The war in Ukraine is pushing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the aspirations of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 further out of reach
Jeroen Kwakkenbos, EU aid expert at Oxfam said, "The war in Ukraine poses a risk to future aid budgets. Aid is already being pulled from countries like Syria to fund the reception of Ukrainian refugees in Europe.”
“We are left with the bizarre situation where European countries could become the largest recipients of their own aid. Instead of cherry-picking humanitarian crises, donor governments need to boost aid budgets to meet the challenges of today.”
“Over 350 million vaccine doses came from hoarded stocks, some of which, were donated far too close to their expiry date. Many more were donated without essential equipment such as syringes making them almost useless. Including these ‘donations’ in aid budgets inflates aid. It is merely donors patting themselves on the back for a job that may have cost lives,” he noted.
Daniel D. Bradlow, SARCHI Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations at the University of Pretoria explained, “The impact of the war in Ukraine is having a devastating impact on Africa. If it continues it is likely to lead to hunger, increased poverty and serious debt crises across the continent,” he added.
“If the Western countries really wanted African support for the war in Ukraine, they should have taken steps to shield Africa and other parts of the Global South from the impacts of a European war. Instead, they are redirecting aid that could have gone to Africa to Ukraine and are cutting their aid budgets”.
“This means that at the end of the day, the Western states are making African states pay for a conflict in Europe that suits their political agendas.”
No comments:
Post a Comment