On 16 June, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the unexpected merger of The Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) into a new Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
This merger could be disastrous for those struggling to survive poverty, climate change, and the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than building a “global Britain,” it could see aid being spent on the UK’s trade, defence, and commercial interests. This would be putting politics before...
ONE
Aya Chebbi is an activist and AU Youth Envoy. We interviewed her as part of our #PassTheMic campaign. Here’s some of what she had to say.
The COVID-19 pandemic is taking over the world, causing a worldwide impact on education. School and university closures are disrupting the education of over 1.53 billion learners, 743 million of whom are girls. School and university students around the world have had to adapt to e-learning.
Lockdowns, quarantines, curfews, isolation, and social distancing that you...
Even before COVID-19, 90% of children in low-income countries could not read and understand a simple sentence. The global learning crisis is the biggest educational threat of our time, not just because it means that individual potential is being squandered. The world’s future hangs in the balance. After all, the children of today are the doctors and public health professionals of tomorrow.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, this sobering picture has only gotten worse. At its peak, COVID-19 pushed 1.6 billion...
Melene Rossouw is the founder of Women Lead Movement. We interviewed her as part of our #PassTheMic series. Here’s some of what she had to say.
Within a few short months, COVID-19 has left a trail of devastation. It has severely affected our health and social welfare systems. In poorer countries, it has exacerbated another humanitarian crisis, where the fight between virus, hunger, and adequate hygiene has become a daily and ever growing battle and concern.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed our...
New OECD projects paint a grim picture for economic growth and recovery in the world’s biggest economies. The projections focus on two scenarios, one in which there is a second outbreak of COVID-19 infections before the end of 2020, with global lockdowns reinstated, and the other where a new wave is avoided.
But our Executive Director of Policy David McNair asked a different question: how will the aftershocks of COVID-19 affect the world’s poorest countries?
https://twitter.com/David_McNair/status/1271393245365522434
Government measures around the world have...
Before COVID-19, 135 million were experiencing hunger so severe that it threatened their lives and livelihoods. Now with COVID-19, that number could double by the end of 2020.
Pandemics and hunger crises go hand in hand. COVID-19 is no different. The economic impact of the pandemic translates into poverty as millions of people’s sources of income fall due to job losses. Remittances to low-and middle-income countries are expected to fall by 20% in 2020, more than double international aid to...
Here’s some good news: governments, philanthropists, and private sector companies committed US$8.8 billion this week to ensure Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance can immunise over 300 million children in the world’s poorest countries over the next five years! These new commitments, made at the Global Vaccine Summit hosted by the UK government, will ultimately save 8 million lives and give children a safer, healthier start to life.
This is more important now than ever. While the world is fighting to stop...
We have an opportunity to rethink global systems and leadership during this transitional period, experts argued during a recent event.
“Remember that times of disruption allow us to rewrite some of the rules … We have the opportunity to actually reimagine some of the institutions that we have and lay the ground for the institutions we need,” explained Gayle Smith, CEO of the ONE Campaign and the former administrator of USAID.
Gayle was joined by former US Secretary of State Madeleine...
Sabine Terlecki is the deputy lead of donor relations at the Global Partnership for Education.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, children and youth all over the world are no longer in classrooms. Home schooling has become the new normal. This is a new situation for everyone, everywhere — but in developing countries, COVID-19 poses enormous challenges for children and parents and further exacerbates existing inequalities.
In my own country of Germany, the education system normally functions quite well. However,...
As part of our #PassTheMic series, where global health experts take over celebrities’ social media channels to discuss COVID-19, Actor David Oyelowo interviewed Gayle Smith, the president and CEO of ONE and former administrator of the US Agency for International Development.
Here’s David’s interview with Gayle about what will make the difference during COVID-19.
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