Jo Hayter writes that there is a small but real decrease in the Australian aid budget to Myanmar. Bad time for Australia to do this.
Jamie
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Australia’s aid budget – many question marks remain
Joanna Hayter, IWDA Chief Executive Officer
21 January 2014
On January 18, the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, issued a press release titled “Five billion dollar aid budget to focus on the region”. The announcement confirmed that the Australian Government’s annual aid budget for 2013-14 will be $5.042 billion, ‘refocussed on reducing poverty in the Indo-Pacific region and tied to rigorous benchmarks’. The Government says it is committed to investing aid in the sustainable development of our close neighbours with the aim of ‘lift[ing] the living standards of the most vulnerable people in our region through aid for trade, better health and education outcomes, empowering women and girls and leveraging private sector involvement’.
This confirmed the Coalition Government’s cut of $656 million from the aid program in the current financial year, now more than halfway through. This means that Australia will now spend $107 million less on aid this year than last year. This is a cut to the aid budget in real terms, not just a cut to the rate of growth. It reverses the recent trend of real growth designed to move Australia closer to the global target for developed countries of spending 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) on aid, a target that has long had bipartisan political support in Australia. The Government’s cuts reduce the percentage of national income Australia spends on aid from 0.36% last year to 0.33% in 2013-14.
The Government has said that from financial year 2014-15 the aid budget will grow each year in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI). While this commitment to indexing provides certainty, it also means an end to real growth in Australia’s aid program; funding will now simply keep pace with inflation. Furthermore, CPI reflects changes in costs in Australia, which have a limited relationship to actual costs in the countries where Australia’s development assistance is focussed, or to the needs to which our aid program is responding.
At a time of growing inequality, when half the world’s resources go to the wealthiest 1% of people, leaving 99% of people to share the other half, the Government’s cuts to aid look both mean-spirited and short-sighted.
Thematically, we are pleased to see the empowerment of women and girls is stated as an overall priority for Australian aid. It is also referenced as a key cross cutting theme. However the information released on the weekend shows a cut of $3.7 million to targeted expenditure on disability and gender (from $29 million last year to $25 million this year). While this is concerning in itself, given the stated commitment to inclusion, this is only a small percentage of the overall aid budget that goes towards closing the significant gender gaps that persist, particularly in our region. Support for women’s empowerment and gender equality is provided through specific programs and through integrating gender in mainstream programs. Improving outcomes for women and girls, some 50% of the population, requires attention to gender across the whole aid program, with a particular focus on areas where gender gaps are widest or which are particularly strategic for improving the lives of women and girls, such as education, health, water and sanitation, and law and justice. Our starting assumption should be that Australia’s aid program equitably benefits women and girls, men and boys and helps ensure a child’s life chances don’t depend on whether they are born a girl or a boy.
In this context, we are particularly concerned about the potential for some cuts to cross-regional programs (programs not focussed on a specific country) to have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, and slow progress towards gender equality:
Health, water and sanitation, where $21.2 million has been cut from the announced budget for 2013-14 (down from $80.7 million to $59.5 million, though still a welcome increase on last year’s expenditure of $38 million). Investment in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is especially vital for women and girls, who currently spend an estimated 40 billion hours globally every year collecting water for their families – time that could be put to much more productive use, delivering enormous social and economic benefits. Access to WASH also reduces the risk of sexual assault faced daily by millions of women on long journeys to find water or a safe, private place to go to the toilet. When sanitation facilities are available, school attendance by girls increases by 11%.
Climate change and environmental sustainability programs have been slashed from $17 million last year to $500,000 this financial year. While IWDA’s deepest concern here is with the sustainability implications, we also know that women and girls are particularly vulnerable in natural disasters, have much local knowledge and experience to contribute to disaster risk reduction but are often closed out of decision-making about natural resource management.
Governance expenditure announced in the 2013-14 budget has been reduced by close to half (from $32 million down to $16.7 million) and is significantly down on last year’s expenditure of $27.2 million. Given the governance challenges in our region, and the fact that women’s political representation and rates of violence against women are the worst of any region in the world, this seems unlikely to be helpful.
