace and stability in, for instance, Afghanistan and Somalia.
• The Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs on Danish assistance for refugees in the regions of origin and the connection with efforts for refugees in Denmark.
• The Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Climate and Energy on Danish environment, energy and climate policy and in relation to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), which is to take place in June 2012, and the UN’s environmental organisation, the UNEP. In relation to climate, Danida works closely with the Ministry of Climate and Energy on the implementation of the climate pool, which will amount to DKK 500 million in 2012.