Irish Aid Annual Report 2005 Tá cóipeanna den Turaascáil Bhliantiúil seo ag fáil as Gaelige o: Cúnamh Éireann, An Roinn Gnóthaí Eachtracha, Cearnóg an Easpaig, Cnoc Réamoinn, Átha Cliath 2 Tel + 353 1 408 2423 Irish Aid Annual Report 2005 Annual Report 2005 Contents Foreword 4 Bilateral programme 6 Ethiopia 8 Lesotho 10 Mozambique 12 Tanzania 14 Timor Leste 16 Uganda 18 Vietnam 20 Zambia 22 Other countries 24 Balkans/Commonwealth of Independent States 26 Zimbabwe 27 Palestine 28 Sierra Leone/Liberia 30 South Africa 32 Emergency Relief and Recovery Assistance 36 Partnership with Civil Society 38 Multilateral development assistance 40 United Nations 42 UN Food and Agricultural Agencies 44 World Bank 46 European Union 48 Co-financing with Multilateral Agencies 50 Priority Areas 54 Evaluation and Audit 56 Development Education 58 The Advisory Board of Irish Aid 60 Fellowships and Training 62 Statistical annexes 64 www.irishaid.gov.ie Annual Report 2005 Foreword 2005 was my first full year as Minister of State To facilitate this interest, Irish Aid supported with responsibility for Ireland’s overseas aid and Comhlámh’s publication of ‘Working for a Better was one of the most active and important in the World’, providing information on volunteering history of the Irish Aid programme. opportunities as a first step in harnessing the strong volunteer spirit in the country. It was a year of immense and devastating global emergencies but it was also the year where the Ireland also initiated an EU mentoring cause of development was afforded the highest programme for new member states embarking political priority on the world stage. on their own development cooperation programmes. In 2005, we hosted Lithuania The G8 meeting in Gleneagles, the UN’s and Hungary and plan further visits by other Millennium Review Summit and the WTO countries in the coming years. meeting in Hong Kong focused global attention on the need for high level political engagement in We also welcomed a new era of cooperation the fight against world poverty. with the Health Research Board, complementing our decision in 2005 to ensure that spending on At home, the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern T.D. and HIV/AIDS would be over €100 million per year. I announced that Ireland would reach the UN target of spending 0.7% of our GNP on overseas Internationally, we faced the aftermath of the aid by 2012. This historic and ambitious plan Asian Tsunami, the ongoing humanitarian will mean that Irish Aid spending will be in the situation in Darfur, chronic food shortages order of €1.5 billion by that date. in Niger and the Pakistan earthquake. These emergencies required concerted, coherent and This unparalleled increase in our aid allocation immediate response. I am pleased to report demonstrates that the cause of development is that we in Ireland more than lived up to our firmly at the heart of Ireland’s foreign policy. responsibilities in these areas. In order to plan for this increased commitment, Close to a quarter of a million people perished I invited submissions from organisations to in the areas affected by the Asian tsunami of the shape a White Paper on the future direction previous Christmas and coastal areas of twelve of the aid programme. This was followed by a countries were decimated. The Government and series of meetings throughout the year for the people of Ireland stepped up immediately to the members of public to give their views on the aid challenge of recovery and reconstruction. programme and Ireland’s relationship with the developing world. Chris Flood was appointed the Government’s Special Envoy for the Tsunami disaster and he These were well-attended and oftentimes lively reported regularly on the needs of the region and discussions displaying the huge interest that the efficacy of our efforts. The Government’s exists among Irish people in the work of Irish total response of €20 million was more than Aid and their willingness to make an active matched by the extraordinary generosity of contribution to the attainment of global equality. the public to Irish NGOs, amounting to over www.irishaid.gov.ie Annual Report 2005 €100 million, making Ireland one of the top five In these countries, we provide substantial contributors globally to this region. and predictable funding to government-run programmes assisting them in their aim to In April, I travelled to Darfur to the tragedy that achieve the Millennium Development Goals. is daily unfolding in that area of Sudan. I met with Sudanese Ministers impressing upon them This approach is yielding real results. In the ten the necessity for a peaceful settlement and that short years of our bilateral programme with humanitarian activities go unhindered. Mozambique, the percentage of people living in absolute poverty has decreased substantially. Irish Aid pledged €17 million over the year to assist this area in most desperate need of Ethiopia’s deforested