Some $250 billion in foreign aid did not leave the shores of donor countries between 2000 and 2012. That is one of a series of findings in a new report from the ONE Campaign on foreign aid investments. The Guardian reports:
“While it can be argued that some of this spending benefits developing countries, it is not clear how much does, and there is a lack of transparency and consistency among donors in reporting these costs,” the report said.
After a two-year decline, overseas development assistance (ODA) increased to just over $131bn in 2013, said ONE, which was co-founded by Bono. It added that collectively donor countries were spending 0.29% of national income on aid, well below the UN target of 0.7%.
“Progress is very uneven across donors. Some countries, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Norway, increased their ODA significantly in 2013.”
The UK hit the UN’s target for the first time last year, joining Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg as the only donors meeting the pledge.
The report said that western aid was not being targeted at the least developed countries (LDCs). Donors spent 0.09% of their gross national budgets in LDCs in 2012, compared to the UN target of 0.15-0.2%.
“LDCs remain highly dependent on aid, which accounts for over 70% of their external flows and is equivalent, on average, to half of their tax revenues”, ONE reports. It called for 50% of donor financial assistance to go to the world’s poorest nations.
The study also found that African governments were not meeting their own commitments to allocate sufficient public spending to areas such as health, agriculture and education.
“Most countries still have a shockingly low level of per capita spending, owing to a limited tax base and the loss of potential government revenue through corruption and illicit financial flows,” the report said. Between 2010 and 2012, only six of 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa met their pledges to devote 15% of their national budget to health.
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Spotlight on PSI
PSI Ambassador Mandy Moore is traveling to Tanzania this week to spotlight the vital contributions of health workers to global health and development.
A robust and effective global health workforce must be a top priority for the international community, and Mandy Moore is helping to champion this cause along with Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, a coalition of more than two-thousand mom bloggers who currently span twenty countries who care about spreading the good news about the amazing work nonprofit organizations and NGOs are doing around the world. They’re visiting health workers in Tanzania with us along with IntraHealth International, with whom PSI partnered to produce the latest issue of Impact Magazine, focusing on the global health workforce.
Follow @TheMandyMoore, @JenniferJames, @SocialGoodMoms, and@IntraHealth as well as @PSIImpact and PSI’s @MarshallPSI, @Mandy_McAnallyand @regaroni, who will be tweeting and Instragramming the trip all week using#HealthWorkersCount. We’ll be creating a Storify every day to collect some of the best photos, tweets, and commentary from Mandy and the group in Tanzania. We would love to include your thoughts and tweets about the value of an empowered global health workforce.
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Global Health and Development Beat
Famine could strike another million people across South Sudan early next year if the civil war escalates, a report said.
A Ugandan health worker recently died of Marburg, a highly infectious disease that manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever, Uganda’s Ministry of Health confirmed Monday as health workers moved to quarantine a total of 80 people who had been in contact with the victim.
States not expanding Medicaid hobble the fight against HIV/AIDS, says Jonathan Capehart in The Washington Post.
Almost 40% of the world’s waste ends up in huge rubbish tips, mostly found near urban populations in poor countries, posing a serious threat to human health and the environment.
The Head of World Hope International says Sierra Leone has a shortage of ambulances and isolation centers, making it much more difficult to contain the Ebola outbreak.
The Press Union of Liberia has urged the Liberian government to concentrate its energy on fighting the deadly Ebola virus outbreak and stop trying to prevent journalists from doing their work.
Wealthy countries are still subsidizing their farmers at the expense of developing nations, undermining market access for some of the world’s poorest producers, two farm ministers told a Food and Agriculture Organization meeting.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Tufts University professor Dan Drezner shares some of the lessons learned from the global response to the Ebola outbreak. A few of his findings:
1) The World Health Organization (WHO) is not terribly centralized, and it’s not going to be anytime soon. The traditional stereotype of international organizations is that of a bloated secretariat based in Geneva, far removed from local field knowledge. In the case of the WHO, however, that stereotype needs to be turned on its head.
Two recent articles in the European Journal of International Relations stress that the WHO might be unique among international governmental organizations. Erin Graham analyzed why the WHO has failed to achieve its stated goals despite strong pushes by major national donors. Her conclusion was that the WHO is too decentralized to be held to account.
6) Even halfway decent levels of health governance and civic trust can stop Ebola in its tracks. Hey, remember when Laurie Garrett was freaking out about Ebola spreading uncontrollably in Lagos and I suggested that this was an overblown concern? Well, a few months later, we have a definitive answer, courtesy of the New York Times’ Donald McNeil Jr. “With quick and coordinated action by some of its top doctors, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, appears to have contained its first Ebola outbreak.”
7) It is not clear if the United States has sufficient levels of civic trust to handle Ebola. After the first Ebola patient was diagnosed in the United States in Dallas, Tex., both the Obama administration and the Perry administration stressed a similar “don’t panic” message.
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Capital Events
Tuesday
12:00 PM – Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing: The Role of Business in Overcoming Poverty – AEI
Wednesday
10:00 AM – Turning the Tide for Girls and Young Women: How to Achieve an AIDS-Free Future – Kaiser Family Foundation and Population Council
1:20 PM – Global Tobacco Control – GHC
4:30 PM – Handwashing Innovations and Inspirations – Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing
Thursday
2:00 PM – Drumbeat to COP 20: Linking Reproductive Health, Food Security, and Climate Change – Aspen Institute
Friday
10:00 AM – Mental Health Needs in a Humanitarian Crisis – Kaiser Family Foundation and The Global Mental Health Advocacy Working Group
12:30 PM – Food for the Future: Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change – World Bank
Friday – 17 October
8:30 AM – Ensuring Equity for NCDs in Women’s Health Throughout the Life Course – FHI 360
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
