NEWS & EVENTS

The aid agency has called on the UN Climate Change Summit, in Cancun, in December, to create a Global Climate Fund for vulnerable populations in poor countries.At a crucial lead-up meeting in Tianjin China over the weekend, there was some progress towards a Climate...

Afghans recently voted in their fourth poll since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. They did so in a country that continues to be wracked by conflict and persistent poverty. It's estimated that 42 per cent of the population live below the poverty line, and there...

The federal opposition seized on the warning as further evidence that an unchecked Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd, who last week was spruiking Australia's benevolence to the United Nations, will only accelerate the program's failure.Deputy opposition leader and...

ActionAid’s report reveals that hunger is costing poor nations US$450 billion a year - more than ten times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015 and meet Millennium Development Goal One.Fighting hunger is in other words ten times cheaper than ignoring...

Care's CEO, Julia Newton-Howes, outlined the details at a Canberra conference called to discuss the findings of a recent joint review of the Australia-PNG Development Co-operation Treaty. Presenter: Canberra Correspondent, Linda MottramSpeaker: Professor Stephen...

He says this as he prepares for his first overseas trip in the job, travelling to the United States. Doctor Emerson says he wants to turn his mind to PACER-Plus, the proposed Pacific free trade deal, as soon as possible, though a tight Parliamentary schedule in...

The endorsement came after this week's meeting of regional agriculture and forestry leaders considered the findings of the report 'Making Land Work' prepared by Australia's overseas aid body, AusAID.The acting director of the Land Resources Division at the Secretariat...

Images of the Australian Defence Force delivering aid to Pakistan this week dominate the Australian government's aid agency website. The news heralds the arrival of mixed military and civilian medical teams to flood-devastated areas.In Britain, the Department for...

Presenter: Jemima Gerrett Speaker: Deva de Silva, from the International Finance Corporation DE SILVA: The priority or the focus here is the lower income segments of the economies in the Pacific Island countries, starting from Timor Leste to PNG and all the other...

Presenter: Jemima GarrettSpeaker: Emele Duitutraga, Executive Director of the Pacific Islands Association of Non-government OrganisationsGARRETT: The Forum Secretariat's failure to consult the peak bodies representing grassroots organisations has been a bone of...

A team of Australian researchers is working with communities in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to monitor exactly how the billions of development dollars that flow into the Pacific directly and indirectly impact women.Professor Katherine Gibson from the Centre for...

PACER Plus is the most important trade negotiation Pacific countries are going to undertake this decade. However, Pacific civil society organisations have not been adequately consulted about the type of development and trade relationship the...

Vanuatu’s Malvatumauri (National Council of Chiefs) has called on Pacific leaders to protect custom land, endorsing a regional declaration on indigenous land tenure in Melanesia.Chief Selwyn Garu, Secretary General of the Malvatumauri announced that the council...

MILDA called upon the Forum leaders, and particularly the leaders of the Melanesian states, to reject all policies which require that customary land be registered as a precondition for business or development activities, and to cease all pressures for customary land...

At the Cairns Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting last year negotiations for PACER-Plus were launched “forthwith”. For Kevin Rudd, as (then) Chair of the Forum, this was both an important public relations coup to deliver to the media and also a key...

Aid sceptics, such as William Easterly and Dambisa Moyo, have made a powerful case against not only the waste and perverse impacts of many misguided projects, but also the patronising and disempowering assumptions of 'northerners' seeking to shoulder a new 'white...

“This agreement has the potential to liberalise tobacco, alcohol and increase access to cheap processed foods. Elected governments will have their hands tied if they try and introduce policies to protect their people’s health’, Patricia Morton from...

A firm belief in community is helping medical experts in Timor-Leste develop strategies for fighting a chronic shortage of healthcare professions.'The healthcare system is still grossly under-utilised. And where we really fall down is we're not doing enough to address...