International funding for COVID-19 not reaching countries who need it most – CDP
The Centre for Disaster Protection has revealed that the more than US$48 billion which has been committed by international organisation in COVID-19 funding is not reaching the countries where poverty is increasing.
The Centre’s research, Funding COVID-19, stated that international organisations have committed this money to low and middle-income counties in response to the pandemic, but the 20 counties seeing the biggest increases in poverty are only receiving 4% of the funding and the money has disproportionately gone to better-off countries.
“This disparity in how the money is distributed is because 97% of the funding is loans, the equivalent of low interest credit cards, which as resulted in countries that are considered more able to repay loans benefiting the most, therefore the world urgently needs to find better ways to pay for crises so that poor countries do not miss out, including providing more grants and insurances,” they added.
The Centre for Disaster Protection is calling on the organisations providing COVID-19 funding, to ensure that a greater share goes to the place that already have high levels of extreme poverty and where extreme poverty is increasing the most as a result of the pandemic.
Ruth Hill, Chief Economist for the Centre said the COVID-19 means millions more families are struggling to meet their basic daily needs because of the crisis. “Billions have been given in funding but there is a stark inequality in where it is going, therefore international organisations must make more money available to counties where poverty is rapidly increasing to save lives and livelihoods,” she emphasised.
Funding COVID-19 is the first study to attempt to track international funding for a crisis and the research put a total figure on amounts committed and received and allows us to know, for the first time, that US$48 billion is on its way to low and middle income countries to tackle the pandemic and the economic fallout. This figure includes funds from the IMF, the World Bank, most regional development banks and from the United Nations COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan.
Funding COVID-19 study will continue to track international funding and is realising findings on a monthly basis.
