The water crisis, 60% of Syria’s population struggles to feed themselves and women must be ‘front and centre’ of pandemic recovery. Here is what you missed from last week’s headlines in the international development sector:
The water crisis has a major impact on human rights
“Water is the lifeblood of human beings, and all life on Earth,” David R. Boyd, UN expert on human rights and the environment said while presenting his latest report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.
“And yet, over 2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water. Over 4 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation. Water shortages now affect more than 3 billion people. Three-quarters of all the natural disasters in the last twenty years were water-related, including floods, landslides, and other extreme weather events.”
In his report, Boyd describes the causes and consequences of the global water crisis, focusing on the negative impacts of water pollution, water scarcity, and water-related disasters on the enjoyment of a number of human rights, including the rights to life, health, water, sanitation, food, a healthy environment, an adequate standard of living, development, culture, and the rights of the child.
After 10 years of conflict, 60% of Syria’s population struggles to feed themselves
As Syria marks its tenth year of conflict, 13.4 million people – 75% of the country’s population – are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, a 20% increase from 2020. The cost of the basic food basket has increased by 250% in the last year and is beyond the reach of many families.
Action Against Hunger, one of the few international organizations that has been able to work inside Syria since the beginning of the conflict, calls for action to break the vicious cycle of mass hunger caused by continued violence. While emergency assistance is still desperately needed, it is not sufficient to meet the recovery needs of the population.
After 10 years of conflict and hunger, here are the key facts:
- 13.4 million people are in need of humanitarian aid. That’s twice as many as in 2011.
- 9.3 million people are food insecure, meaning there is no available food or no sustained access to healthy food. 2.2 million more people are at imminent risk of becoming food insecure.
- The cost of a basic food basket, which includes commodities such as rice, bread, wheat, lentils, sugar, and vegetable oil, has increased by 250%.
- 6.1 million people are internally displaced and five million refugees have fled the country. More than 90% of refugees are in the neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq.
“Many people have reduced the number of meals they eat to two a day, buy food on credit, or have sold their livestock and belongings to raise money to feed themselves. It’s a massive phenomenon in the country, especially in Idlib and Aleppo in the northwest, which shows the close links between war and hunger,” explains Nasr Muflahi, Country Director of Action Against Hunger in Syria.
Women must be ‘front and center’ of pandemic recovery, UN chief says
Women need to be “front and center” of the pandemic recovery as a matter of economics, efficiency, effectiveness and social resilience, the UN chief told the women’s commission on March 16.
“Male-dominated teams will come up with male-dominated solutions”, Secretary-General António Guterres warned a virtual town hall with women civil society during the 65th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CWS).
“We cannot go back to the failed man-made policies that have resulted in the fragility we see around us – in healthcare systems, in social protection, in access to justice, and in the wellbeing of our planet”, he added.
DevelopmentAid Editorials
UK promises to donate excessive COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries, while officials discuss the cuts of development funding
During a G7 virtual meeting in February 2021, the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, pledged to donate the surplus COVID-19 vaccines in his country to poorer nations, failing to specify when this may possibly happen. The declaration was made just two-weeks before leaked reports revealed Foreign Office officials discussing dramatic aid cuts for some countries.
Syrian civil war 10 years on: unbearable human pain still there
The civil war in Syria started 10 years ago and today, a decade into the catastrophe, almost half of the country’s pre-war population, that is, over 12 million people, have either been internally displaced or found refuge abroad. The pandemic that hit in 2020 simply added one more catastrophe to those that already existed, triggering a healthcare crisis caused by only half of Syrian hospitals functioning and worsening the already shaky economic situation. Against this backdrop, the European Union and the United Nations have called for discussions regarding the last devastating 10 years in Syria on 29-30 March at the fifth Brussels Conference on “Supporting the future of Syria and the region”.
Indebtedness and dependency: the untold story of the Green Revolution
Based on its achievements, the Green Revolution and conventional farming once promised to feed people while contributing to rural development. Indeed, it did succeed in avoiding famine in many countries and helping some of the world’s poorest countries to become self-sufficient in food.[1] However, decades of putting this approach into practice have revealed its negative impact on soil and agricultural systems as well as its devastating effect on thousands of farmers worldwide. This article seeks the reasons for this and the solutions identified to avoid farmers resorting to suicide and to secure sustained agricultural practices.
Development aid: calls for a reset
Foreign aid or foreign assistance is defined as “the international transfer of goods, services or capital from a country or international aid agency to a recipient country or its population”. Regardless of the types of development aid, it goes without saying that it contributes greatly to evolutions in developing countries. Yet, lately, there have been calls for a reset in the process of providing aid, which sound rather grounded when looking at the current reasons of providing aid and at disparities between financial resources transferred to/from developing countries.
Development aid: calls for a reset
Foreign aid or foreign assistance is defined as “the international transfer of goods, services or capital from a country or international aid agency to a recipient country or its population”. Regardless of the types of development aid, it goes without saying that it contributes greatly to evolutions in developing countries. Yet, lately, there have been calls for a reset in the process of providing aid, which sound rather grounded when looking at the current reasons of providing aid and at disparities between financial resources transferred to/from developing countries.
Here’s what else has happened
ADB: The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved $175 million in funding for an Asian Development Bank (ADB) program to support the Government of Mongolia’s efforts to improve rangeland management and reduce the climate vulnerability of its rural economy.
