Commitment freeze NFP, NFP-MENA and NICHE partially lifted
11 Mar 2011
In november 2010 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked Nuffic to put new commitments on hold for the Netherlands Initiative for Capacity building in Higher Education (NICHE) and the Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP). In January 2011 the ministry decided to partially lift this commitment freeze.
Late December the Dutch cabinet decided to impose a 34 million-euro cut on the higher education programmes NICHE and NFP in 2011. In order to implement this cut, Nuffic has been given permission to spend up to 54 milllion euros on new multi-year NICHE projects and up to 34 million euro on multi-year commitments under the NFP.
In the NICHE programme, priority will now be given to projects that are in line with the priorities as formulated in the 'Basisbrief Ontwikkelingssamenwerking', which was sent to the Lower House on 26 November 2010:
- food security
- water
- maternal mortality
- security and the rule of law in fragile states.
The budget available for the November 2010 and January 2011 application rounds for the NFP and NFP-MENA programmes has remained unchanged. The budget for the February, May and October application rounds will be cut by an average of 33 per cent. The overall budget cut in terms of multi-year commitments in NFP will amount to approximately 23 per cent.
