Reality of Aid

Reality of Aid Report 2020/2021

With the theme of aid in the context of conflict, fragility and the climate emergency, The 2020/2021 Reality of Aid Report aims to contribute to the overall body of work on the subject. The Triple Nexus tackles how humanitarian action, development and peace efforts intersect to improve development interventions, especially in conflict affected and fragile states.

On South-South Cooperation: Assessing its political relevance and envisioning a future beyond technical cooperation

South-South Cooperation (SSC) has been regaining traction in recent years due to setbacks in North-South Cooperation. Development partnerships among Southern states aim to be complementary to traditional cooperation and is rooted on horizontality, solidarity, and respect for national sovereignty and ownership. SSC offers itself as a modality that attempts to shift away from ineffective development cooperation practices. One of its core principles, which came from the Bandung Era, is to forward the decolonization agenda. With this, SSC has the potential to leverage a kind of development cooperation that is linked with peoples’ demands, values, and lived realities. Despite SSC’s potential […]

When Aid Colonizes, Displaces, and Kills: Statement of Reality of Aid-Asia Pacific on Palestine

After decades of aggression between Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian people, the past weeks witnessed relentless attacks on civilians and wide-scale human rights violations. Driven by their right to self-determination, Palestinian armed resistance forces have long fought for their independence and rights over their land. Israel’s response remains violent, launching bombs, air strikes and dangerous chemicals on its occupied territories, detaining civilians, cutting off access to water, power, food and medical supplies, forcing millions of Palestinians to leave their homes, and blocking humanitarian assistance. The attacks have resulted in deaths of thousands of civilians and a humanitarian crisis for […]

Civil Society Demands the World Bank Group to Rethink the Direction of its Evolution

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group (IMF-WBG) are gearing to reform themselves as a response to heightening crises of our generation. At the Annual Meetings last 9 to 15 October, the institutions brought together states, multilateral institutions, IFIs, and civil society to discuss critical matters on delivering impact in the context of a world experiencing a polycrisis. With the theme, “Global Action, Global Impact”, the IMF-WBG seeks to continue its work in many arenas of development. One of the prominent discussions in the Annual Meetings is the WBG’s Evolution Roadmap. As a response to the widening cracks […]

Nowhere in the Middle: APRCEM NGO Constituency on the outcomes of the SDG Summit

At the midpoint of the Agenda 2030, only 15% of the targets are on track. In the Asia-Pacific, this translates to compounded impacts of the pandemic on health and economic systems, debt burden on the poorest, worsening conflict, deterioration of social protection systems, violation of basic human rights, and incapacity to address the climate crisis. Recognizing that the world is nowhere near in achieving its sustainable development targets, the SDG Summit is convened by the United Nations (UN) to accelerate action towards the goals with solutions outlined in Our Common Agenda. However, civil society has noted that these frameworks continue […]

“How do we respond to the changing aid landscape?”: The Reality of Aid debates on the future of aid

In a world afflicted by multifaceted and overwhelming global challenges, civil society organizations working on aid and development cooperation continue to grapple with the question, “ How can we effectively respond to the changing aid landscape?”

Aid Observatorio

Welcome to the Aid Observatorio What is the CSO Aid Observatorio? The Aid Observatorio is a CSO-initiated and maintained database of development projects funded through the Official Development Assistance (ODA) or funded by International Finance Institutions (IFIs). It offers on ground narratives and evidence-based analysis of development projects in fragile nations and developing countries. The impacts of the projects are monitored and evaluated in terms of Development Effectiveness Principles and of the following areas: human […]

Explore the Aid Observatorio

HIGHLIGHTS

Reality of Aid – Asia Pacific and CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness convene CSOs amid worsening civic spaces and multiple economic crises

The Reality of Aid - Asia Pacific (RoA-AP) and CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) - Asia held their Regional Meeting and Workshop (RMW) 2025 last February 19 to 21 in Bangkok, Thailand. The three-day event convened RoA-AP and CPDE Asia members, as...

RoA-AP & CPDE Asia Regional Meeting & Workshop 2025

Building on previous and existing efforts to distill and discuss locally-led development and development effectiveness in international cooperation, RoA-AP and CPDE Asia will hold its regular Regional Meeting & Workshop (RMW) from February 19-21, 2025 in Bangkok,...

On USAID shutdown: RoA-AP calls on US government to honor right to development

In an effort to curb overseas spending and dwell on economic protectionism, the once again elected United States (US) President Donald Trump is attempting to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an institution that delivers and funds...

CSO assessment of ADB’s second revised ESF draft

We would like to extend our gratitude to the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, FORUM-Asia, and Fair Finance Asia for their valuable inputs to this article. Context After four long years, the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Environmental and Social Framework...

The Future of Aid: Recounts from the Reality of Aid Report 2023

Decades of politicization largely influenced and inarguably shaped how Official Development Assistance (ODA), or more popularly known as “aid”, is delivered to and received by the Global South. This briefer lifts and synthesizes accounts from the recently published...

As Bangladesh faces crises anew, long-standing repression and maldevelopment resurface

The past two weeks saw blood spilled along streets of Dhaka as Bangladeshi students and youth peacefully protested against the quota system for government jobs, only to be greeted with open fire from police forces in return. This government-imposed brutality led to a...