northern Tigray region has international attention and support. been regenerated and agriculture in that region can now sustain livelihoods. During the summer the humanitarian crisis in Niger came to international attention. Niger Uganda has 30% more trained health care is ranked 177th out of the 177 countries on workers. Lesotho and Tanzania are nearing the UN’s Human Development Index, making a universal enrolment in their it the least developed country in the world primary schools. where statistics are recorded. The Government allocated €3 million to deal with acute Over 100,000 Zambians have access to clean malnutrition in that country. water and Timor Leste’s fledgling state held village elections in 13 districts – all with Irish support. In response to the earthquake that struck Pakistan on 8th October, Irish Aid pledged 2005 was a year of reaction, continuation and €10 million in immediate funding. I visited innovation. We reacted quickly and effectively the country in December meeting President to disasters as they occurred, continued and Musharraf, viewing the destruction for myself enhanced our internationally renowned long- and the excellent rehabilitation work undertaken term development work and began the process by NGOs with Irish money. for Ireland’s first ever White Paper on Irish aid. Throughout these visits, I was heartened by the I am proud to direct this programme and of the work of Irish and international NGOs in some of Irish people who finance and engage in this fine the harshest working environments in the world. work. In all of this I have been greatly assisted Our aid programme recognises these invaluable by our hard working team of diplomats, efforts and funded these organisations to the Irish Aid officials and Development Specialists. tune of over €100 million in 2005. This close cooperation will be enhanced in future years. The headline events demand response, nonetheless, the bulk of the Irish Aid programme was and continues to be in the slow work of building societies in our partner countries in Africa and Asia. Conor Lenihan T.D. Minister of State for Irish Aid www.irishaid.gov.ie Bilateral programme www.irishaid.gov.ie www.irishaid.gov.ie Annual Report 2005 Bilateral Aid to Ethiopia in 2005 €28.1 million Ethiopia Population 77.43 million 2005 HDI rank 170th (out of 177 countries) Programme Summary hold. The plans for scaling up aid, which had been put in place at the start of the year, were Most Ethiopians lead lives of unrelenting also shelved for the time being. hardship. The majority of households live on small plots of relatively unproductive land At the start of 2005, following a year-long and rely almost entirely on hand-cultivation of planning process, Irish Aid’s Country Strategy basic food grains to survive. More than 15% of Paper for Ethiopia was approved. The new children die before their fifth birthday and 47% strategy aims to strengthen partnership with of children are malnourished in some form or the Government of Ethiopia and non-state another. Maternal mortality, at 871 per 100,000, development partners with a primary focus on is about the highest in the world. addressing issues around health and education, HIV/AIDS, governance and vulnerability/rural Nevertheless, in 2005, there has been development. encouraging progress in improving some basic aspects of life in Ethiopia. Since 1996, the The Human Development literacy rate has increased by 50%, the rate of malnutrition has fallen by 20%, the share Programme (The Social of the population with access to clean water Sectors) has risen to 38% and according to the Welfare Monitoring Survey, there has been a steady Irish Aid’s support to health, education and decline in the reported incidence of illness. HIV/AIDS in 2005 amounted to €10.5 million. €4.3 million of which contributed to Federal 2005 was a particularly difficult year for level interventions, €4.3 million to the Southern Ethiopians – mostly because of the political crisis Nations Region and €1.9 million to Civil Society surrounding the elections in May. The positive Organisations. ‘opening up of political space’ in advance of May and peaceful conduct of the actual polls A new Human Development Team Approach contrasted sharply with the civil disturbances was adopted in 2005, which represented and violence, which followed the announcement a departure from the traditional sectoral of the election results. The subsequent response approaches that had been deployed previously. of the Government, resulted in 193 deaths, the The rationale was that a number of key detention of thousands and the imprisonment development challenges being tackled by of the leaders of the main opposition party. This Irish Aid are common to the three areas of provoked the condemnation of the international health, education and HIV/AIDS and that community and seriously disrupted the many of the investment strategies rely on development cooperation agenda.