Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is an office-level agency in the federal administration of Switzerland, and a part of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Together with other federal offices, SDC is responsible for overall coordination of Swiss international development activities and cooperation with Eastern Europe, as well as humanitarian aid.

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
(in German) Direktion für Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit
(in French) Direction du développement et de la coopération
(in Italian) Direzione dello sviluppo e della cooperazione
(in Romansh) Direcziun da svilup e da cooperaziun
Agency overview
JurisdictionFederal administration of Switzerland
HeadquartersBern
Minister responsible
Parent agencyFederal Department of Foreign Affairs
Websitewww.deza.admin.ch

As of 2015, the SDC is led by Director-General Manuel Sager. It has a staff of 536, no revenues and annual expenditures of CHF 1,433 million.

According to the OECD, 2019 official development assistance from Switzerland increased 0.6% to USD 3.1 billion.[1]

Organisation and tasks

The Swiss constitution states that Switzerland contributes to the alleviation of hardship and poverty in the world, to respect for human rights, and to the promotion of democracy and the peaceful coexistence of nations. The SDC is charged with implementing this mission.[2]

The SDC’s activities are divided into three areas:

  • In the context of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation, the SDC promotes economic and national self-sufficiency, works to improve conditions of production, assists in dealing with environmental problems and helps to ensure better access to education and healthcare for the poor. For example, SDC was a major donor to the International LUBILOSA Programme: which developed a biological pesticide for locust control, in support of small-holder farmers in the Sahel.
  • The mission of the Confederation’s agency for humanitarian aid is to save lives and alleviate suffering. During armed conflicts and following natural disasters, it provides help through the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit and supports humanitarian partner organisations such as the Red Cross.
  • Cooperation with Eastern Europe assists the countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to make the transition to democracy and the market economy.

Swiss bilateral development assistance is as of 2008 focused on 17 priority countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Cooperation with Eastern Europe centres on ten countries in South-Eastern Europe and the CIS. At the multilateral level, the SDC works with UN agencies, the World Bank and regional development banks.

The SDC’s specialist units are grouped in the Thematic and Technical Resources Department. They focus mainly on conflict prevention, good governance, social development, employment and income, natural resources and the environment.

gollark: Maths is good, though - my maths set has a really good teacher and we do (well, did when school was running) interesting and challenging stuff a lot of the time without repeating the same topic over and over again.
gollark: English is awful because we mostly overanalyze literature and write essays and stuff, but we did writing one time and that was fun.
gollark: A lot of the chemistry and physics stuff we do at school is... somewhat interesting at first, but we end up going over it again and again and doing endless worksheets for some reason, which is not very interesting.
gollark: They might actually be actively negative in some areas, since for quite a lot of people being forced to learn the boring stuff they don't care about will make them ignore the interesting bits.
gollark: Personally I figure that schools are wildly inefficient at actually transmitting knowledge and skills anyway, so meh.

References
  1. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org//sites/00eb9f0b-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/5e331623-en&_csp_=b14d4f60505d057b456dd1730d8fcea3&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=chapter#
  2. This section has been adapted from The Swiss Confederation – a brief guide 2008, p. 51, archived from the original on 14 May 2013. The text of that publication is in the public domain in Switzerland. All figures are as of 2008, unless otherwise noted.

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