Welcome to the week from Brussels, where we know that when Germany talks, it’s best to listen. Today we take you through the latest from Berlin on the 2023 budget for the world’s second-largest donor of official development assistance.
Also in today’s edition: An examination on the state of visa inequity for those from the global south, and a stinging critique of OECD aid rules.
Back from the brink
Germany’s development budget for 2023 will drop €190 million ($199 million) compared to this year’s amount — but things could have been much worse. That’s the takeaway from Devex contributor Andrew Green’s story for Devex Pro members.
A possible €1.3 billion in cuts proposed over the summer has been averted, but it’s interesting to see where the final reductions fell. Core funding for multilaterals and some other development ministry priorities is down, but there is a clear focus on situations such as the global hunger crisis, Andrew reports.
UN Women and the Global Partnership for Education are taking a hit, though the Bundestag upped the contributions to the World Food Programme, from €28 million in the earlier budget proposal from the cabinet to €78 million now. Germany is also expected to hit the target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance.
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It’s all a bit reminiscent of events in Sweden and Norway this year: As the war in Ukraine puts pressure on aid budgets, United Nations agencies are often among the first to see their funding cut. New York may have their lobbying work cut out for them in Europe for a while yet.
Read more: German development budget drops, but could still fulfill targets (Pro)
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Postcard from Europe
Today I’ll be roving around the Council of the European Union, trying to extract a quote or two from the few development ministers who attend the biannual meetings designed for them to strategize together. Follow me on Twitter to see the answers to some tough questions that I got from EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, European Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen, and more about pressing EU matters.
Poor attendance has long been a problem, with the chair, Borrell, expressing his frustration at the last meeting in May. What will he make of another poor showing from EU capitals, especially when there is no shortage of problems to discuss? Along with Ukraine and progress on commitments from the African Union at a summit in February, today’s agenda includes Afghanistan, where the European Commission wants to convince EU states that it should expand the kind of support it can provide to include medium-to-long-term projects, vocational training, and work with “the private sector and business” — while not channeling assistance through the Taliban.
“Aid is not enough,” the commission wrote to member states in documents seen by Devex. “Afghan people want income and jobs, i.e. the economy to improve.”
Exclusive: EU eyes private sector support in Afghanistan
+ Check out all our coverage of aid and development assistance for Afghanistan.
Passe-partout
To try and travel to Berlin to collect an award for her work on the sidelines of last month’s World Health Summit, Anita Kouhavey-Eklu, the deputy country director for Togo at the NGO Integrate Health, had to submit reams of documents including bank statements, letters, her employment contract, return plane tickets, and even her wedding certificate. Her Schengen visa was still denied.
It’s a well-known problem — and my colleague Jessica Abrahams has this timely piece on whether it’s getting worse.
Recent high-profile cases have led some to call for a boycott of events if in-person access cannot be guaranteed. Meanwhile, others want more care to be taken to ensure the conferences are organized in visitor-friendly countries, highlighting the ability to arrange visas on arrival for conference attendees in Kenya and Rwanda, for instance.
Read: How passport inequity bars global south experts from crucial summits
Dr. Sara Saeed Khurram and Dr. Iffat Zafar Aga, cofounders of a telemedicine startup based in Pakistan, have this firsthand account of what it’s like to be nominated for a global health award — only to be unable to attend the ceremony due to visa problems.
“When visas pose a major barrier to limiting the potential for dialogue, vital insights and expertise are absent from major global health decisions,” the pair write.
Opinion: We couldn’t attend a health awards gala. Here is our message
ODA-counting
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee, a secretive 31-member body in charge of setting the rules on what can be counted as foreign aid, has come in for some serious criticism recently.
In our latest DevExplains, David Ainsworth and I look at loans and in-donor refugee costs — two areas where advocates say that donors are being too generous with themselves. Or, as Steve Cutts, a former assistant secretary-general at the United Nations and former chef de cabinet at OECD, puts it: “The dogs are in charge of the dog show, and they are all giving themselves rosettes at every turn.”
Cutts wants to see an independent statistical review of ODA, to get OECD to live up to the principles of impartiality, objectivity, and transparency that it espouses in its own “Twelve key recommendations to ensure the quality of statistics.”
DevExplains: Are we overcounting ODA by tens of billions? (Pro)
And ICYMI, we should know any day now who will replace the U.K.’s Susanna Moorehead as the chair of the DAC. We’ve got a look at the pitch from the French, Norwegian, and Danish candidates for Pro members.
In other news
Venezuela's frozen funds, which total more than $3 billion, will be released through a U.N.-managed fund to address the country’s humanitarian crisis. [Reuters]
The U.N. reported that nearly one-third of South Sudan's 12.4 million people are facing severe food insecurity, while an investigation revealed starvation is being used by its government as a "weapon of war." [AP and The Guardian]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that about $150 million was raised during a Saturday summit in Kyiv in support of the initiative to export grain to countries most affected by famine and drought. [VOA]
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About the author
Vince Chadwickvchadw
Vince Chadwick is a contributing reporter at Devex. A law graduate from Melbourne, Australia, he was social affairs reporter for The Age newspaper, before covering breaking news, the arts, and public policy across Europe, including as a reporter and editor at POLITICO Europe. He was long-listed for International Journalist of the Year at the 2023 One World Media Awards.
