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An interesting piece by Mr. Bizhan. The very update regarding Afghanistan is that the state has stopped providing bread for vulnerable citizens, which was being done during the Ramadan month. However, the state officials (talking on Radio Arman) said that another package of direct aid will be provided soon; given that the "Soon" word in Afghanistan's state terminology sounds a joke since it literally means "never" or at best will take a long time.

Hi Stephen. Thanks for this. A press release is indeed a positive step forward in terms of openness and transparency compared to earlier actions. While funding for the Global Fund and GAVI is pleasing, it does highlight the lack of a clear aid narrative. Recently, the government expressed clear dislike for the “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy” that GF and GAVI represent. Now with the revised COVID focused aid tilt, funding for them is increased. I have also heard that there is a new multilateral aid assessment being conducted (though not sure if it is using the same methodology as the ones conducted five or six years ago). Lots of strands - I do hope they are woven into a beautiful clear tapestry at some point...

Buai Spitting May spread COVID 19 Virus Buai spitting is very questionable and before we add into our COVID 19 Messages, we must confirm as one of the medium of transmission of COVID 19. The reason why I am saying is that the poster shown in this blog written "Buai Spitting may spread the virus". Are we really sure of it or just to raise fear into our people who chew and live with buai many thousand years. We need medical or scientific evidence to support the Phrase "BUAI SPITTING MAY SPREAD VIRUS (COVID19). I have seen the poster and i asked myself why do we have to come up with such messaging and disseminate this information to our people only to create fear and once fear is instilled into them, the community members who grow Buai lost their income and surely it will affect their livelihoods. Thanks

Hi Paul Like you I was very sorry to hear of his death. As a cruising yacht, I visit his island every year I visit PNG. Never saw him face to face, but we spoke on the phone, to see if my volunteer project could help his people.

Dear Ian, you are making a very good and important point! There are certainly areas in which we lack sufficient data, such as the cost of service delivery you mention, but also the effective coverage of interventions and determinants of health outcomes, to name just a few. The two key questions to ask ourselves would then be: i) what are ways of collecting such data without overburdening the system, particularly service delivery, and without generating unnecessary parallel systems, and ii) how can we ensure the data is useful and used for decision making for the benefit of the people in PNG (or any other country). Part of the answer to question ii) I see in the development of strong local capacity, including leadership capacity, which is a long-term undertaking, rather than a quick fix.

O this era East Timor not well by hand again but East Timor could awake and running by all what will give benefit on the future like knowledge, capacity building, human resource, economic, businesses management, agriculture and all sector I didn't mention yet – we need to put our priority to build not to expanding Money only for boulseat.

Thanks for sharing your "complaint" in a very honest and well-mannered way, but I believe that was just the tip of the iceberg. I wish my fellow Timorese will have their chance to read this as well.

It's worth mentioning, however, that one standout in the Timorese bureaucracy is the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE), which has done a first rate job over the years in delivering elections the validity of which has never been seriously questioned, even against the background of the sometimes fractious politics in the country. Voters wishing to obtain their photographic voter ID cards are normally able to get them on the spot when they go to a registration office. Timor-Leste stands higher on the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity Index than the USA, and every other country in South East Asia. https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/s/Electoral-Integrity-Worldwide.pdf

I'm originally from Australia,I came to East Timor in December 1999 and been living in East Timor ever since. My wife is Timorese and I have 5 wonderful children, the saddest fact I would like to point out is that as a father I can see that this country is struggling to find it's way. I'm concerned that there is going to be no future for my children to live their lives here in East Timor, the government's hear are just wasting the money from the oil fund on bullshit projects that have no economical benifits to the community's of East Timor... Corruption and miss management of this country will only end if the Timorese people can stand up and speak up about what is really happening... All Timorese deserve a safe and secure future.🇹🇱💖🇦🇺

These are two interesting and thought-provoking blogs. The case for focusing on "minimal essential data" is well made. While I agree there is a need for streamlining the data collection on health outcomes, I think there is also a case for increasing the collection - and use - of some of the basic costs of health service delivery. It is quite noticeable in a number of countries that there is little, if any, useful data collected on the actual cost of delivering a particular health service. As a result, there is no real basis, or incentive, for exploring more affordable or cost-effective alternatives. The lack of relevant data on costs is particularly noticeable in some "pilot programs" and / or when tracking how unit costs change - for example increase or decrease - as a particular new program scales up. Including some "minimum essential" data on relevant costs could therefore be part of the mix when considering how to make key health data more useful, and used.

Very interesting piece. It would be interesting to compare the experiences of rural village life between East and West Timor - are there any marked differences? From crop yields and agricultural techniques, to remittance income, government policy position (and implementation), quality of life measures - would be a fascinating study.

After 46 years as a Shipping and Port Consultant in Emergent Maritime Nations, I think I am just beginning to understand what aid projects are all about. The change to DDD would need to be pandemic. The good projects I have worked on, in an international industry regulated by the same international bodies universally has meant different things to different nations. The most successful have been in those nations where the majority of the politicians knew that they needed the project and they wanted the project, and where the policy of government was implemented by the civil servants. The donor funded the project and then did not interfere; the recipients were hungry for knowledge and wanted to learn; there was a local champion who had recently graduated from an international place of higher (highest) learning, who I identified early; I lived in the nation I was advising for at least three years; there was no fly in fly out! (When I started in 1974 fi-fo was impossible to most parts of the World.) The projects with the least outcome impact were where the project had been identified from outside by people who had little or no understanding of the industry being assisted; who were more interested in the political impact of giving aid (both at home and in the recipient nation), than the development impact of the aid they were giving; employing consultants who were ill-equipped outside of their academic specialities to comprehend the sociological aspects of their presence on the project, and where the time-scale to achieve the objectives was determined by budget limitations rather than the volume of capacity development needed. If no local champion was identified the outcome was worse. If the Civil Servants worked against the interests of elected government policy, project outcome was easily stymied. I am not naive and know that I am asking for the moon for projects to have the most valuable outcome, but that is why I say a pandemic is needed for change at almost every level.