Australian aid
The government has released an unclassified version of its assessment of Israel’s response to the April killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues in Gaza by the Israeli military. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said Australia will press for “full accountability” for Frankcom’s death.
Marking World Humanitarian Day, ACFID and other civil society groups paid tribute to the more than 450 humanitarian workers killed globally in 2023 and 2024, of whom over half have been killed in Gaza since the 7 October attacks by Hamas.
Australian health experts and advocates have called upon the government to act on the worsening mpox outbreak in Africa and “expedite resources towards mobilisation of an effective, internationally coordinated and equitable response that will contain this outbreak, accelerate research, and safeguard vulnerable populations in the region”. The outbreak has been declared a “public health emergency of international concern” by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the new, deadlier strain of the virus has been detected in Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Sweden.
Marking the one-year anniversary of its 2023 International Development Policy, the government restated its commitment to improve DFAT’s development capability and culture, build bipartisan support for its nominal increases to aid funding, and strengthen development impact with a focus on gender equality and climate change. It also announced $35 million over four years for a promised Civil Society Partnerships Fund to “address the challenges of shrinking civic space in many parts of the world”.
As part of the implementation of the 2023 policy, DFAT has published the development partnership plans for Indonesia (2024-28) and Papua New Guinea (2024-29) and 19 of the 20 program evaluations completed in the first half of 2024.
Addressing the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Tonga, the UN Secretary General António Guterres issued a fresh warning about the rate of climate-induced sea level rise and called on G20 nations like Australia to “step up and lead, by phasing out the production and consumption of fossil fuels and stopping their expansion immediately”. Australia secured endorsement of the $400 million, five-year Pacific Policing Initiative and Australia and Tuvalu announced the entry into force of their Falepili Union Treaty.
Prior to the Leaders Meeting, Australia and New Zealand announced a joint contribution of $42.6 million toward the Pacific Humanitarian Warehousing program. The program design envisages a possible scale-up to $100 million to $120 million over eight years “through additional donor funding and/or in-kind support” and “assumes some form of contribution from partner government[s]”.
Denying Australian media reports that it is planning to sell state-owned electricity assets to China, the head of PNG’s major state investment firm has highlighted the challenges associated with meeting the targets set out in the PNG Electrification Partnership announced by former PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and the governments of Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Japan in 2018.
Austender has published its 2023-24 data on active DFAT aid contracts valued at over $100,000 (see Table 1).
The ANU Crawford School will host a “Gender, Climate and Diversity Forum” on 24 September. The call for papers welcomes submissions which present research or innovative programming in these areas. Submissions should be sent to Annabel Dulhunty (annabel.dulhunty@anu.edu.au) by 6 September.
Regional/global aid
During a visit by Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka ahead of the Forum Leaders Meeting, China’s President Xi Jinping reportedly agreed to invest in Fiji’s tourism, agriculture and fisheries industries and support a road upgrading project on Vanua Levu, the country’s second-largest island.
The Biden administration will provide funding to the Philippines to temporarily host a “limited number” of Afghans (reportedly, around 300) being considered for resettlement in the United States.
The WHO and UNICEF have called for a humanitarian pause to the conflict in Gaza to allow for the delivery of over 1.6 million vaccine doses following the detection of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus in July. According to the WHO, Gaza has been polio-free for the last 25 years and its reemergence “represents yet another threat to the children in the Gaza Strip and neighbouring countries”.
Famine has officially been declared by the UN’s Famine Review Committee (FRC) in at least one refugee camp sheltering hundreds of thousands of people in the Darfur region of Sudan. Although the finding is limited to the Zanzam camp near the city of El Fasher, the FRC report warned that “many other areas throughout Sudan remain at risk of famine as long as the conflict and limited humanitarian access continue”.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a bailout of US$3.4 billion for Ethiopia to support its economic reforms over the next four years and help it deal with mounting balance of payments and fiscal challenges after it defaulted on its sovereign debt repayments late last year.
The German government’s final draft federal budget for 2025 includes cuts to funding for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (-46%), UNFPA (-18%), and UNICEF (-8%). The budget maintains Germany’s contribution to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) at US$1.4 billion, the same as its 2022 contribution, ahead of IDA’s upcoming replenishment.
Books, articles, reports, blogs, podcasts etc.
The World Bank’s World Development Report for 2024 focuses on overcoming the “middle-income trap”, noting that “the total population of the 34 middle-income economies that transitioned to high-income status since 1990 is less than 250 million, the population of Pakistan”. There are currently 108 countries, containing around 6 billion people, that remain in this income category.
The Overseas Development Institute has published a new series of essays exploring Sri Lanka’s ongoing recovery from its economic, fiscal and political crisis in 2022 and its path forward.
The latest edition of the Belt and Road podcast looks at China’s economic, development and environmental footprint in northern Laos and the China in Africa podcast previews the upcoming China-Africa Summit.
In the journal Economies, Bedassa Tadesse and his colleagues look at the effectiveness of mainstreamed gender equality aid across 118 countries.
In the latest edition of the Journal of International Development (open access), Stephen Brown from the University of Ottawa looks at the tensions between country ownership and LGBTQI+ inclusion in “hostile environments”.
In their new book, the ANU’s Luke Glanville and the University of Manchester’s James Pattison ask how governments and leaders might prioritise multiple and sometimes competing global priorities like poverty, climate change and health.
Disclosure
Material for this update has been collected by Devpol staff; editorial responsibility lies with Cameron Hill. Devpol’s work on Australian aid is supported by the Gates Foundation. The views represent those of Centre staff only.
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