The South Korean government decided to provide 500,000 Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses to Guatemala and 105,000 BioNTech/Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doses to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In line with South Korea’s continuous vaccine donation, South Korea hopes that this donation will contribute to daily COVID-19 recovery efforts.
The Japanese government disbursed US$100 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) to fight hunger and malnutrition in light of the recent global food crisis. The contribution is part of Japan’s US$200 million pledge made at the G7 Summit in Germany in June 2022.
The funding will be disbursed through multiple channels:
Park Jin, the South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs, attended a virtual ministerial meeting for COVID-19, entitled 'Pandemic Prioritized Global Action Plan for Enhanced Engagement' to discuss global cooperation on COVID-19 response.
Minister Park shared South Korea’s plan to contribute to the global health cooperation system. For example, South Korea will contribute US$30 million to the World Bank's new Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) - a new financing mechanism to better prepare and respond to future pandemics. In addition to its ongoing contribution to the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), South Korea will continue to contribute to the global health system.
The Humanitarian Coalition, a coalition of Canada's leading international assistance agencies including Oxfam Canada, CARE Canada, and Save the Children, recently held a public fundraiser to address the global food crisis. The event raised a total of nearly CA$11 million (US$9 million).
The fundraiser was a matching campaign with the Canadian government and included CA$5 million (US$4 million) in matched funding. These funds will help provide food, water, and health care to people facing acute food insecurity and starvation in 'Sub-Saharan Africa'.
The United State Agency for International Development's (USAID) Global Health Assistant Administrator Atul Gawande has warned that the funding for USAID's COVID-19 response will run out in just weeks unless Congress approves new funding. Gawande made his remarks at the health care summit held on Capitol Hill.
USAID has been asking for additional funds -- a minimum of US$5 billion -- since December 2021, but Congress has not approved any new funding. To date, the agency has assisted 120 countries and has provided almost US$10 billion in assistance. Gawande also said that the lack of funding will mean that the COVID task force will shut down in two months.
The German Federal Foreign Office hosted this year’s 13th Petersberg Climate Dialogue from July 17 - 19, 2022 in Berlin, where high-level representatives from 40 countries convened ahead of this year’s 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27). The German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Svenja Schulze, presented a new Global Shield against Climate Risks.
The concept for the Global Shield against Climate Risks has been developed under the German G7 Presidency and was supported by G7 leaders at the summit in June 2022. The Global Shield will scale up climate risk financing, improve climate resilience and preparedness, and promote the development of rapid solutions in the case of climate-related damages. Coordinators envision early warning systems, especially in vulnerable countries, preparedness plans, insurance schemes, and social protection systems as part of the shield. The Global Shield will work to mobilize additional funding for protection against and compensation for Loss and Damage resulting from climate change.
Schulze aims to launch the global shield at this year’s COP27 in Egypt together with countries most affected by climate change.
Press release – Federal Foreign Office
Press release – Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
On July 15, 2022, the Italian Government presented its Voluntary National Review during the UN High Level Political Forum. In response, the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) Italy published a shadow report to urge a stronger commitment to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to tackle the current economic, social, and climate emergencies that are slowing progress towards Agenda 2030 targets.
The report - which is structured around the three P's: People, Planet, and Prosperity - showed that Italy is still far from reaching the SDG target on poverty eradication. In 2021, over 1.9 million households (7.5%; down from 7.7% in 2020) and about 5.6 million individuals fell into absolute poverty. Moreover, the incidence for relative poverty rose from 10.1% in 2020 to 11.1% in 2021. Finally, although the number of people at risk of poverty decreased in absolute terms compared to 2018, the income gap between the poorest and the richest classes increased in Italy. The per capita income of the lowest 40% of the population has decreased more than that of the total population.
