Annual report 2019-20
Read nowGroup of children in the village of Kataboi, Turkana.
Building back better means supporting countries with aid to allow them build the healthcare systems and infrastructure needed to deal with this crisis.
Overseas aid works. It has lifted millions out of poverty, slashed maternal and infant mortality rates, and led to more people being in school than ever before. Aid works but government aid budgets are now under threat due to the COVID financial crisis.
Cutting aid budgets in our unequal world means that the world’s poorest will be hit the hardest. These are people living in countries with very weak health systems. Many of these countries don’t have safety nets like social welfare, universal healthcare and COVID payments.
Reducing aid will only deepen the crisis. It may also prolong the global pandemic. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said “the world is only as strong as its weakest health system”.
Globally, countries have made a commitment to spending 0.7% of their national income on helping the world’s poorest people. The promise amounts to spending just 70c for every €100, but even that meagre promise has been broken in Ireland.
A recent poll showed that over two in three Irish people support spending on overseas aid, even during the Covid-19 crisis. Yet despite our commitment to spending 0.7% of our national income on aid, we are currently only spending 30c for every €100 on aid. Even that amount is now under threat as we face economic crisis and uncertain times.
In the UK, despite the fact that the 0.7% has been reached, the recent merger of the Dept for International Development and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has led to fears that the primary aim of UK overseas aid – to alleviate poverty – could be threatened.
At a time when the impact of COVID threatens famines of “biblical proportions”, there is a danger that Ireland and the UK will reduce their commitment, either in monetary terms or changing priorities, to the world’s poorest people.