2020 Development trends, MFAT's Partnering for Impact update, Flipping the Nexus and more

+ Happy New Year & 'The Decade of Delivery'

The CID team would like to wish you all a Happy New Year, Tau Hou koa, Feliz Año Nuevo, Manuia le Tausaga Fou, Xin Nian Kuai Le, سنة جديدة سعيدة, Buon anno, Bonne Année, and Na tawase ni yabaki vou! 

We sincerely hope your 2020 is one of positivity, great communion, and achievement of all your personal goals, as well organisational development/ humanitarian targets!

With just ten years left in which to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the decade ahead has been dubbed 'the Decade of Delivery'. As is the case at the start of any new year there have been numerous lists of likely trends or things to look out for the year/ decade ahead. The start of 2020 has been no different, with a number of lists published recently:

• Ten humanitarian crisis and trends to watch in 2020
• Aid Policy Trends to watch in 2020
• Six global trends to watch in 2020
• The Decade of Delivery: Can We Still Meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030?
• Bond's 12 things to watch in 2020 and what it could mean for international development
• SDG Knowledge Hub Expectations for Super Year 2020

 

+ EoIs for Pacific Island Non-State Actor Capacity Building Programme

*** Please note the deadline for EoIs is this Friday, 17th January 5:00pm Fiji time ***

In Partnership with the European Union, the Pacific Islands Forum is committed to building stronger partnerships and relationships with regional and national Non-State Actors (NSAs). Two inception workshops are taking place in Fiji in February, and these are comprised of two distinct but related programs  run back-to-back :

1. Policy Development Skills (18th - 20th February) – research, policy analysis, coalition building, policy influencing, developing advocacy strategies, and exploring opportunities for engagement, and 
2. Monitoring and tracking implementation of policy initiatives towards Ending Violence Against Women and Girls in Forum Island Countries (25th - 27th February) - Training for CSOs on EVAWG Policy Monitoring Toolkit to empower CSOs to participate in policy formulation, implementation and strengthen CSO and government partnerships to progress implementation of agreed regional and national commitments on ending violence against women and girls. 

You may apply to participate in either or both programs. If you or your partners are interested in participating, please urgently contact Aaron Davy Here are the 2020 NSA Regional Capacity Building concept note and application form.
 

+ 15 years since Indian Ocean Tsunami/ 10 years since Haiti Earthquake

On 26th December 2004, an undersea 'mega-thrust' magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia resulted in a series of large tsunami waves around the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean. The tsunamis killed an estimate of 227,898 people in 14 countries. The Indonesian city of Banda Aceh reported the largest number of victims.

Millions in Indonesia, Thailand and other impacted communities have marked the 15th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Many also ask if new warning systems have made the region safer 15 years later?

A decade after a magnitude 7 earthquake, Haiti still struggles in its recovery from the destruction left behind. The earthquake happened on 12th January 2010, with an additional significant 52 aftershocks over the following 10 days. At the time the Haitian PM stated that he believed the death toll was more than 316,000, since then investigations have estimated that fatalities numbered approximately 90,000 - 100,000. Over three million people were affected by the quake, with nearly one million of those displaced.

Ten years after the devastating earthquake, some Haitians still question the lack of recovery and say they are losing hope. Also, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA. recently reported that the number of Haitians who do not have sufficient food to eat is expected to surpass four million in 2020.
 

+ MFAT Partnering for Impact: NGO Wānangā & Toroa

NGO Wānanga

MFAT are planning to hold Partnering for Impact wānanga in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch next week.  The timings and venues for each of the wānangā are as follow:

• Auckland - Wed, 22nd January 9:30 - 12:30 @ Tearfund NZ, 64c Stoddard Road, Mt Roskill
• Wellington - Thu, 23rd January 9:30 - 12:30 @ MFAT, 195 Lambton Quay, Te Aro
• Christchurch - Fri, 24th January 1:00 - 4:00 @ The Meeting Rooms, 10 de Havilland Way. Christchurch International Airport

The objectives for the wānangā are to provide an update, including an outline of MFAT's recently finalised monitoring, evaluation, research and learning framework; deliver a brief workshop on Manaaki; and to create space for partners to share any messaging.  There will also be a brief session in Wellington on MFAT’s new Policy Statement on NZ International Cooperation for Effective Sustainable Development.

If you wish to attend, please rsvp to MFAT - indicating which wānangā you plan to come along to - before 10:00am Tues, 21st January.  

