Development Archives

Donor fatigue is a political choice and a "tragic error" by Western leaders, and it is making the Global South feel "disappointed, frustrated and even betrayed", Achim Steiner, chief administrator of the UN development programme, told EURACTIV. 

China and Russia are bolstering their presence in Africa to tap its rich natural resources, analysts say, amid grave warnings from UN agencies the world's poorest countries face accumulating crippling debts.

The international community needs to rapidly agree on a new debt relief programme worth $148 billion by 2029 to avoid a new debt crisis, the United Nations has argued ahead of a key G20 summit on international finance. 

Protests in Stockholm on 21 January against Turkey and NATO, including the burning of a copy of the Koran, heightened tensions with Turkey at a time when the Nordic country needs Ankara's backing to gain entry to the military alliance.

Women’s leadership has been shown to result in greater responsiveness to citizens’ needs, as well as increased cooperation in delivering sustainable peace and improved outcomes of climate-related projects and policies, writes Ebru Özdemir.

The combination of drought, climate change and donor fatigue have resulted in a 'foreseeable' food crisis in Eastern Africa that has left millions at risk of famine, panellists told an event organised by EURACTIV last week. 

The world’s population will reach 8 billion in the middle of November – a testament to scientific breakthroughs and improvements in nutrition, public health and sanitation. But as our human family grows larger, it is also growing more divided, writes António Guterres.

It is vital that much needed support for Ukraine does not come at the expense of funding international development, prevention, peace and resilience-building efforts, write Ulrika Modéer and Thomas Gass.

The European Union must be the driving force for reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals, where progress has come to a halt or has even been reversed. Tomas Tobé and Jessica Polfjärd explain how this can be achieved.

The development arm of the European Investment Bank is expected to be instrumental to the success of the EU's Global Gateway project. So why then is there so little information about EIB Global's structure and mandate, ask Farwa Sial and Adrian Chikowor.

The war in Ukraine has pushed the number of refugees across the world to more than 100 million, according to a new report published on Thursday (16 June). 

A small charity broke ground this year on a clinic in northern Burkina Faso to care for thousands of women and children who have fled Islamist insurgents wreaking havoc along the fringes of the Sahara.

While foreign aid from countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reached historic highs in 2021, data analysis shows this was primarily fuelled by donating COVID-19 vaccines, many of which were out of date or unusable.

There is growing concern that aid spending by European states to cope with the humanitarian crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will come at the expense of other existing crises across the world.

Talks between wealthy nations on how to report donated COVID vaccines have collapsed after they failed to agree on a common rules regime.

Wealthy states were stuck at an impasse after failing at a meeting on Tuesday (December 21) to agree on new rules that would allow them to report the donation of surplus COVID-19 vaccines as aid.

In recent months, the world has watched in real-time as Afghanistan spiralled deeper into humanitarian catastrophe. Now it is teetering on the edge of full economic collapse, writes Harlem Désir,

The question of how COVID vaccines donated by wealthy countries are classified and priced could artificially raise the European Union’s development aid figures by billions of euros, EURACTIV understands.

For a growing number of populations around the world, facing a future of more frequent and extreme disasters will only be possible if more funding is channelled towards adaptation and disaster risk reduction, writes Mami Mizutori.

El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, a real-world experiment proponents say will lower commission costs for billions of dollars sent home from abroad but which critics warned may fuel money laundering.

The EU, the UN and the United States on Sunday (5 September) condemned what appears to be a military coup d’état in Guinea.

The 2015-2016 refugee crisis must not repeat itself in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, foreign ministers of Mediterranean countries stressed at Bled Strategic Forum on Thursday (2 September), calling for more cooperation in the region.

Norway’s investment of billions in fighting overseas deforestation follows the West’s hypocritical relationship with climate change, once again shifting the blame on developing nations whilst diverting attention away from the West’s culpability in environmental destruction, writes Muhammed Magassy.

The European Commission said it had reached a temporary agreement with South Africa to use a plant there to bottle Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines that are being imported into the EU, after criticism of the arrangement.