As a result, GCAP Italy called on the government to increase efforts to tackle domestic poverty and to improve the National Sustainable Development Strategy, for instance by empowering local actors and NGOs in the identification of priority interventions. The report suggests that the government should boost the role of the National Forum on Sustainable Development as the main space for NGOs and CSOs to consult on development cooperation politics and initiatives also with the local governments to adopt participatory processes to design and implement policies.
On July 19, 2022, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation José Manuel Albares started his first trip to 'Sub-Saharan Africa', aiming to reinforce Spain’s bilateral cooperation with strategic partner countries in the region.
First, minister Albares visited Mauritania to meet with Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamed Salem Ould Merzoug to discuss sustainable development, security, and migration challenges in the Sahel region.
Next, Albares went to Senegal to meet with President Macky Sall, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Aissata Tall Sall. Albares's visit preceded the Senegalese presidency of the African Union.
While Spain currently holds the rotatory presidency of the Sahel Alliance, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's current administration plans to prioritize development cooperation efforts in 'Sub-Saharan Africa' and the Sahel region, as underlined in the new development bill that will be approved by parliament in the coming months.
The African Development Bank Group provided a US$151 million loan to Côte d’Ivoire to implement an Emergency Food Production Programme. The initiative is also supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which provided a US$68 million contribution.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has seriously impacted vulnerable populations in Côte d’Ivoire due to the rapidly increasing prices of basic necessities. The increase in fertilizer prices has weakened farmers’ ability to grow produce, exposing large portions of the population to food insecurity.
The loan will support the agricultural sector and aims to improve food security and reduce the country’s dependence on foreign imports. This project is part of a larger initiative to strengthen the agricultural sector in countries in Africa and produce 38 million tonnes of food over the next two years.
In its annual report to the Council of the EU, the European Commission reported that while the EU and its member states provided a combined total of €70.2 billion (US$74.3 billion) in ODA in 2021 – a nominal increase of 4.3% from 2020 – the EU Institutions’ (EUI; indicating financing from both the European Commission (EC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB)) ODA decreased by 6.3% in nominal terms.
According to the Commission, the EUI’s ODA in 2021 was €16.1 billion (US$17 billion), down €1.1 billion (US$1.2 billion) from its 2020 ODA. The figures from the report are sourced from the OECD, which reported an 8.1% decrease in EUI ODA in real terms.
The decrease in EUI ODA is due mostly to repayments on private sector loans and frontloading of payments in 2020 for speedier support for the COVID-19 response in partner countries.
Press release - European Commission
Publish What You Fund released a series of reports on women's economic empowerment (WEE) in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria to support policymakers, funders, and gender advocates.
The report series covers international and national funding for WEE, women's financial inclusion, and empowerment collectives from 2015-2019. Funding, particularly grant funding, in all three countries remained relatively unchanged over the examined period.
The reports included a focused analysis on unpaid care work, which is underfunded in most areas. While the study period ended in 2019, the reports provide some preliminary insight into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on WEE and gender equality.
In an op-ed published in the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), 200 public figures and celebrities, including tennis player Yannick Noah, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, ONE France Director, Nobel Prize Laureate and President of Sidaction, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and activists from the African continent and international NGOs called on governments, especially the European Commission and France, to drastically increase their contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria ahead of its seventh replenishment, which will take place in September 2022 in New York.
According to the signatories of the call, 38 million people live with HIV and 700,000 died in 2020. Malaria is still endemic in 87 countries and tuberculosis, the second-most active infectious disease after COVID-19, caused 1.5 million deaths in 2020.
South Korea, as the World Health Organization (WHO)’s global Biomanufacturing Workforce Training Hub, began training vaccine production personnel from 25 low- and middle-income countries.
Trainees are expected to have the basic capability to cope with future infectious diseases via education on vaccine development and production. WHO and South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) have held two steering committee meetings to discuss training plans and cooperation. They also plan to operate the WHO training hub in a way that reduces vaccine inequality around the world through a strengthened cooperation system.
