NGOs badly impacted if cheques are withdrawn, UN Secretary General meets Pacific leaders and more

+ NGOs badly impacted if cheques withdrawn

The move by Kiwibank to ban cheques could badly impact the bottom line of New Zealand charities, including international NGOs, and risks a backlash.

Older New Zealanders are incredibly generous to charities, and predominantly give via cheques. They simply don't trust other ways of paying.

New Zealand is a quick adopted of new technologies, but for older New Zealanders the timelines for change need to be longer.

Kiwibank has given just nine months notice before all cheque books will be withdrawn.

In the United Kingdom, banks initially gave ten years notice of their intention to go cheque free. But after a campaign by the charity sector, and groups representing older people, play a parliamentary inquiry, the ten-year notice was dropped for an even longer period.

The 11th-hour reprieve in the UK came as a relief to millions of consumers and businesses who wrote more than one billion cheques in Britain in one year.

According to This is Money, only 4% of car insurance and 24% of home insurance in the UK can be paid by cheque.

In New Zealand, banks could consider a longer timeframe, and no new cheque book accounts, while honouring existing customers with cheque books for their lifetime.

Here's what we know already:

• Charities, schools and tradespeople all still get cheques.
• More than 300,000 Aucklanders getting their power via Vector get an annual dividend from Entrust, and often that's via a cheque.

Help us make the case to Kiwibank and the banking sector that they can go digital without leaving older New Zealanders behind, or damaging the charitable sector in New Zealand. Let us know the following:

1. How many cheques does your charity receive each year ?
2. What is the total income generated by these cheques each year ?
3.What % of your charity’s donations are received via cheque each year ?
4.What would be the impact, to your organisation of donors being unable to use Kiwibank (or any other banks) cheques as a form of donating ?
 

+  How to do Sensitive Investigations in the Humanitarian Sector: CID-IDYP Talk: 

CID Talk: Tuesday 28 May, Auckland CBD at 5.30pm (location TBC). 

Sean Buckley and Jaydene Buckley, founders of OSACO Group, will share case studies to highlight threats and illustrate successful mitigation strategies and protocols particular to the humanitarian sector.
 
OSACO Group Ltd was established in 2013 to support UN Agencies and INGO’s around the globe with their oversight & compliance needs. OSACO’s management and investigation and compliance specialists have worked extensively around the globe in the humanitarian sector often dealing with complex allegations of misconduct in hazardous locations.

Many of the challenges faced by the Humanitarian community arise from misconduct by those involved with our organizations, whether it be fraud and corruption or safeguarding issues such as sexual exploitation and abuse and harassment. Human risk factors and mismanagement have caused concrete harm to beneficiaries and their programmes in addition to causing damaging reputational fallout.
 
The event will be co-hosted by CID and IDYP. A social happy hour will follow the talk.

+ UN secretary-general meets Pacific leaders (to be built)


UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited the Pacific last week after a few days in New Zealand and Christchurch to pay his respects to the victims of the Christchurch shootings.

Mr Guterres is intent on building global momentum for sharper cuts to emissions,arguing that drastic action is necessary to stave off ecological disaster.

For this, he called on nations worldwide to make four pivotal shifts:

1. Tax pollution, not people

2. Stop subsidizing fossil fuels

3. Stop building new coal plants by 2020

4. Focus on a green economy not a grey economy

https://www.developmentaid.org/#!/news-stream/post/42353/climate-action-4-shifts-the-un-chief-encourages-governments-to-make?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=NewsDigest

+ National party launch international policy discussion

National’s foreign policy discussion document contains plenty of unarguable positions, a couple of eyebrow-raising proposals, and one conspicuous omission. But the fact the party considered such a paper worthwhile should be applauded, writes Sam Sachdeva in Newsroom. 

The paper is unclear about exact commitments to aid budgets or policies, and it's shame to see no mention of a 'Pacific Reset', or localisation. These should both be bi-partisan approaches that are about increasing the impact or effectiveness of New Zealand's aid dollar.

