Economic growth in African countries has triggered a global race for influence. Britain cannot afford to be left behind
Africa is the coming continent. Its population is predicted to double to 2 billion people over the next three decades. That growth will mean enormous opportunities for business and investment, but will also create huge challenges around sustainability and the environment.
An Africa focus is therefore essential, particularly for a post-Brexit Britain.
Continue reading...Congo-Brazzaville and Chad among hardest hit as campaigners warn spiralling repayments could trigger disaster
Poorer countries are cutting public spending in response to a “growing debt crisis”, campaigners have warned.
Debt in some countries has trebled according to new figures that calculate debt reimbursements, and their impact on government expenditure, in 60 countries.
Continue reading...In Venezuela, hospitals lack the basics and medicine shortages are common, forcing humanitarian groups to pick up the slack
Feliciano Reyna masterminds a drug running network that spans Venezuela. His organisation moves substances through ports, trucks them across the country, and deliver them into customers’ hands. But he is not on any DEA watchlist.
“I am the biggest dealer in Venezuela,” says Reyna – though he is quick to qualify the remark – “If we’re talking about legal drugs.”
Continue reading...When Fazle Hasan Abed set out to lower death rates among poor children in rural Bangladesh, by teaching mothers how to treat dehydration, he was careful not to pay his field workers per household reached, but on how well their subjects, often illiterate or semi-literate mothers, could answer questions afterwards.
His approach, to reward high-quality instruction and rigorously monitor results of a door-to-door pilot scheme in the 1980s, fed lessons from the field back to research labs in Dhaka, and has been credited with saving countless lives from being lost to diarrhoea, a major source of child mortality in the country. It also propelled Brac, which Abed founded in 1972 as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee to help refugees returning to their homeland after the liberation war of 1971, to become one of the largest non-profit development organisations in the world.
Continue reading...UN relief chief fears women, girls and disabled people will bear brunt of continued conflict, climate and economic deprivation
The UN’s relief coordinator, Mark Lowcock, believes next year could be worse than a “terrible” 2019, when conflict, the climate emergency and economic desperation left 165 million people in need of aid.
Extreme storms, drought and other disasters driven by the climate crisis hit the world’s poorest “first and worst”, Lowcock told the Guardian, with women, girls and those with disabilities the most badly affected.
Continue reading...Impasse continues as Russia calls for reduction in number of crossings for delivering aid
Vital cross-border aid to Syria is under threat after the UN security council was unable to overcome Russian and Chinese objections to the programme.
The aid, which is sent over borders at four UN approved checkpoints and without the formal permission of the Syrian regime, is seen as critical as the humanitarian crisis in Idlib and north-east Syria continues to mount.
Continue reading...Charities caution that ‘UK aid risks becoming a vehicle for UK foreign policy’ if post-Brexit merger comes to fruition
A coalition of aid groups including the British Red Cross, Cafod and Oxfam GB has warned Boris Johnson that to abolish the Department for International Development would suggest Britain is “turning our backs on the world’s poorest people”.
One climate diplomacy expert said it would be “political suicide” to merge DfID with the Foreign Office in 2020, the same year the UK is hosting the UN climate summit, since the move would tie up senior civil servants when they were most needed to tackle the response to the climate crisis.
Continue reading...DfID must remain independent to safeguard aid commitments and our global reputation, says former minister
We are standing at a pivotal moment in the UK’s relationship with the rest of the world.
As parliament reassembles post-election, nations around the world, both within the EU and beyond, are waiting to see what direction the UK will take.
Continue reading...Humanitarian agencies say Rohingya people displaced by violence in Rakhine state are forced to live in ‘apartheid-like’ facilities
The UK has broken ranks with the UN and is continuing to put money into squalid Rohingya “apartheid-like” camps, despite a policy designed to avoid complicity in Myanmar’s rights abuses, the Guardian has learned.
Internal briefing documents as well as interviews with UN and humanitarian agency officials in Myanmar showed the British government was maintaining a policy of providing aid and other support to displaced people living in camps in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that have been slated for closure since 2017.
Continue reading...Increase in violent conflict combined with effects of climate crisis make outlook bleak for world’s poorest people, says report
Attacks on healthcare workers have reached a record high according to a UN report that predicts a “bleak outlook” for the world’s poorest people due to intense armed conflict and the climate emergency.
The number of highly violent conflicts has risen to 41, from 36 in 2018, causing deaths, injuries, significant displacement and hunger, the UN’s global humanitarian overview 2020 report found.
Continue reading...British-backed plantation firm vows to address claims that underpaid palm oil workers have been exposed to toxic chemicals
The UK development bank has been accused of failing to protect workers from exposure to dangerous pesticides and paying “extreme poverty” wages on palm oil plantations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Human Rights Watch said the CDC group, along with three other European development banks, had failed to properly oversee its investments in Feronia, one of Africa’s largest palm oil companies.