Investment in research and development effectiveness within NGO, volunteer and community programs is down by $2.2 million on the $12.5 million announced in the budget for 2013-14 and down $1.5 million on last year’s expenditure. Particularly in the Pacific, where gender inequality is pronounced and the statistical and other evidence base is limited, this can only hamper the Government’s commitment to increased effectiveness.
Geographically, our international program presently works in 6 countries across Asia and the Pacific. The table below will give you a sense of how these nations have fared in the budget. The impact on IWDA remains uncertain.
Australian aid mid-year budget cuts 2013-14
Country Cuts against FY 13-14 budget Revised budget allocation Percentage cut
Papua New Guinea $5.3 million $448.5 million 1.2%
Solomon Islands $14.2 million $90.4 million 15.7%
Fiji $2.8 million $34.2 million 8.2%
Timor-Leste $8 million $70.0 million 11.4%
Cambodia $7.9 million $51.0 million 15.5%
Burma (Myanmar) $2 million $62.1 million 3.2%
The budget information released publicly to date does not reveal enough information for us to assess how our program or financial stability may be affected. IWDA will maintain dialogue with our colleagues at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to understand greater detail about programming and resourcing. Last year 37% of IWDA’s income came from Australian Government grants to support work with organisations improving women’s rights and gender equality in our region.
IWDA remains deeply concerned with media speculation that the 2014-15 aid budget may take us back to a blank canvas and a redesign of the aid budget. If the Government is genuine in its concern with effectiveness and providing stability and future certainty to partner governments, non-government organisations and international organisations, then cuts to the aid budget halfway through the financial year and signals that further wholesale change will be delivered in the May budget are neither strategic nor effective. This leaves many partnerships, and the people they are supporting, vulnerable and exposed, in turn undermining the very same poverty reduction, security and sustainability the aid program aims to achieve.
IWDA supports Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s statement in 2012 that ‘Report after report, survey after survey, indicates the absolute truth that investment in gender equality yields the highest returns of all the development investment we can make.’ However, there is a very real danger that consistent work to support gender equality won’t happen unless it is explicitly prioritised and funded. This is what has happened in the past. When the Labor Government cut aid commitments in 2013, programs supporting women’s rights were disproportionately damaged. Just over 61% of the total $375.1 million cut or diverted came from programs that had a principle or significant impact on women.
There is no debate to be had in regards to whether gender equality results in better development outcomes. We know that if women in developing countries had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30%, contributing to both food security and economic growth. Boosting women’s and girls’ access to education improves livelihoods and economic outcomes; gender gaps in education are estimated to cost the Asia and Pacific region up to US $30 billion a year. Violence against women has huge direct costs for individual women and their families and for health services, translating into billions of dollars lost to national economies. Investing more in sexual and reproductive health and maternal and newborn care would deliver enormous social and economic benefits, reducing unintended pregnancies, maternal and newborn deaths and expenditure on medical care for complications from unsafe abortions and more.
The Coalition Government emphasises benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of our aid. This week, IWDA joined all members of the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) to share with the Government a guiding document that reflects our expertise and experience regarding known markers of development effectiveness. The eight benchmarks recommended by ACFID to ensure an effective and accountable Australian aid program based on internationally agreed standards and good practice are:
Aid guided by a comprehensive policy statement
Aid targeted at inclusive growth (targeting the poorest 40% of people in middle and low income countries and creating opportunities for all including women’s empowerment, disability inclusion and other vulnerable and marginalised groups)
Aid targeted at peace, security and governance
Aid targeted at environmental sustainability
Aid delivered with effective partnerships
Aid delivered with civil society and people-to-people links
Aid delivered with predictability, transparency and accountability
Aid delivered with expertise, evidence and innovation
As CEO of IWDA and a member of the Executive Committee of ACFID I am deeply concerned that it remains unclear how Australia will capture and plan for the gender impact of this and subsequent budgets. IWDA calls for a gender budget mechanism as a companion to the focus on benchmarks, to connect policy and practice and provide greater transparency. Gender budgeting is a tool for translating the Minister’s declared policy priorities into action and will ensure a more targeted aid program going forward. Unless policy is linked to resourcing, the gap between commitment and action on gender equality will remain wide.
http://www.iwda.org.au/2014/01/21/australias-aid-budget-many-question-marks-remain/#utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=policy
