Country Profiles

Netherlands

Context

On July 2, 2024, a new government was established in the Netherlands, following parliamentary elections in November 2023. The new coalition government consists of four political parties: the PVV of Geert Wilders, the liberal VVD, New Social Contract (NSC) and the farmer’s party BBB. This composition clearly marks a shift to the right.

Netherlands

Due to hesitations on working with the PVV, the four party leaders decided on forming an extra parliamentary government. As a result, the four party leaders remain in parliament and have chosen other party representatives as Ministers. The current Prime-Minister, Dick Schoof, is not a representative of any party.
Caspar Veldkamp (NSC) was appointed minister of Foreign Affairs and Reinette Klever (PVV) was appointed minister for Foreign Trade and Development. The ministers have yet to present their respective policies, which are expected in early 2025. The government has presented a coalition agreement, in which heavy cuts for ODA were announced and priorities for ODA were briefly outlined. In the coalition agreement, the priorities were food security and water. During the presentation of the annual budgets, health was added as a third priority.

 
This addition reflects the Dutch Global Health Strategy (2023 – 2030), which was adopted by the current parliament in May 2024. SRHR is firmly embedded as a priority within this strategy. The Dutch government also announced to maintain its feminist foreign policy.
The current funding framework for civil society will come to a stop at the end of 2025. The government announced that the funding framework will not be continued as is. A new framework will be set up, including a budget of 390-565 million Euros for five years, compared to 1.4 billion for the current five-year framework.

Policies & funding

Dutch Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)

From 2024 to 2027, the total ODA-budget is, respectively, 7 billion (2024), 7.17 billion (2025), 7.3 billion (2026) and 5.44 billion (2027). The percentage of ODA from GNI is heavily decreasing, from 0.62 in 2024 to 0.43% in 2027. This is due to huge ODA cuts by the new government, amounting to structural reductions of 2.4 billion in 2027. Moreover, this is also due to the uncertainty regarding the link between the ODA budget and growth of GNI. In the annual budgets presented in September 2024, the new government decided to de-link ODA and GNI for 2025. This implies that the percentage of ODA as a part of the GNI may decrease even further and budget cuts may increase if the government continues this path.

 
The ODA budget cuts of 350 million Euros, announced by the government Schoof for 2025, have been distributed evenly among the different policy areas. So, it is still unclear how the huge budget cuts in 2026 (550 million) and 2027 (2,4 billion) will affect the different sectors, including SRHR.

Funding for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

In 2024, funding for global health and SRHR amounts to 510 million. Due to the budget cuts for ODA, this decreases to 447 million in 2025. It is uncertain what amount of funding will go to SRHR after 2025, considering minister Klever has not yet decided on her policy for ODA. Considering the large budget cuts to ODA as a whole, it is likely that the funding for SRHR will decrease further after 2025.

Internationally vocal

The Netherlands has been a strong supporter of SRHR, as shown in their statements at the annual Commission on Population and Development, the Commission on the Status of Women, Human Rights Council and High-Level Political Forum. The Netherlands has often taken a lead role in intergovernmental negotiations, cross-regional statements on SRHR and in 2021, during the Generation Equality Forum, the Netherlands led the action coalition of feminist movements and leaderships. A change in position on SRHR has not been announced by the new government. The Netherlands remains involved in SheDecides, and Minister Klever signed the She Decides statement for the UN General Assembly, and is part of the Team Europe Initiative on SRHR in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Key documents

Explore more