Australian aid
PNG’s Minister for National Planning Ano Pala called for improved impact, coherence and value from Australia’s aid at the launch of the new bilateral development strategy in Port Moresby, criticising “funds being switched, withheld in Canberra and absorbed by Australian management contractors and consultants…”. Pala also called for an urgent review of the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific’s operations in PNG and the establishment of an in-country office for the facility by 2025.
Speaking at the UN Summit of the Future, Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced that by the end of 2025 Australia will offer Climate Resilient Debt Clauses in its sovereign loans and that Australia will lead a global effort to develop a new UN Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel.
World Bank President Ajay Banga visited Australia to make the case to the Albanese government to contribute to a 30% nominal increase in overall donor funding to the International Development Association’s (IDA) upcoming 2026-28 replenishment. IDA provides concessional finance and grants to the world’s poorest countries and has increased its financing for the Pacific and Timor-Leste in recent years.
At the Quad Leaders’ Summit between the US, Japan, Australia and India, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that as part of the “Quad Cancer Moonshot” Australia will expand its Elimination Partnership in the Indo-Pacific for Cervical Cancer Program. The expansion will include funding from government ($16.5 million, including $12.5 million previously announced) and the Minderoo Foundation ($13.1 million) to help up to eleven countries in the region “advance the elimination of cervical cancer and support complementary initiatives focused on cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment”. It’s not clear that any new funding has been allocated to this initiative by other Quad partners.
The government has allocated over $30 million from its Partnerships for a Healthy Region initiative to improve regional immunisation coverage, fund applied research at the intersection of human, animal and environmental health through the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, strengthen community preparedness for epidemics in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and improve regional biosecurity across the Pacific and Timor-Leste through training for animal health workers.
Australia will provide Vietnam with $3 million for humanitarian relief to assist its response to Typhoon Yagi, to be delivered through the Australian Humanitarian Partnership and local organisations.
Australia will also allocate $1.8 million in funding to assist the victims of recent flooding in Bangladesh, $9.5 million to scale-up climate resilient community infrastructure in Tonga, and a further $10 million to UNICEF and UNFPA to help address the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
The Minister for International Development and the Pacific has promised a “record-breaking” 100 Australia Award scholarships for Solomon Islanders to undertake undergraduate, postgraduate and short course study in Australia in 2024-25.
The Safer World for All coalition, headed by Micah and the Australian Council For International Development, has launched its new public campaign calling on the next Australian government to provide at least 1% of the federal budget as Official Development Assistance (ODA). In 2024-25, Australia’s ODA is estimated to account for just 0.68% of the budget (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: ODA as % of the Australian federal budget, 2000-01 to 2027-28 (est.)
Sources: Safer World for All, Resources: New Election Policy, September 2024; adapted from on Devpol’s Australian Aid Tracker: Trends.
Regional/global aid
The Japan International Cooperation Agency has requested a total of US$1.1 billion (up $US28 million from 2024) from the country’s parliament to fund its grant operations and facilities in 2025 and a further US$16.1 billion (up US$2.1 billion) to finance its loan projects.
Incoming Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has vowed to renegotiate the terms of Sri Lanka’s US$2.9 billion International Monetary Fund loan, put in place in the wake of country’s 2022 debt crisis, in order to make its conditions more “people-friendly”.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that the September 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation included agreement to “open, green and clean cooperation” under the China’s Belt and Road Initiative, promised debt repayment postponements for Beijing’s African borrowers, and endorsed the creation of an African credit ratings agency.
Japan, Canada, the US, European countries and institutions and pharmaceutical companies have collectively pledged just under 4.9 million vials of mpox vaccines to date to support Africa’s fight against the disease. Of these, only around 280,000 have been delivered to date. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have called for the provision of 10 million doses by 2025 to help address the continent’s multi-country outbreak.
The UK government has suspended some, but not all, arms sales to Israel, saying there is a “clear risk” this equipment could be used to commit serious violations of international law. The UK has also assessed that “Israel has not fulfilled its duty as Occupying Power to ensure – to the fullest extent of the means available to it – those supplies essential to the survival of the population of Gaza”.
Humanitarian agencies are scaling up their operations in Lebanon as the widening conflict results in civilian deaths, places new pressures on the country’s strained health system, and threatens further destruction and displacement.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has commissioned an independent review of Britain’s “global impact”, including a stand-alone assessment of its efforts to “modernise the UK’s development offer” and improve its development expertise and capabilities. The development review will be led by Baroness Minouche Shafik, a former Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development (DfID) and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.
USAID has released its new “Locally Led Humanitarian Assistance Policy” which pledges to increase the amount and accessibility of US funding for local humanitarian organisations.
Books, articles, reports, blogs, podcasts etc.
In its 2024 Goalkeepers report, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation predict that a projected stagnation in development assistance for health over the next five years will slow progress in reducing global rates of child mortality and will mean that the 2030 UN target of 25 under-5 deaths per 1,000 live births will likely be missed (see Figure 2). The report also projects that between 2024 and 2050, climate change’s impact on nutrition outcomes will mean 40 million additional children will be stunted, and 28 million additional children will suffer from wasting.
Figure 2: Stalled financing threatens decades of health progress
Source: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Goalkeepers 2024 Report: the Race to Nourish a Warming World, 2024.
Writing on the fall in Western aid to Africa over the last decade, Adam Tooze characterises the enormous disparity in aid to Ukraine and aid to poorer, conflict-affected countries on the continent as “a stark measure of the difference between a crisis in which the Western donors see their interests directly and urgently engaged and one to which they are relatively indifferent”.
Experts from the Lowy Institute have published a new report on how to make the new global Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage fit for purpose.
The International Crisis Group explores the dynamics behind the worsening violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the impact on the region’s remaining Rohingya population, and the implications for humanitarian donors.