Continue reading...Government’s announcement represents blatant disregard for human rights, says IRC
Greece is poised to create “prison” island camps, say aid groups amid growing criticism of government plans to overhaul refugee reception centres on Aegean outposts facing Turkey.
As the UN refugee agency’s top official, Filippo Grandi, prepared this week to fly to Lesbos, where almost 16,000 people are crammed into a single facility, Athens was criticised for adopting legislation in contravention of basic human rights.
Continue reading...Key manifesto pledge includes ending investment in fossil fuel projects and supporting ‘green transitions’ abroad
Labour has pledged to review how hundreds of millions of pounds of foreign aid is spent through the government’s private finance arm and rebrand it as a green development bank.
In a key manifesto commitment, Labour promised to overhaul the CDC, which has received £2bn from the aid UK budget since 2016 to invest in projects in poorer countries.
Continue reading...Contributions from European countries drop as progress on 0.7% target goes into reverse
Less than 10% of EU aid money reaches the countries where it is most needed, according to a study that found levels of assistance had dropped for the second year running.
The EU and its member states remain the biggest development donor group in the world – investing €71.9bn ($61bn) in 2018, more than half of global aid – but its contribution was 5.8% lower than in 2017, the European NGO network, Concord, found in its AidWatch report.
Continue reading...President wants to apportion aid based on how countries treat religious minorities
White House officials are reportedly drafting plans to make US foreign aid conditional on how countries treat their religious minorities, in an effort that is seen as a sop to Christian evangelicals in Donald Trump’s base.
The move, which threatens to impose further constraints on a US foreign aid policy already heavily restricted under the Trump administration, was first reported by Politico after briefings from White House aides.
Continue reading...James Le Mesurier, who set up Syrian rescue group, reportedly found with injuries near home
The British founder of the organisation that trained the Syrian rescue group known as the White Helmets has died in Istanbul.
A spokesman for the White Helmets confirmed on Monday afternoon the death of James Le Mesurier and said further details were yet to be established.
Continue reading...Survey of EU citizens reveals overwhelming belief in importance of helping people in poorer countries
The British public remains firmly behind efforts to support people in poorer countries, with almost two-thirds of people canvassed in a survey of EU citizens believing that maintaining overseas aid at its current level should be “a major priority”.
The results from Eurobarometer, the EU’s polling organisation, also found that almost 90% of people thought helping people in developing countries should be a priority of the EU and national governments.
Continue reading...Beijing should substantially reform its lending practices, Lowy Institute says
China has not engaged in deliberate “debt-trap diplomacy” in the Pacific, but the burgeoning scale of China’s lending, and institutional weakness within Pacific states, pose clear risks for small states being overwhelmed by debt, a new report argues.
And an infrastructure arms race between China and other countries with interests in the region – including Australia – might only exacerbate the problem.
Continue reading...MPs point to lack of progress on promised safeguarding improvements for whistleblowers and survivors
MPs have accused aid organisations of “dragging their feet” over combating sexual exploitation and abuse in the sector, despite safeguarding pledges made in 2018 after the Oxfam abuse scandal.
Work to improve protection and support for whistleblowers has “stalled”, and more needs to be done to protect survivors, a report by the UK international development committee (IDC) has said.
Continue reading...After an earthquake struck in 2010, the US pledged to help rebuild the Caribbean country. A decade later, nothing better symbolises the failure of these efforts than the story of a new port that was promised, but never built. By Jacob Kushner
When Bill and Hillary Clinton travelled to the Caribbean nation of Haiti as newlyweds in 1975, they were enchanted. Bill had recently lost a race for Congress back home in Arkansas, but by the time they returned to the US, he had set his mind to running for Arkansas state attorney general, a decision which would put him on the path to the White House. “We have had a deep connection to and with Haiti ever since,” Hillary later said.
Over the next four decades, the Clintons became increasingly involved in Haiti, working to reshape the country in profound ways. As US president in the 1990s, Bill lobbied for sweeping changes to Haiti’s agricultural sector that significantly increased the country’s dependence on American food crops. In 1994, three years after a military coup in Haiti, Bill ordered a US invasion that overthrew the junta and restored the country’s democratically elected president to power. Fifteen years later, Bill was appointed United Nations’ special envoy to Haiti, tasked with helping the country to develop its private sector and invigorate its economy. By 2010, the Clintons were two of Haiti’s largest benefactors. Their personal philanthropic fund, The Clinton Foundation, had 34 projects in the country, focused on things such as creating jobs.
Continue reading...