admin May 31st, 2011
Bang in line with Andrew Mitchell’s approach at DFID, Accenture has produced a new report that argues that the way forward for international development is ‘convergence’. This convergence it sees as a narrowing of the gaps that currently exist between the commercial and NGO sectors – plus a changing relationship of donors (government and private) with both.
Accenture talks about a “convergence of solutions”, which it describes as “an approach that puts the needs of those most affected squarely at the heart of the matter”. NGOs would surely say that this is what they do already but the key to what Accenture is arguing surely comes in its observation that “development problems are so complex, so large, so persistent, so fluid that they require a wide range of approaches” and it suggests that these approaches could just as well come from the private as from the NGO or the public sectors.
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Tags: Accenture, Afghanistan, Andrew Mitchell, Bayer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Clinton Foundation, DFID, Ericsson, GSK, Heineken, Mercy Corps, NGOs, Rwanda, UNHCR
admin May 25th, 2011
Since the referendum went through peacefully in January there has been – at least as far as the main news organisations are concerned – an eerie quiet about Sudan in general and South Sudan in particular. But it would appear that a major, man-made, humanitarian disaster is brewing there.
With independence for the South just over a month away, violent confrontations are taking place in the critical region of Abyei – the one part of the South that did not have a referendum in January and home to a large part of Sudan’s oil reserves. Abyei is claimed by both north and south Sudan and the referendum to decide its future did not go ahead in January due to disagreements over which groups would be eligible to vote.
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Tags: Oxfam, South Sudan, Sudan, UN
admin May 17th, 2011
If news had just emerged from your department that the costs of two aircraft carriers had risen from £4bn in 2007 to £5bn in 2010 and £7bn now, I guess you would also be casting around for other budgets to savage.
Especially when it also turns out that the planes to go on one of these carriers will not be available until three years after the ship itself goes into service.
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Tags: Denmark, DFID, Germany, Japan, Liam Fox, Sweden, USA
admin May 6th, 2011
Two stories published today give different halves of the same picture. In Western Tanzania 3,500 people are made homeless by what are described as ‘devastating’ floods. Meanwhile from Bonn in Germany comes the news that none of the world’s rich countries have met a May 1st deadline for outlining how they will help developing countries combat climate change.
In fact, two countries did respond by the May 1st deadline set up at last year’s Cancun COP meeting – Russia and Ukraine. But they both wrote in to say that they did not feel obliged to contribute under the deal under which the rich countries would provide almost $30 billion in initial “fast-start” climate funds from 2010-12.
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Tags: Cancun, Climate change, Copenhagen, Floods, natural disasters, Plan International, Russia, Tanzania, Ukraine, UNFCCC