Foreign Aid to Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a country with a population of 120 million people, but heavily dependent on international or foreign aid. One of the downside of receiving foreign aid is that Bangladesh still spends a part of it for waging war in the Chittagong Hill. Foreign aid is also used for socio-economic developments and fighting one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Each year, Bangladesh spends an extra $125 million on foreign aid and 15% of its budget for military and defense purposes and for military expenses in the Chittagong Hills. Japan, the USA, European and Middle Eastern countries are large aid donors to Bangladesh. One of the mistakes that aid donors should try and fix in Bangladesh is that they never made aid donations conditional on keeping and respecting human rights in the country. If international donors will stop their aid supply until Bangladesh enforces national human rights policies, the womens and childrens rights would have a different status today. Still, the aid is the main source of income for many poor families that are living in slums in urban areas or in underdeveloped rural areas. The international community is constantly ignoring the fact that thanks to their aid, Bangladesh is capable of maintaining a military force in the war zone. This military presence will make the war go on forever, while important issues like human rights and medical care in Bangladesh are constantly downsized. Human rights violations are a national problem in Bangladesh. The country receives aid to fix these problems from the following international institutions: UNICEF, World Health Organization, Australian Development Assistance Bureau, Swedish International Development Agency, Asian Development Bank and many others. Still, all these foreign players should consult the indigenous population when it comes to how all their aid should be spent. People should be the one to choose, not the government, who usually spends it on military activities.

Bangladesh : Foreign Aid The government is aware of the fact that because of the existing international economic environment the amount of foreign aid so essential for developing countries like Bangladesh is fast dwindling. The conditionalities of aid are also becoming stringent. The government has, therefore, taken appropriate initiatives for proper utilization of foreign aid. The country's development partners at the same time, ought to acknowledge that Bangladesh not only needs more aid but also better aid. The government has given the highest priority to implementing with utmost efficiency the annual development programme (ADP) which allocates domestic and foreign resources to different sectors of the economy. From the economic and social points of view, agriculture is the country's most important sector as it contributes 32.4 percent of GDP and about 75 percent of its 120 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on it for their livelihood. But because of declining growth in agriculture in the past the standard of life of the small and marginal farmers had been going down forcing the nation to become increasingly dependent on food imports. The government has, therefore, decided to increase allocation for agriculture substantially and offer a wide range of incentives to the farmers including liberal credit to raise production and generate on-farm and off-farm employment for the rural poor. An Agriculture Commission has also been set up to recommend long-term policy reforms to boost the sector.

Aid Activities in Bangladesh

Australia's aid program in Bangladesh has increased over recent years. The program focuses on maternal and child health, primary education and improving livelihoods for the extreme poor.

Education
The goal of the education program is to make a significant contribution to the achievement of MDG 2: Universal primary education and the national program, 'Education for all'.

Primary education development program

y y y Contribution: $27.24 million Duration: 200711 Implementing Organisation: Government of Bangladesh through UNICEF Australia, as part of an 11member donor consortium, supports the Government of Bangladesh to deliver its program of primary school education. By partnering with UNICEF, the Australian aid program benefits from their expertise in primary education and can help the Government of Bangladesh make real improvements to the quality of primary education.

Expected outcomes: y y y y y improved capacity for effective sub-national planning enhanced teachers' professional development through quality in-service training quality primary education promoted through the media and social mobilisation improved access to quality education for children with special needs and disadvantaged groups expanded provision of pre-primary education for children aged three to five.

BRAC education program

y y y Contribution: $39.17 million Duration: 200711 Implementing Organisation: BRAC Australia, along with four other donors, supports the BRAC education program. It aims to provide quality education to disadvantaged children who have either never enrolled in or have dropped out of formal primary school, in rural and urban communities in Bangladesh.

Australia Awardsdevelopment awards

y y Contribution estimated 201011: $7.7 million Duration: ongoing For the 2011 intake, 61 candidates were selected from Bangladesh for the Australian Development Scholarships program, including candidates from the Government of Bangladesh, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and indigenous candidates from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Australian Leadership Award is a prestigious award, which provides opportunities for high performing students to undertake Master's and Doctorate level studies in Australian universities. Since the introduction of these awards in 2007, 86 candidates have come from Bangladesh. For 2011 intake, 17 scholars were awarded under the program. Australia Awards [external website]

Health
Healthchild survival
y y y Contribution: $20 million Duration: 200711 Implementing organisation: Government of Bangladesh through UNICEF This program provides a package of high impact interventions targeting more than two million children in eight low-performing, disadvantaged districts. The three principal program componentsintegrated management of childhood illness, antenatal care and the expanded program of immunisationare combined and delivered through government and non-government health providers. The program aims to strengthen existing health services to deliver this integrated package. Implementation involves delivery both at home and in health care facilities, and also social awareness campaigns. The Government of Bangladesh's Directorate General of Health Services is the lead implementing agency with technical and financial support from UNICEF.

