The German Foundation for International Development (DSE) presented its last annual report in Bonn on June 25, 2001. The organisation, which offers advanced training programmes for specialists, leading executives, multipliers and decision-makers in developing countries, will be merged with the Carl-Duisberg-Society (CDG) which offers similar services in human resource cooperation. The new organisation made up of DSE and CDG will have a combined staff of some 900 and an annual budget of DM 140 million. It will reach about 40,000 participants in more than 100 countries.
In presenting the DSE Annual Report 2000, the President of the Board of Trustees, Adelheid Tröscher, said that the talks on the merger were on schedule. The seat of the new organisation will be Bonn, but existing DSE training centres in other parts of Germany and the CDG offices in federal states will also be used in future. DSE Director-General,
Dr. Heinz Bühler, said the founding of the new organisation reflected the importance attached in German development cooperation to human resources building and training and information for development. The merger opened the chance to make human resources cooperation the third pillar of development cooperation, in addition to technical and financial cooperation.
As far as the year 2000 is concerned, DSE was again affected by cuts in the funds provided for its work by the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Following a 10 per cent cut in the previous year, 2000 saw a further drop of 7.8 per cent in federal funding which could not be compensated by higher contributions of individual federal states and reimbursable cooperation with governments and international institutions. Bühler regretted the cuts and criticised the budgetary policy of the federal government: "It just does not fit together if the government recognises the problems of 'One World' and at the same time cuts the funds necessary for coping with them", Bühler said.
The smaller budget, but also the extra burden of moving headquarters from Berlin to Bonn, led to a 5.2 per cent drop in the number of participants in DSE activities in 2000.The highest number of participants (32 %) came from Asia, above all from Vietnam, Indonesia, and China. Africa came second (24 %), with Uganda, Cameroon and Namibia among the top partner countries. In Latin America (16.4 %) the main partners were Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, while in the Middle East (4 %) DSE cooperated mainly with Yemen and the Palestine Authority Area. Altogether, some 8,700 people participated in DSE programmes in 2000. An extraordinary increase in participants (+ 80 % compared to 1999) was recorded by the Development Policy Forum of DSE which organises policy dialogues among high-ranking personalities from industrial and developing countries on important development issues. The number of trainees attending the International Journalism Institute in Berlin also grew by 40 per cent.
Tillmann Elliesen
