development

The Federal Government has announced it will meet its promised foreign aid target a year later than promised.

An Australian professor working in Norway says the training and arming of the Police mobile squad in Papua New Guinea by Australian aid "has produced a large dedicated private army" used by Malaysian logging interests.

Despite ample evidence of human rights abuses being committed in the name of an AusAID funded resettlement project, nothing seems to have changed.

AID/WATCH welcomes the suspension of the Cambodian Railway Project by Toll Royal Railways, but this is just the first step in redressing the problems with this project.

An Australian firm has pulled out of its involvement in running the Cambodian train system after criticism from aid groups. Toll says it will withdraw from the operation for one year. Aid/Watch claimed the project was forcing poor Cambodians out of their homes.

Proposed voluntary directives on access and ownership rights to go to UN committee on world food security for final approval.

The Federal Opposition's Defence Spokesman has attacked Australia's aid effort in Afghanistan, saying Ausaid's presence in the country is ''extremely low'' and the Gillard Government needs to rethink its approach.

Back in 2008 AID/WATCH wrote about a controversial ADB sponsored open cut mine in Bangladesh that threatened to displace 130,000 people. The UN Special rapporteur on the right to food has echoed our initial concerns and recommended that the project not proceed due to concerns over human rights and environmental desctruction

Read Bridges Across Borders new report on the AusAID funded Cambodian railways project

AUSAID is considering a new strategy for Afghan assistance - spending more than $20 million over the next four years on mainly agricultural projects to assist poor residents in drought-stricken areas and to help strengthen local Afghan non-government organisations, a leaked concept paper shows.