Nigeria and Global Fund: Nigeria and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria have launched three new grants to strengthen the fight against HIV, TB, and malaria and build resilient and sustainable systems for health.
The Government of Japan: The World Food Programme (WFP), World Health Organisation (WHO), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) welcome a contribution of US$ one million from the Government of Japan to support various interventions in Angola.
Jamaica: Fifteen Caribbean countries will receive just over 2.1 million doses of COVAX vaccines by May, according to allocation figures provided for the first round.
EIF and Raiffeisenbank: The European Investment Fund (EIF) and Raiffeisenbank (Bulgaria) EAD have signed a guarantee agreement of €85 million to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and small mid-caps in Bulgaria. The guarantee is backed by the European Guarantee Fund.
UNESCO and Japan: While the COVID-19 pandemic and the insecurity in some regions of the Sahel undermine the hope of a better future for the youth of Burkina Faso, the Government of Japan and the UNESCO Regional Office for West Africa-Sahel signed an agreement on 3 March 2021.
Reports
Ageism is a global challenge
Every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes – leading to poorer physical and mental health and reduced quality of life for older persons, costing societies billions of dollars each year, according to a new United Nations report on ageism.
Read the full United Nations report on ageism.
Urgent action is needed to address the enormous education crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Latin American and Caribbean region is experiencing an unprecedented education crisis that requires immediate action to mitigate and reverse learning losses, according to a new World Bank report.
Report examines meteorological and air quality factors and COVID-19
A World Meteorological Organization Task Team has issued its first report on Meteorological and Air Quality factors affecting the COVID-19 pandemic. It cautions that weather and climate conditions, including the onset of higher temperatures in the northern hemisphere spring, should not be used as a trigger to relax measures to halt the spread of the virus.
UNICEF says that one in five children globally does not have enough water to meet their everyday needs
Globally, more than 1.42 billion people, including 450 million children, live in areas of high, or extremely high, water vulnerability, according to a new analysis released by UNICEF. This means that 1 in 5 children worldwide does not have enough water to meet their everyday needs.
Read the Water Security for All.
Events
The Rise of the Green Economy and Availability of Green-Climate Financing | Webinar
? 15 April 2021 ? 4 PM (Brussels) / 10 AM (Washington DC)
Webinar
Join the DevelopmentAid webinar to find out about the rise of the green economy and the availability of green-climate financing.
Topics to be discussed:
- Opportunities and threats for Africa’s agriculture in the global green economy transition
- Assessment of green projects’ investments in agriculture
- Green Taxonomy as an opportunity for the financial sector
- Green economy transition in the eyes of donors, perhaps explaining how projects need to be green or greener, as well as climate-friendly
- Availability of green-climate financing as a demand-driven process towards greening the economy
- Examples from the field on how to introduce green – climate-friendly investments
HOST: Ana Marin, Sr. Business Development Manager, DevelopmentAid
Trade, Robots, and Industrial Development | Virtual
? 23 March 2021 ? 9:00 – 10:30AM (ET)
Virtual
In recent decades, trade and international integration enabled a remarkable economic convergence. Several low-income countries leveraged strong export performance to rapidly industrialize and catch up with high-income countries. Despite this achievement, too many firms in developing countries remain poorly positioned to succeed in global markets. At the same time, a new threat is emerging. The automation of industrial production in developed countries—only accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic—could hinder the future growth of export manufacturing in low-income countries.
In this talk, World Bank economist Paulo Bastos will draw on evidence from several recent studies to identify key drivers of firm-level upgrading and industrial development, including entrepreneurial ability, exports, foreign ownership, training, and learning by working. Bastos will then present insights from recent research on the implications of robotization for trade between developed and developing countries. Informed by this evidence, the talk will conclude with a critical discussion of policy options for promoting industrial development and trade-led growth.
Target Gender Equality Live: Women’s Empowerment in the Decade of Action | Virtual
? 16 March 2021 ?5:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (EST)
Virtual
Organized on the sidelines of the International Women’s Day and Commission on the Status of Women events, Target Gender Equality Live will demonstrate the leadership of UN Global Compact on gender equality by showcasing the Women’s Empowerment Principles, promoting the Target Gender Equality global impact initiative and engaging women-led businesses. This interactive virtual event seeks to inspire and engage business and other stakeholders to take concrete action to advance gender equality and help to build private sector support and momentum in advance of the Gender Equality Forums taking place later in the year.
Target Gender Equality Live will showcase the work of Global Compact Local Networks and partner organizations, featuring a dynamic mix of live plenaries, on-demand programming, global networking, and practical tools and resources.
Best Practices in Project Management with Multi-Stakeholders | Webinar
? 1 April ? 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM (CEST)
Webinar
Join the DevelopmentAid webinar to find out about the best practices in project management with multi-stakeholders.
The speaker at this webinar is the CEO of GEDS, an Istanbul-based design consultancy, with a strong focus on design research.
The overall conversation is going to focus on understanding and mapping the capabilities of the teams which are critical to set the strategies and tools for an iterative Design Management process.
You will have the possibility to ask questions directly at the webinar.
HOST: Sergiu Casu, Business Development Director, DevelopmentAid
Speaker: Gulay Ozkan, GEDS Founder
