Increasing the budget of the Overseas Aid Committee
Many Island individuals and organisations give generously of their time and money to projects in developing countries. We believe too that Tynwald’s Overseas Aid Committee spends aid effectively on a wide variety of life-saving and empowering projects, but the £2.4m budget allocated to it by Government remains disproportionately small.
The UN recommends that governments of developed nations give 0.7% of their national income in aid. The UK government, despite political and press criticism, has committed itself to reaching this figure by 2013, and has already attained 0.56%. The IoM manages only 0.06%, less than one-tenth of the UN target. Put another way, the UK Government is spending £134 this year on overseas aid for each UK resident; for each of us, our Government spends just £30.
Back in 2004, Tynwald voted in principle to reach the UN’s 0.7% target by 2013. In 2008, the Council of Ministers approved a thoughtful report setting out a trajectory to triple aid by 2015/16. Sadly, these fine words have lacked the will to turn them into deeds. Of course we have fallen on harder times but to put this in perspective compare our average life expectancy of 80 years to 56 in sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike many children in Africa, none in the Isle of Man will go to bed hungry tonight.
More than ever before, we live in a globalised, interconnected world. To quote Dr Martin Luther King, ‘Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world.’