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Healthcare innovation combined with compassionate care creates better patient experiences. I’ve been reading more about rehabilitation innovation and it’s good to see continued focus on patient-centred care.

Patrick, thanks, and you're quite right; ideally I would be less curmudgeonly about non-DAC aid. However, I struggle to see China's loan forgiveness as "very active". There has been a fair bit of research on this, which suggests Chinese cancellations are confined to one narrow instrument — intergovernmental interest-free loans extended by the China International Development Cooperation Agency. Johns Hopkins finds around US$3.4 billion of these cancelled across Africa over 2000-2019, with subsequent FOCAC rounds in the low hundreds of millions. But interest-free loans are only around 5% of Chinese lending to Africa — total commitments over the same period exceeded US$150 billion. The remaining 95%, from China Development Bank, Eximbank and state-owned commercial banks, gets restructured but, as Harry Verhoeven has put it, "never considered for cancellation." AidData's work shows China's response to Belt and Road borrower distress has overwhelmingly been rescue lending at relatively high interest rates — the opposite of concessional relief. On in-kind and labour costs: most of what China provides is probably already reportable as official development assistance in principle — technical cooperation, medical teams, goods and materials, turnkey projects. A decent attempt to put Chinese aid on OECD-comparable terms was made by Kitano and Miyabayashi, based on China's own valuations of these in-kind contributions from its budget accounts. That puts China's aid at US$5–8 billion in recent years — significant relative to, say, us, but very small for a great power. Saudi Arabia, incidentally, has reported to the OECD on compliant standards since 2018.

The real issue is that the non-OECD reject the OECDs counting methodology and have done so for the last 50 years (see Zhou Enlais eight principles) China’s very active loan forgiveness (see FOCAC reports) doesn’t seem to be counted nor does equivalent in-kind and how China (and Saudi e al) count in kind and staff labour costs. So the fact that the Global South is/maybe picking up the slack may or may not be a bad thing but certainly worth noting with more enthusiasm.

Additional commentary and analysis of the draft Bougainville constitution can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/167159943/The_Bougainville_Draft_Constitution_Sovereignty_the_Common_Law_and_the_Judicial_Construction_of_International_Law

I do wonder if we are "much less of a generous nation" or whether people think the world is a more wealthy place than it used to be and in need of less help. Extreme poverty has decreased and become less obvious and we don't see famines and massive deaths from natural disasters as used to be the case. When your main images of India and Africa come from cool music videos and when Asian countries are clearly thriving is it surprising that aid support from the Australian public has dropped?

Thanks, Stephen. Economists clearly understand the Iran war as an “economic disaster”: energy prices, inflation, weaker growth, and pressure on vulnerable import-dependent economies. But has DFAT, and the wider Australian Government, really internalised what this means for the Pacific? DFAT appears alert to the immediate fuel security risks. Less clear is whether the wider economic effects have been fully assessed. If understanding of those wider risks is patchy, that may partly explain why the response looks inadequate. It may also reflect a broader loss of confidence in bilateral aid as a policy instrument, and the need for DFAT to make a stronger public case for its economic capability, analysis and impact. Lots to think about.

I went to the NID office and registered on February and did paid the k40 agent fee but I haven't get my Birth certificate yet.

These important insights need to be included in the governance of the UN BBNJ treaty.

A very apt and timely reminder in an era of AI. These lines are so powerful: “We are free to speak the truth — we are not free to misinform, deceive or propagate falsehood. There is a huge difference between the freedom to speak truth and the freedom to speak lies.” Malo ‘aupito Kalafi Moala.

Thanks for this post and for all your efforts. There is much to celebrate. Well done. This partnership (along with your four principles for aid effectiveness) provides an important and much-needed model for other contexts and programs.

The long shadow of excluding girls from education is not only educational but economic, social and intergenerational. The question is not only what girls lose, but what entire societies lose when half a generation is locked out. Helpful related read from Borgen: https://borgenproject.org/keeping-girls-in-school/

A very important point and very well written. Reprioritising girls’ education also means recognising the daily frictions that make dropout rational in contexts of poverty: distance, care work, hunger and stigma. This Borgen article gives a concise overview for general readers: https://borgenproject.org/importance-of-girls-education/