Breaking faith with foreign aid partners is unkindest cut How shall we celebrate the New Year? From where I sit, a minutes silence may be the best response. I work for an Australian aid and development agency, one that waits to see where the latest round of cuts to the aid budget will fall. Here is what we know: On top of the $7.6 billion in cuts to aid since it came into office, the Abbott government will take a further $3.7 billion out over the next four years, with 1 billion to be extracted from the coming years budget alone. How much will be cut from the part of our aid that is delivered through non-government agencies like mine, remains to be seen. Wherever it falls, the impact will be brutal. For a time, from 2004, buoyed by the commitments of Labor and Coalition governments to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the resulting increasing aid levels, we saw the maturity of the aid and development sector grow. Importantly, we saw improvements in the things that the MDGs measured: more children at school, more babies born safely, more communities with safe water systems. Australian aid does lots of good things. It enables us to invest in regional and global partnerships with cross-border programs to stop the spread of disease, to harness and share natural resources, and to help displaced people and assist after humanitarian disasters. Working with non-government agencies, our aid contributes powerfully to removing the barriers that stop people from living healthy, productive lives, enabling them to contribute to the wellbeing of their communities and to stable civic environments. One story illustrates the expertise and effectiveness of our aid sector in Laos. Keo Chan, her husband and three children were only just getting by. With little money, they shared a small house with two other families. There was not enough rice to go around, and Keo and her husband had to travel to another village to work to feed their family. There was no extra income for daily expenses, like school fees or medicine. If emergencies came up, there was no safety net. Read more: theage.au/comment/breaking-faith-with-foreign-aid-partners-is-unkindest-cut-20150103-12gbdv.html
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 03:35:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015