By Chloe Hickey-Jones, an intern in the Lowy Institute's Melanesia Program.
- The World Bank has announced US$1.5 billion in support funding for the Clean India Mission. This project is the country’s largest to date to help improve sanitation.
- In this podcast, Lucy Lamble interviews Juliana Lunguzi from Malawai and Bernard Hadzirabwi from Zimbabwe about the impact of the ongoing drought in their communities. They discuss the effect of food shortages and the secondary impacts on education as children are forced to give up schooling to assist their families in the search for food.
- Development Impact Blog celebrates their 5th birthday this month. Each blogger from the team at The World Bank nominated their favourite posts.
- The Australian aid budget has shrunk, and as Robin Davies argues, this has increased pressure on development objectives for 2016-17.
- Similarly, Daniel Cullen examines the changes in the UK’s aid budget. He is critical of the removal of poverty reduction from the rhetoric and states that while the budget has been well received by the electorate, it may serve to weaken the UK’s development commitments over time.
- GlaxoSmithKline has announced it will remove patents on certain medications to allow cheaper, generic versions to enter the market without threat of legal action. Many companies within the industry are beginning to move towards a tiered-pricing model in response to ongoing criticisms about medicine being too expensive for the developing world. However, a spokesperson from Medecins Sans Frontieres responded to the announcement critically.
- On the 22 March, the world celebrated World Water Day which sought to highlight the connection between water and jobs. Half the world’s working population — 1.5 billion people — work in jobs related to water and nearly all jobs depend on water delivery (Photo from UNICEF campaign about the link between water, climate change and children below).
- Following World Water Day, Duncan Green considers what historical success can teach us about sanitation and hygiene. He analyses successes in sanitation reform in Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.
