No Pacific Aid Cut Amid Financial Crisis: Australia
Date: 29-Oct-08
Country: AUSTRALIA
Many poor nations, particularly in Africa, have raised concern their people will eventually bear the brunt of financial upheaval as richer nations cut back on aid in response to any global recession.
But Australia's aid minister, Bob McMullan, said Canberra would remain a major aid donor to south Pacific island nations like the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Kiribati, many of which have experienced recent security upheavals.
"Australian aid will never change despite the financial crisis. We will continue to boost our assistance to the Pacific island nations," McMullan told the Solomon Star newspaper.
Australia's May budget committed A$3.7 billion (US$2.2 billion) for foreign aid, with a third going to the Pacific, which Australian defence planners call an "arc of instability".
Much of the money goes to improving administration and infrastructure, as well as fighting the impact of climate change and rising sea levels, expected to eventually inundate low-level nations like Kiribati.
An Australian report this year said many of Australia's Pacific neighbours were economically worse off than sub-Saharan Africa, with 3 million people living on less than $1 a day and poverty to pick up this year by 4.8 percent, before the global crisis struck.
Up to a million children did not attend school regularly and 18,000 children died each year from easily preventable causes, the Australian aid report said.
At a meeting of aid officials at last month's United Nations General Assembly, France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said it was "sort of unfair" to be talking about alleviating poverty when rich nations were fighting economic crisis.
But US President George W. Bush earlier this month warned it would be a "serious mistake" for rich nations to cut aid pledges in the wake of the financial crisis and turn inward to focus on their own economies.
(US$1=A$1.66)
(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Valerie Lee)