Country Profiles
Belgium
Context
Belgium promotes sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including access to family planning (FP), in its multilateral and bilateral cooperation. Belgium has been a key champion of the SheDecides initiative since its inception.
Policies & funding
Belgium’s federal law on development cooperation (2013) stresses the importance of SRHR for sustainable development and prioritises reproductive health and HIV in its bilateral cooperation. At the regional level, sexual and reproductive health and family planning (SRH/FP) has been a priority in the foreign affairs of the Flemish government. SRH/FP is also a priority in operational federal policy documents on health and on gender in development.
In June 2024, Belgium had the so-called ‘super Sunday’, compiling regional, national and European elections. The results confirmed the long-standing position of the conservative New Flemish Alliance as the largest parliamentary party, and led to the resignation of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. In February 2025 Belgium confirmed a new nationalist-led government. The new coalition, led by the first Flemish nationalist Prime Minister of Belgium, brings together three parties from Dutch-speaking Flanders (conservative, centrist Christian-Democrats and leftist) and two from French-speaking Wallonia (centrist and centre-right). The coalition agreement commits to reducing ODA by one fourth.
She Decides as accelerator
Belgium has been a frontrunner for SheDecides, the international initiative that was launched in 2017 and seeks to promote women’s rights and SRH/FP worldwide. Under current Prime Minister and former Minister of Development Cooperation Alexander De Croo, Belgium hosted the pledging conference in March 2017 and in its aftermath renewed its multi-annual core support for UNFPA, started to support UNFPA Supplies, and developed dedicated SRH/FP programmes in its government-to-government cooperation with partner countries. In May 2022, Belgium hosted the She Decides 5+ conference in Brussels, which brought together SRHR activists from all over the world to discuss challenges and opportunities in the international promotion of SRHR. At the conference, Belgium reconfirmed its commitment to promote SRHR in its international cooperation and in March 2023 the Minister of Development Cooperation, Caroline Gennez, stepped forward as a new international SheDecides champion.
The focus on government-to-government support for SRH/FP
Bilateral support for SRH/FP increased with the roll-out of the ‘She Decides’-SRHR programmes in Belgium’s partner countries, channelled mainly through government-to-government. Belgian’s support for SRH/FP through this stream amounted to 17 million Euros in 2024 and, even though several of these programmes are coming to an end, they still represented almost half of the country’s total spending on SRH/FP. Overall support to this agenda in 2024 amounted to 38 million Euros, which is 23% less than in the previous year.
Sustained multilateral support for SRHR
Multilateral support for SRHR remained steady at 9 million Euros in core support to UNFPA and 2 million Euros for UNFPA Supplies.
Support to fight the HIV-epidemic has stagnated over the past years at 3 million Euros for UNAIDS and 15 million Euros for GFATM, and bilateral attention for the uptake of HIV prevention strategies has been in steep decline, despite the ongoing challenges with HIV prevention and response in Belgium’s partner countries.
Budget cycles and core support
Belgium’s ODA is decided upon by the parliament through a system of parliamentary budget cycles. As such, Belgium traditionally supports SRH/FP politically and mainly through its multilateral and bilateral cooperation. This support may however be impacted in the coming years as the new coalition government agreement commits to reducing ODA by one fourth. This moves away Belgium even further from its promise to step up its efforts to get back on a growth trajectory towards the goal of 0.7% of its GNI, as Belgium’s total support for ODA stood at only 0.48% in 2024.
Belgium tends to prefer providing core funding to multilateral SRH/FP and health organisations over earmarked funding, in order to respect the agencies’ decision-making. Belgium supports several multilateral organisations with specific attention for SRH/FP, such as UNFPA, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFTAM), UNAIDS, UNICEF, the WHO and the World Bank. The regional government of Flanders also funding the Human Reproduction Programme of the WHO, and other multilateral programmes starting in 2023, and even though this support has been discontinued.
Internationally vocal
Belgium has been a key supporter of SRH/FP and SRHR internationally. In addition to making commitments around SRH/FP, the country champions the employment of progressive language in UN processes. Belgium’s leading role in the promotion of SRHR is supported by a vocal All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on health and gender equality, the ‘Parliamentarians for the 2030 Agenda’. Belgium is also actively engaging at the EU level: in 2021, the country joined the Team Europe Initiative focusing on SRHR in sub-Saharan Africa and in 2024 it assumed the presidency of the Council of the EU, during which the Council adopted Conclusions on the Global Health Strategy, stressing the importance of SRHR as part of the efforts to promote global health. Belgium was a co-facilitator of the Second World Summit for Social Development and contributed significantly to the resulting political Declaration, which laid forth commitments to advance gender equality, namely by promoting access to SRH and eliminating all forms of SGBV.
Forecast
Belgium is expected to further decrease support to both SRH/FP and SRHR in the future. The reason is threefold: several multi-annual SheDecides bilateral cooperation programmes are coming to an end; support from the Flanders government is expected to be reduced; and central funds may also be further curtailed, as the current government is not living up to its promise to get back on a growth trajectory towards the goal of 0.7% of its GNI. This 0.7% goal was not included in the centre-right government’s agreement struck in February 2025.