Government's Official Development Assistance Annual Report 2018
News
15 November 2019
Our new Policy on International Development builds on Ireland’s strengths as a donor. It is at the heart of Ireland’s contribution to a more equal, peaceful and sustainable world. The emphasis in the new policy is to update our traditional focus on ‘the poorest of the poor’ to focus on the pledge of the SDGs to reach ‘the furthest behind first’.
The policy commits to scaling up resources and capacity across four policy priorities, including on:
• Prioritising Gender equality, including a strengthened focus on education for girls, and new initiatives on Sexual and Reproductive Health and on Women’s Economic Empowerment.
• Reducing humanitarian need, to consolidate our response to hunger, humanitarian crises and intensify our work on conflict prevention.
• Climate action: as part of our international response we will scale up our spending and explore innovative approaches to risk insurance and climate adaptation; a new Oceans initiative will seek to tap into the potential of the blue economy including for Small Island Developing States.
• Strengthening governance: we will have a central focus on effective institutions for delivering economic growth and long term sustainable transformation.
The policy also outlines a commitment to intensify work in three clusters of interventions where Ireland has proven expertise: protection, food and people. They are also areas which are authentic to Ireland’s own development story over a century of democracy. The focus on protection seeks to engage more on conflict prevention and resolution, and protracted crises, building on our longstanding effective response to humanitarian crises. The second cluster on food, focuses on food and sets out a sustainable food systems approach; resonating with Ireland’s journey from famine to a major food exporter has resonance. The focus on people builds on the traditional engagement of Irish development workers in health and education in developing countries.
Download Report: https://www.irishaid.ie/media/irishaid/latestnews/Irish-Aid-2018-Annual-Report.pdf