Robin Perry

Robin Perry is a Senior Policy Officer with the Australian Human Rights Commission. He has worked for governmental and non-governmental organisations, including the Asia Foundation, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the International Rescue Committee, on a range of projects aimed at promoting better dispute resolution in a variety of developing countries. He has published on subjects related to justice, security, and development in a variety of media, including the Harvard Human Rights Journal, The Lowy Interpreter, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Robin holds a Master of Law & Development from the University of Melbourne, and a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Asian Studies from the University of Western Australia
Big Elephants and Small Islands: getting beyond the New Aid Orthodoxy

Big Elephants and Small Islands: getting beyond the New Aid Orthodoxy

by , , , | Mar 29, 2021

Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management have long drawn fire from a broad range of critics, but this has been particularly acute in recent years. This has resulted in dwindling confidence in aid as an instrument of development, giving rise to a series of sensible, if slow-moving, initiatives to address some of its systemic flaws. We argue that these initiatives are welcome but, in and of themselves, are incapable of lifting aid effectiveness to meet the lofty rhetoric of the expectations that it is burdened by.

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