UAE | Government
UAE supports development goals
Foreign-aid report shows it endorsed eight initiatives to help nations across the globe
- By Samir Salama, Associate Editor
- Published: 00:00 July 1, 2010
Abu Dhabi: The UAE is committed to helping countries of the world achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to the UAE's foreign aid report.
At its Millennium Summit in 2000, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) endorsed eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), each with quantifiable development targets to be reached by 2015.
These include reducing the number of people suffering from hunger by half, ensuring universal primary education and cutting the mortality rate of children under five by two thirds.
"The UAE's aid has assisted developing countries, directly and indirectly, to make progress towards their MDG targets, helping them to tackle poverty, improve health care and widen access to education."
In 2009, UAE donors contributed over Dh700 million in "commodity aid" to help mitigate the effects of the food crisis and provide essential food supplies to the victims of emergencies.
Donors also committed more than Dh830 million for health programmes, contributing to the MDGs to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases.
In the education sector, UAE donors committed over Dh340 million.
Dubai Cares focuses almost exclusively on promoting primary education in developing countries and is making a major contribution towards the MDG to "achieve universal primary education".
In 2009, the government made four significant commitments worth more than Dh4.24 billion and charged the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development with administering them.
The four grants were Dh2.29 billion to Yemen, Dh991.7 million to Pakistan, Dh918.2 million to Afghanistan and Dh110.2 million to Seychelles.
Resolution to contribute
These funds are recorded as 2009 contributions from the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development.
They will be disbursed over several years, and in some cases their exact use is still subject to negotiations with the governments of the aforementioned nations.
In 1970, the UNGA passed a resolution urging donor countries to contribute at least 0.7 per cent of their gross national product (GNP) to developing countries.
The target has been reiterated many times since, and more recently has been calculated as 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI).
The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) reports each year on how donors have performed against the target, issuing tables which show the ratio of ODA to GNI.
In 2008, total net ODA from DAC members rose by 11.7 per cent in real terms to $121.5 billion, the highest dollar figure ever recorded, representing 0.3 per cent of members' combined GNI.
However, only five countries reached the 0.7 per cent target, namely Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
The UAE will report data on its aid flows to the OECD/DAC in July 2010, for December publication. The figures submitted will differ from those in this report, due to the OECD's stricter definitions of what qualifies as ODA, as opposed to the more general definition of ‘foreign aid' employed here.
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