OECD - OCDE’s Post

Official development assistance (#ODA) rose by 1.8% in 2023 to an all-time high of $223.7 billion.   Here’s what you need to know from the preliminary data:   📈 Support to Ukraine and an increase in humanitarian assistance drove ODA growth.   🌍 Development Assistance Committee countries’ ODA to Ukraine increased by 9% to reach $20 billion, including $3.2 billion of humanitarian aid. On a global level, humanitarian aid rose by 4.8% in 2023 to $25.9 billion. 🎯 Only 5 countries exceeded the 0.7% target of ODA as a percentage of national wealth: Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden. 🏠 ODA used to cover refugee costs within donor countries fell by 6.2% in 2023 to stand at $31 billion. ⤴ ODA to least developed countries increased by 3% to reach $37 billion. Explore the data: http://oe.cd/oda

We can all see the affects of a scatter gun approach to aid spend. From cutting budgets, slowing down tendering, stopping vital learning to cancelling contracts. The last thing the industry wants is uncertainty in a time when we should be recovering in order to provide the vital work around the world needed to aid all.

Some very insightful stats in this article and a very well-put demand: “Aid for Ukraine, or for the next big emergency that demands global attention, must be in addition to existing humanitarian and development budgets, and “not sacrifice one for the other”.” What makes me quite sad is that even the aid sector is vulnerable to accounting mislabelling…

"The government has lost its grip on the UK aid budget due to the uncontrolled spending by the Home Office on costs associated with refugees in the UK," says Bond's Director of Policy and Advocacy Gideon Rabinowitz in response to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office statistics report on how UK aid was spent in 2022, published today. "Refugees and asylum-seekers urgently need sufficient support, but it needs to be better managed and should not be provided at the expense of millions of people facing conflict, climate change and poverty globally." This annual publication provides an overview of the UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) spending in the calendar year 2022 and has revealed that nearly 30% of the UK aid budget was spent on refugee costs in the UK in 2022, while development and humanitarian assistance in the lowest-income countries decreased. Read Bond's full response and a breakdown of the statistics. ⤵ https://lnkd.in/eJtV5aXA

The amounts spent on the Ukraine crisis are paralleled by a reduction of spending in most other crises in the world. ODA is driven by politics, and unfortunately as such, it seems to be proportional to the white pigmentation present in the affected populations' skins. #keepeyesonSudan #Somalia #Ethiopia (now especially #Amhara) #Sahel (now especially #Niger) #Afghanistan #DemocraticRepublicofCongo #Yemen #Pakistan #Syria #Haiti and many others, besides Ukraine. Not to count the money donor countries are spending to send weapons to nurture conflict and war, instead of promoting real peace and human development. A big change is needed.

The delivery of humanitarian aid in Sudan is a challenge that will require rethinking established routines for providing aid.