Timelines Guide

50+ years of Bangladesh-Netherlands Cooperations

Welcome to the NICC Topic Timelines 50+ years of Bangladesh-Netherlands Cooperation.

The NICC timelines are developed to share insight on Dutch international cooperation and development. The timelines have been structured according to different themes (such as water, gender, education, agriculture and climate) and different countries.

NICC Timelines

On the NICC website you can find an overview of the different timelines NICC has developed. The website also offers a video gallery with various interviews with experts from the field of international cooperation and a search engine for the NICC collection.

Although we already gathered a lot of information, our timelines are never completely finished. If you have input for one of our timelines, feel free to contact us! You can do so by sending an email to info@stichtingnicc.nl

The Bangladesh and the Netherlands Cooperation timeline is a product by Stichting NICC. The following people have been responsible for the creation of this timeline:

Resource persons

Bob Tempelman:
Bob Tempelman has a law candidate, was trained as an officer at the Royal Military Academy. After a bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, his career in people management began. First with the Royal Airforce at airbases, HQ, the embassy in Washington DC and as a major at the head office. Bob was also People manager at AkzoNobel, among others as Head recruitment & Management Development manager. He later worked as a personnel manager at a university and a traffic consultancy. Bob holds a HR Master degree. He worked at MSF/OCA as secretary of the Works Council in Amsterdam from 2009 until 2015 and as Human Resources Coordinator in Bangladesh until mid-2016. From 2017 until now he is active as a peer in the Peer Support Network OCA. Actual he works as a coach and advisor. Bob is married, has children and grandchildren.

Pieter Marres:
Pieter Marres (Maastricht,1946) has been working in the field of development cooperation from 1972. He worked for the United Nations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Royal Tropical Institute. He was posted in Dhakka, Bangladesh, form 1982-1984, as head of the Netherlands Development Programme. As inspector of the Foreign Service he paid a visit to Bangladesh in 2001. He was ambassador in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, from 1997-end 2000 and in Bangkok, Thailand, from 2004-2008.

Kees Beemsterboer:
Kees Beemsterboer is a retired Dutch diplomat and political scientist who served as the Netherlands Ambassador to Bangladesh between 2004 and 2007. He graduated from Nijmegen University in 1971 and worked for two years in East Africa before joining the Netherlands Diplomatic Service. After leaving government he was associated with Heifer, a ngo in the field of development co-operation and is now a regular contributor to NICC for the Bangladesh and Tanzania timelines.

Gert Uittenbogaard:
Gert Uittenbogaard worked as a consultant and programme director for international organisations and consulting companies at a global level, with a focus on Asia. He holds a MSc degree in Environmental Engineering / Land and Water Management from Wageningen University. Most of his work concerned water management, both for rural and urban areas. His experience includes project planning and design, implementation, institutional development and project finance. He has a broad experience in Bangladesh within the period 1980 - 2016.

Ella de Voogd:
Ella de Voogd worked from 2011 untill 2016 at the Netherlands Embassy in Dhaka. First she was appointed as Education sector expert, but just before her removal to the Bangladeshi capital she got to know that the focus areas for the Embassy’s Development Program were changed and she was requested to start a new program on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. The Education program should be phased out in the upcoming two years.
In 2017 Ella retired and from 2018 on she is participating as a part-time SRHR and gender advisor at the team of RedOrange, a communication and media company in Dhaka. She provided on-line in company staff trainings on SRHR and gender and developed together with RO-staff a gender policy and a policy to ban unwanted intimacies at the workplace, among others.           

Koen de Wilde:
Koen de Wilde studied political and social sciences, including international relations. From 1972 until 1975, he worked at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS), and after that until 1978 for the Dutch embassy in Dhaka as coordinator for development cooperation, followed by three years at the DGIS for policy development. From 1981 onwards he worked as consultant for the preparation, implementation, and evaluation of development activities, with the sub-continent and Bangladesh in particular as main areas. From 1998 until 2002 he was the team leader for the Char Development and Settlement Project in Noakhali, Bangladesh. In the 15 years that followed he remained committed to the development of Bangladesh’s coastal areas. 

Alphons Hennekens:
Dutch Ambassador to Bangladesh 2009-2012

Leoni Cuelenaere:
Dutch Ambassador to Bangladesh 2015-2018

Editors

Marit Leeuwenburgh, Saar van Ommeren, Loukie Levert, Tessa Foekens, Hugh Quigley, Youri Dobber, Jochem Delvaux

Stichting NICC would like to express its gratitude to everyone who worked on the timeline!

Sources - Read more 

Link to website

Link to timelines

Link to video gallery

Link to search engine