Healthmaternal and child health

y y y Contribution: $24.14 million Duration: 200712 Implementing organisation: BRAC and Government of Bangladesh through UNICEF This program aims to increase maternal, neonatal and child survival rates in rural areas through knowledge transfer, improving the skills and motivation of providers, strengthening referral linkages between public and private health facilities, increasing demand for services and providing improved public emergency obstetric care. An extensive network of frontline health workers have been trained and deployed to provide a range of services to pregnant mothers and children. In this partnership between Government, UNICEF and BRAC program, BRAC works to create demand for services through social mobilisation while UNICEF works at the public health facility levels to improve access to and quality of services provided. The program is expected to reduce the incidence of maternal complications and to save the lives of approximately 19,000 new born babies and 35,000 children under the age of five years. This MNCH project will reach 19 million people in 10 districts.

HealthManoshi urban health

y y y Contribution: $2.25 million Duration: 2007-2012 Implementing organisation: BRAC Manoshi is a community based health intervention in urban slums in Bangladesh. BRAC is implementing this five year (2007-2012) project funded by the Australia and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It covers six city corporations reaching about six million slum dwellers. The goal of the project is to decrease illnesses and deaths in mothers and newborns in urban slums of Bangladesh through the development and delivery of an integrated, community-based package of essential health services. In Manoshi, the community health workers provide maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH) services to the community. MNCH services are delivered to slum populations with over 7,000 trained community health workers and about 900 trained urban birth attendants (UBAs) working in 418 BRAC birthing centers. They are supported and supervised by 130 Manoshi midwives. Australia supports two MNCH programs of BRAC which complement each other - one is a partnership with UNICEF focusing on rural areas and this Manoshi program which has an urban focus.

Health research
y y y Contribution: $ 14.85 million Duration: 2010 - 2014 Implementing Organisation: International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). Australia has supported ICDDR,B since 1978. Australia's support shifted from being project based to core funding support since 2007. Recently an agreement was concluded between ICDDR,B (the Centre) and Australia under which Australia will provide, through AusAID, core support of A$14.85 million for 2010-11 to 2013-14. This is a significant increase of Australian support to the Centre (last phase of support was annual A$1 million for three years).

AusAID is part of a group of four donors providing core funding to ICDDR,B. Australian funding will support ICDDR,B to implement its Strategic Plan 2010-20 and continue to provide knowledge, research, training and medical services that will help those in need and influence government policy making in public health. Australia will also continue to engage with ICDDR,B on aspects of institutional strengthening and reforms including strategic planning, financial management and sustainability.

Water and sanitation

Supporting hygiene, sanitation and water supply (HYSAWA)
y y y Contribution: $7.7 million Duration: April 2010June 2011 Implementing organisation: HYSAWA The HYSAWA Fund is an autonomous financial institution currently receiving funding from the Government of Bangladesh and the Governments of Denmark and Australia. It aims to ensure sustainable water and sanitation services through a demand-driven approach where local government institutions (unions) and the community take responsibility for planning, implementing and monitoring water and sanitation schemes. Australia's support has expanded HYSAWA coverage to 50 unions in three southern coastal districts. The project is expected to reach 400,000 people, of which around 80,000 are extreme poor and 200,000 are women.

Extreme poverty reduction

y y y Contribution: $49.1 million Duration: 200712 Implementing organisation: BRAC Australia supports BRAC, the largest NGO in Bangladesh, through its innovative and highly effective Challenging the frontiers of poverty reduction (CFPR) program, designed to lift three million extremely poor people out of poverty by 2011. The extreme poor are food insecure and vulnerable to shocks such as natural disaster, illness and food price inflation. CFPR provides extremely poor families with productive assets such as cows or goats, and intensive training on income generation. CFPR also provides basic health care, social support to integrate the extreme poor with the broader community, and shows them how to access services of the local government.

Chars livelihoods program (CLP)

y y y Contribution: $15 million Duration: 201013 Implementing organisation: UK Department for International Development The CLP targets some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities of Bangladesh, people living on chars (river islands). The char people have very limited income earning opportunities and often cannot afford two meals a day. They are vulnerable to annual flooding and erosion. They have very limited access to government services including health and education. CLP aims to lift 1 million people living on the chars out of poverty. CLP provides support (plinths) to raise homesteads to protect houses from flooding, undertakes cash-for-work activities to address seasonal unemployment, and provides productive

assets (e.g. livestock, seeds and saplings) and training to develop income-generating enterprises. A cash stipend is provided until an income is earned from the assets.

Climate change
Comprehensive disaster management program (CDMP) phase two
y y y Contribution: $2 million Duration: 200911 Implementing organisation: United Nations Development Programme/UK Department for International Development The CDMP aims to reduce Bangladesh's vulnerability to adverse natural hazards and extreme events including the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. AusAID joined other donors including DFID, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the European Commission in funding the second phase of the program. Support from AusAID will be incorporated under the local disaster risk reduction fund mechanism, which supports local communities to reduce their vulnerability to disaster risk and become more resilient to current and future climate change impactsparticularly those associated with extreme weather events.

Humanitarian
The Australian Government provides assistance to Bangladesh when requested following natural disasters. AusAID also provides humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations through ongoing programs. Through a strategic partnership agreement with World Food Programme (WFP), Australia provides core support to WFP activities globally of which a proportion of funds can be earmarked for specific programs. For 201011, $4,805,921 was provided for activities in Bangladesh, including the school feeding program. The school feeding programme provides children in poor performing districts in Bangladesh with high energy biscuits to address malnutrition and improve classroom attendance.