During his recent trip to the Middle East, US President Joe Biden announced US$1.2 billion in humanitarian and food assistance to Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya to help prevent starvation in light of the unprecedented drought and accompanying famine.
Most of the assistance will be for emergency food assistance, nutritional assistance to prevent child malnutrition, farming and agricultural support, health and water sanitation services, and assistance to prevent gender-based violence.
Some of this assistance was part of an emergency supplemental bill previously approved by Congress, most of which was intended for Ukraine. This latest funding announcement brings the total of US assistance to this region to US$1.86 billion for FY2022.
This announcement comes as some members of Congress urged the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development to spend already-approved funding faster. Staffing shortages and inadequate efforts to quickly move appropriations to food assistance in areas that need it most are the primary reasons for the delay, according to the letter to the Administrator.
On July 13, 2022, Sweden announced its plan to increase its financial support to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) to SEK3 billion (US$286 million) over the next three-year period 2023-2025. Sweden’s support is intended to contribute to the fund’s goal of saving 20 million lives and reducing mortality from HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria by two-thirds.
Swedish funding to the Global Fund will amount to SEK1 billion (US$95 million) per year from 2023 to 2025. This represents a more than 5% increase in Sweden’s financial support for the organization.
Sweden has provided extensive development assistance for health, focusing on creating societies that promote health, improve access to quality health services for all, and respond to health threats and crises. Sweden’s work against poverty, for equality and gender equality, and to address the climate crisis are also important cornerstones of its global health priorities.
European Investment Bank (EIB) President Werner Hoyer and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates signed an agreement to partner on investing in human development, including strengthening health systems, eradicating polio, and preventing other infectious diseases.
The agreement will also include supporting the manufacturing, procurement, and delivery of health technologies to prevent and treat COVID-19 and other diseases affecting low- and middle-income countries with a focus on 'sub-Saharan Africa' and South Asia.
This partnership will build on previous collaborations between the EIB and the Gates Foundation, such as the African Health Diagnostic Platform and the European Health Platform.
Australia plans to provide increased assistance amounting to A$5 million (US$3.5 million) for biosecurity. This funding would assist Indonesia in dealing with its foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, and Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea with keeping foot-and-mouth disease out of their countries.
The commitment was part of a broader package to protect Australia from the entry of the disease, particularly now that its presence was confirmed in Bali. The disease could severely damage livestock production in affected countries.
The Pacific Islands Forum leaders called for dramatic reductions in greenhouse emissions and declared a “climate emergency “in its recent leaders’ meeting.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Pacific leaders commended Australia for stronger climate commitments. The new Australian government announced a 43% target reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. This could be enshrined in legislation in the coming months.
Australia’s suggestion of holding COP29 in the Pacific was welcomed in the communiqué from the meeting.
The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently published a subsidy tender for up to US$16 million for the Fund Combating Sexual Exploitation of Children. The subsidy will go to a three-year program, which will begin on January 1, 2023, to support CSOs in combating and preventing the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents.
The promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) has been a long-term priority issue for Dutch foreign policy. It is estimated between one and two million children worldwide are victims of sexual exploitation annually. Children’s vulnerability to exploitation has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing digitalization.
CSO alliances are eligible to apply, but must include at least one organization from a low- or middle- income country and one from the Netherlands. The proposed program must be implemented in a minimum of three countries, preferably in priority areas outlined in the latest Dutch development strategy, which included 'West Africa and the Sahel', the 'Horn of Africa' and the Middle East and North Africa' (MENA) regions. Applications may be submitted in Dutch or English until September 16, 2022.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) launched a Fiscal Investment and Loan Program with social bonds valued at ¥24 billion (US$179 million).
The proceeds from the program will be invested in countries affected by violent conflicts. The goal is to assist countries in building resilient states and societies and to contribute to a more peaceful and just society. JICA has confirmed that no proceeds will be allocated toward coal-fired power generation.
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