Te Rōpū o Ngā Toroa (Toroa) – New NGO Reference Group

Following on from the success of the inaugural Partnering for Impact NGO Reference Group, MFAT are also moving to set up a new reference group to support the ongoing design, implementation and adaption of the programme. The new reference group is called Te Rōpū o Ngā Toroa (Toroa). Please find attached the terms of reference for Toroa here.
 
If you are interested in nominating yourself, or someone else, please complete the expression of interest form attached here. Applications will close at midday on Fri, 7th February. 
 
MFAT will contact all those who submit an EOIs by mid-February with the outcomes of the application process.  They expect to hold the first Toroa in Wellington either in late February or early March.
 

+ When goodwill goes bad

A CID opinion piece How misdirected kindness can hamper essential aid was published by the NZ Herald, The Dominion and healthcentral.nz just prior to Christmas. This article included a link to direct the public to the webpages of CID members collecting donations for the Samoa measles epidemic. This article addressed the issue of unsolicited bilateral donations in response to the Samoa Measles epidemic, and common logistical issues that have since been illustrated in regards to public donations to Australia bush-fires over the last number of weeks.

A website will be launched by World Food Programme in late February with the domain name donateresponsibly.org. The launch of the website will be accompanied by a regional social media campaign, that CID will also be part of.

The website will take the user on a journey that traces the potential (negative) path of goods if donated without adequate coordination, and compare this to the path of 'cash is best' best-practice. The website acknowledges that donations-in-kind (between family, churches and diaspora is quite different to unsolicited bilateral donations. The goal of the website is to educate and inform the user to donate effectively, including checklists before sending and links to remittance services, and reputable organisation to donate. 
 

+ Making a submission to the Australian aid budget review

*** Please note the deadline for submissions is Fri, 31st January. ***

The priorities of the Australian foreign aid budget are to come under scrutiny in a landmark review being carried out by the Morrison government. ACFID have invited New Zealand NGOs to engage in the review as well, and believe it will be important for the Australian Government to hear the regional perspective of the New Zealand sector as well.

The review is the beginning of the first major reset of the Australian international aid and development programme since 2013 and is set to identify new priorities and reassess which countries receive support. 

ACFID have released a short toolkit to help organisations engage, and this includes some suggested key issues, links to other resources and media, etc. In advance of the review, ACFID polled the public on how they believe the $4 billion aid foreign aid budget should be spent. They found:

• 60% of those surveyed believed that Australian aid should primarily serve the poorest people and those most in need; and
• 33% believed spending should primarily serve Australia’s interests.

ACFID has stated that they believe that Australian assistance should be targeted at the bottom 40% of people by income in poor countries. Marc Purcell, ACFID chief executive states, "Prioritising the poorest and most marginalised people should be the foundation stone of the Australian government's assistance to our neighbours."
 

+ Flipping the Nexus

The clear commitment to 'close' the humanitarian-development-peace nexus has been a crucial element of the sector's debate in the last few years. But, is it working?

Attempting to address the symptoms of our dysfunction without trying to alter the sector’s underlying architecture, drivers, or ideological foundations is, at best, distractingly inefficient, at worst, pointless. 

For meaningful reform to take place – beyond agreeing to the nexus in principle while having no real intention to change the structures and ideologies of separation – we need to take a harder, deeper look at the power dynamics within our sector and what incentivises our behaviour.

Marc DuBois, former director of Médecins Sans Frontières UK, writes on The New Humanitarian that the problem with the triple nexus is not the lack of linkage between the three silos, but the conglomerated silos of sub-specialisation within each sectoral silo.

According to DuBois, the triple nexus simply reinforces the very dysfunction it aims to correct, namely the misapplication of three cloistered international crisis response systems to multi-dimensional yet unified, organic whole-of-society crises.  

In his sharp analysis, DuBois explains why the nexus calls for compromise, not purity. 
 

+ New CID working groups - get involved!

Thank you to those of you have put your names forward to help set up the CID Working Groups. We’ll be in touch.

These Working Groups will report to the CID Board, and help to drive activities and advocacy in key areas of interest for our sector. 

If you would like to be part of these groups, please contact CID at office@cid.org.nz

We will be in touch with all of you have already contacted us in the new year to discuss Terms of Reference and next steps. The CID working groups are as follows:

• Localisation 
• Partnerships with Business 
• Partnerships with Academia