CID Weekly: Welcome back! New CID Associate Members, Cyclone Yasa Update & more.

Ngā mihi o te tau hou ki a koutou katoa, Ia manuia le Tausaga Fou, Manuia te Tauhaga Fou, Hauoli Makahiki Hou and Happy New Year!

In the year ahead, we are confident that we will continue to draw upon the collective resilience and strength of our sector, particularly as we address any vagaries that flow into 2021 - from the disruptiveness of 2020. We look forward to a positive year ahead, and the CID team wishes you all the best for 2021!
 

+ Brief 2 min Newsletter Survey - Please Complete!

With the start of the new year, we are conducting a review of the CID Weekly to see what sort of content you would like us to include in it.

If you could please take a couple of minutes to fill out this survey of the CID Weekly and provide us with some feedback, it would be much appreciated.

Please email Luke at members@cid.org.nz if you have any further comments about the newsletter.
 

+ Welcome to our two new Associate Members!

CID would like to welcome two new Associate Members to the network: Tonkin + Taylor, and Better World.

       
                     



Tonkin + Taylor have been an integral part of the CID network for a while, and we are delighted to make it official with their Associate Membership status. Tonkin + Taylor do extensive work alongside other members in the Pacific, and we look forward to having T+T as a part of the conversation. 

Better World is an initiative that supports a range of international development and altruistic endeavours around the world. Despite being a small organisation, they have a lot to offer, and we look forward to having their Director, David Allis, join the network.
 

+ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Next week - on the 22nd January - the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons shall enter into force.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on activities, including undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. The Treaty also prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons on national territory and the provision of assistance to any State in the conduct of prohibited activities. 

New Zealand was one of the first signatories of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which aimed to prevent states without nuclear weapons from acquiring them, and committed the five states already possessing nuclear weapons to a process of disarmament.

Dissatisfaction with the lack of progress in nuclear disarmament has since become widespread. Along with other members of the United Nations (UN), New Zealand voted in December 2016 to mandate negotiations for a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.  New Zealand was also one of the first to signed the new treaty, on 20th September 2017; the first day it opened for signatures.
 

+ 2021 Trends to watch for in Aid Policy

The theory goes that big events and mega-crisis spurred reforms, so 2020 could be a historical turning point for the humanitarian sector. But will it force a reset, or a rethink, of a humanitarian system highly resistant to change? 

Given the growing numbers of people affected, the disruptions to conventional ways of working, and the prospect of dwindling funding, the pandemic year reignited many conversations about aid reform. Whether that momentum will continue as vaccines are rolled out, travel restrictions are lifted, and life moves towards some semblance of normality is uncertain. Here are four trends/ questions The New Humanitarian will be keeping an eye on in 2021:

1. How will the rapid growth in state-led social protections intersect with the humanitarian sector?
2. How will global solidarity and multilateralism meet the challenges of division and competition?
3. How will movements such as #BlackLivesMatter continue to influence the aid sector?
4. What if the COVID-19 pandemic is just a taste of the future?
    

+ After Tropical Cyclone Yasa...

The UN resident coordinator in Fiji says support for those made homeless by Cyclone Yasa will be needed for many more months. More than 3,000 people are still in evacuation centres across the country's north, three weeks after the category five cyclone.

A number of schools and educational facilities - utilised as evacuation centers - have now been cleared and disinfected however, to ensure they are ready to open for the new term. UNICEF has supported the Ministry of Education to ensure schools in effected areas are ready to open for the first term of 2021.

With hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops estimated to have been destroyed, as well as subsistence farmers’ personal food sources, the Fijian government believes there is a need for a quick recovery plan to ensure the nutrition needs for people in the north are met. The recovery plan has so far has included distributing 10,000 seedlings and Bele cuttings and more than 150,000 cassava stems and deploying teams to affected communities.

The 2nd part of New Zealand's support through the $2 million support package continues to be implemented. A number of CID Humanitarian Network members also submitted applications for a New Zealand Disaster Response Partnership funding round, with the outcome of this to be notified this week.
 

+ New appointees to CID sub committees

CID would like to congratulate Quenelda Clegg (Director of Programmes, ChildFund New Zealand)  on becoming the new Chair of the CID Humanitarian Network. Quenelda leads ChildFund's programmes team in the delivery of development assistance and humanitarian projects throughout Asia, Africa, and the Pacific regions. Prior to her role at ChildFund, she worked in schools, including in Timor-Leste and an indigenous community in Australia. Quenelda has also worked for the United Nations and the World Bank. 

We would also like to congratulate Kate Holgate (International Programmes Advisor, Habitat for Humanity New Zealand) and Rosemary Fenton (International Programmes Director, Save the Children New Zealand) on becoming the new Member Representatives on the CID Code of Conduct Committee. 

We are really excited to be starting the new year with the talent of these new appointees supporting our work in both the Code space and humanitarian coordination.
 

+ A moment in time... Pacific Localisation & Covid 

With the pandemic response continuing, and international travel restrictions, border closures and lockdowns currently still in place, a large numbers of expatriate development and aid practitioners have returned to their home countries. This represents a significant change in the demography of the development landscape in many regions, particularly within the Pacific,  

So, what are we witnessing? This period is a unique moment in time, one that presents challenges and opportunities for locally led humanitarian response and development.

A number of initiatives have sought to explore these dynamics, and to understand what this means now, and what it could mean in the future. DevPolicy has collated a number of reviews, and this is available here.