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My elder brother broke cartiledge on my neck because he wanted to log our tribal land and I did not agree in a fight. Stop all banking transactions. Logging in Solomon Islands is worse than the ethnic tension.

need to know more information about Education Against corruption in Indonesia

Hi Colin, Very interesting piece. I think it also boils down to Landowners' lack of knowledge of their legal rights when signing the lease agreements. Would be really interesting to see the results of the CoI. I'd also like to request a copy of the PNG National Gazette dated July 27 2012- please send this to me as I am interested to know which land areas in Oro Province have been granted SABLs recently. Thanks, Stella Wewak

Very well written.

Dear John, Nate and Aran, Completely and utterly agree with your idea. But I wonder - might this idea even be elevated to a joint, regional unit supported by willing partners in the Asia-Pacific, rather than being housed completely within AusAID? Or is the political landscape in AusAID / DFAT such that 'baby-steps first' approach is warranted before launching into a regional initiative, if only to develop some real and dedicated international/intranational conflict mediation capacity first? I wonder if a parallel or alternative approach could be to develop a civil society 'mediation support' network, comprised of academics and mediation practitioners? Something to build up the capacity whilst AusAID / DFAT are convinced of it's utility, that could be folded into any unit they (hopefully) might create? Just food for thought. Best, Michael Cornish PS. For those having trouble with the link for the "Framework for working in fragile and conflict-affected states: Guidance for Staff", it is missing the colon, and so should be: http://www.ausaid.gov.au/Publications/Documents/aid-fragile-conflict-affected-states-staff-guidance.pdf PPS. Nate, no doubt you have considered this lead already, but Prof. Damien Kingsbury at Deakin University would be a brilliant person to speak to re: your thesis - he was intimately involved in the mediations from the GAM side.

International panels are close relatives of the Australian parliamentary committee and generally about as impactful. Then of course we have the global leader's statement from the G8/G20/General Assembly etc. This usually starts with something like: "We are united in", "We support","We welcome", "We look forward to"; but rarely "We will" or "We commit to" - especially if any significant action or amount of money is involved.

Have confidence in NRI taking the lead as our premier think with better grants from governments.

Have faith in NRI being our premier think tank with enough funding from the government.

I find the entire debate on development aid revolving and fascinating having worked in the sector for over 20 years. The following are general views targeting most donor agencies and INGOs and my intention is to provoke a practical discussion: 1. While aid is a good tool to facilitate development in many different ways, I often get the impression that at times donor agencies are taking away the role of the government and it could be that national budgets for certain sectors such as health, clean running water and health seem to be shrinking. I do think donors should ask the governments, or implementers to co-fund significantly as a way of demonstrating commitment and sustainability (this can be reviewed by countries instead of one foot fits all) There seems to be limited discussion on sustainability or transition plans in some of the projects/programs. Are donors doing less or more harm? Other countries have a lot of resources but they still continue to receive funding. Will they not then abuse their own revenue as they rely on spending donor funds? Please mobilize support to bring the discussion on sustainability back on the national and international agendas. 2. Let’s all pause and ask ourselves how we can increase impact by reducing duplication and enhancing transparent coordination and collaboration, the two fundamental concepts that can potentially result in significant savings. Implementers, donors and INGOs have to start talking to each other more often and honestly (to avoid recycling funds) and a proper mapping exercise needs to be presented systematical and not for the sake of meeting a proposal condition before funding is approved. My suggestion is that funding models need to be adjusted to appropriately align to the current context. Twenty years ago and many years beyond, and taking into account many variables including lack of systems then, the fact is that funding was less but the impact/results was greater, for example look at what the missionaries and volunteers did, they built some of the durable hospitals and schools we see today and provided basic furniture therein, trained medical personnel, sent many people to school nationally and abroad, but with way less money that we see being channeled to other countries by donors (examples on the work of missionaries can be found in some of the countries in Africa and I have taken these to be good lessons). While some impact is seen in other countries, it is also important to establish, where is the money going- is the current level of funding sustainable and for how long- could this money be used to develop sustainable and revenue generating infrastructures such as the HIVAIDS levy in Zimbabwe-with improvements it’s a good starring example despite all these challenges? What can we learn from the past regarding value for money and empowering governments and communities-? Yes, the costs may have gone up over the years, but we can also consider going back to simplicity and innovative ways that result in long term sustainability? 3. Please exploit the development of practical, simple and easy to monitor systems that can also make implementers accountable, for example how much money actually reaches the person who is being provided with ARVS or an orphan who is being sent to school. This unit cost can also help governments to budget with sustainability in mind and for a better future. 4. Please exploit how the multi nationals and private sector can also contribute towards the development sector.

Thank you Saraswati. It's very interesting to hear your perspective. I definitely agree with your final point: even if we don't ultimately conclude that aid workers should be paid less, aid agencies do definitely need to be at the very least thinking about and discussing this issue in an ongoing way.

Thank you for raising interesting topic. In fact, third world country people often raise question, why is development aid make smaller impact on people living in measurable condition but has greater economic and social impact on aid worker. There is always an argument that aid worker have short term job and needs to pay higher salary to get best out of it. A simple aid worker who has earned bit and pieces to live suddenly starts thinking about safety while traveling in country and needs a star hotel to accommodate, mineral water instead of spring water, feels uncomfortable walking along path where slum leave and covers nose while they see men and women in smelly dirty cloth. If people do not have commitment to work with these group why do people become an aid worker? just to live a comfortable life with little or no commitment to make people's life different. However, when it comes to distributing benefits to community people there are policies and argument made for how do we effectively reach them and distribute fund, why is there less debate on how much fund on aid should go to management and aid worker. Despite aid agency having agenda on management fees and structure, indirectly huge amount of aid is transferred to the country of origin. There is always a suspicion and an argument that why are there less factories and economic activities going on to raise and elevate poverty in a very rural area to uplift the economic status of poor and marginalized people? employment is determining factor for exposure and change people's life, though in some cases it might not be true but in larger picture it is in fact a powerful factor for change. I do not just argue that aid worker should be paid less but my argument is that how much and to what extent should the aid worker be paid should be discussed by aid agency.

I think we create a problem in this discussion with the use of the word 'aid' which has a defined meaning in the DAC/OECD context and in the public mind. Rather, the word investment might be better - we invest in disease control, climate change mitigation and other examples that Stephen gives primarily for good self-interested and not humanitarian reasons. Australia invests in tfe Northern Territory in Biosecurity management to prevent the entry of damaging invasive species for Australian public good reasons It helps the NT but we would hardly call it aid. Our private sector invest in mining in Africa that will generate private returns but will deliver substantial economic and social benefits to the countries concerned. Would we define this investment as aid if done by a government agency? I think an interesting discussion emerges from the transition of countries out of aid. We lost a big opportunity when Korea almost overnight fell out of the aid category and an extensive set of cooperative partnerships built up in aid arrangements were lost through the absence of sustainable partnerships because we had no successor arrangements in place.