Every year, more than one billion children – or half of the world’s children – experience some form of violence. Exposure to violence compromises a child’s mental and social development, hampers educational outcomes and reduces opportunities for gainful employment. If the world does not put an end to it, we risk losing the investments made in child survival, health, and education, thus eroding human and social capital and slowing economic development. It is estimated that physical, sexual and emotional violence against children costs societies 3% to 8% of global GDP.
In 2017, our organisations commissioned a review of ODA to identify an estimate of how much international aid was spent to end violence against children over the course of one year. This review found that in 2015 ODA spending on ending violence against children was less than 0.6%. Whilst no globally agreed benchmarks for investments in ending violence against children exist, the 0.6% is very small compared to overall ODA spending. Consequently, two key asks of the review was for donors to increase allocation in lieu of the commitment to invest in children and to track spending on ending violence against children to allow improved monitoring of annual contribution to achieving commitments both in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
We commissioned a second review of ODA. Outcomes of this review estimated that in 2018, the total ODA spending towards EVAC was just US$1,512.6 million – or 0.77% of total ODA spending. While this represents a 33% increase since 2015, it is also 7% lower than the previous year. This raises significant concerns especially in the current financial climate of increasing fiscal austerity.
At this virtual event we will share and discuss findings of the report Counting Pennies 2: Review of official development assistance to end violence against children. We will also discuss current trends in the broader Financing for Development stream.