Both fit easily into National's policy suite. 'Localisation' is another way of doing Bill English's 'devolution' agenda, but in the Pacific. It means devolving decision making and resources to communities who know best what the problem are in their community, and how best to respond to emergencies like cyclones and to development challenges.

The Pacific Reset moves our relationship with the Pacific beyond aid and a welfare model, to a relationship of partners in a shared region - a Pacific Union to match the best of the European model.

But the discussion paper is a welcome move. 

"In some ways, that National’s consultation document exists is as important, if not more so, than what it contains. Foreign policy is often an afterthought for politicians and the public alike, yet it is more important than ever in an increasingly unstable and complex world," writes Sam Sachveda.
 

+ Localisation workshop and latest research

+ GoT fans don't worry (too much) 

Yesterday it all ended. The last episode (sob!)

GoT is no stranger to violence, but which character has committed the most war crimes so far?

A team of volunteers of the Australian Red Cross analyzed every episode ahead of the final season — and their answer might surprise fans. Sure, everyone who watched season 8 knows that the ranking results of the GoT 'worst war criminals' would have been slightly different if they had included the last 6 episodes ...!

This is not  the first time Red Cross has scrutinized war crimes in virtual reality.

In 2011, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement discussed the implications of video games that simulate real-war situations and the opportunities the games present for spreading knowledge of the laws of armed conflict. 

"In computer and video games, violence is often shown and the players become 'virtually violent.

"However, such games are not zones free of rules and ethics. It would be highly appreciated if games reproducing armed conflicts were to include the rules which apply to real armed conflicts. These rules and values are given by international humanitarian law and human rights law. They limit excessive violence and protect the human dignity of members of particularly vulnerable groups."

In 2013, the ICRC has started working with video game developers, so that video game players face the same dilemmas as real soldiers.
 

+ The link between well-being at home, and overseas aid

This Devpolicy Blog explores the links between well-being at home (in New Zealand) and the support for well-being elsewhere; exploring and challenging the assertion that “if New Zealanders are better off, then our aid partners are better off too”, writes Luke Kiddle.

This is particularly timely as the New Zealand government embarks on the first ‘Well-being Budget’.

Luke Kiddle has worked previously with the New Zealand Aid Pogramme, and currently teaches Environment Studies and Human Geography at Victoria University.

Kiddle references work undertaken by Stats NZ called ‘Indicators Aotearoa New Zealand’, which involved the development of a long draft list of possible well-being indicators. The Stats NZ research is based on three dimensions of human well-being:

1. well-being of the present generation in one particular country, or the ‘here and now’;
2. the well-being of future generations, the ‘later’; and
3. the well-being of people living in other countries, the ‘elsewhere’ dimension as, for example, influence by foreign aid.

In its work, Stats NZ is suggesting that the well-being of New Zealanders is influenced by foreign aid, and, in turn, foreign aid’s impact on well-being overseas. But how might well-being in New Zealand be influenced by aid, and its effectiveness? 

• New Zealanders favour giving aid.
• New Zealanders, like Australians, want their country’s aid spent on helping poor people in need, rather than aiding their own country. In addition, there is a positive relationship between belief that aid does indeed help the poor (that aid is effective) and support for an increased aid budget.
• In the 2015 New Zealand Aid Stakeholder Survey, the majority of respondents from NGOs and the private sector thought that aid was primarily focused on advancing the commercial and geostrategic interests of New Zealand, rather than helping reduce poverty overseas.

 

+ Devex Podcast: Development disrupted

In this podcast, Raj Kumar, CEO and editor-in-chief of Devex, hosts Kristin Lord, president and CEO of IREX and George Ingram, senior fellow for global economy and development at Brookings Institution, to discuss the findings of the new report they have co-authored.

The report involved a survey of 93 leaders of the global development sector and showed how the aid industry is in flux. Across the sector, myriad development efforts — to respond to refugee and migrant needs, stall dangerous climate change, and combat fragility, among them — outpace the financing and capacity they require to be assuaged.

“In so many different ways, we found that development is being turned upside down,” said Kristin Lord, IREX chief and co-author of the Brookings report. “And in many ways, that’s a very good thing.”

+ Introducing Peter Glensor, new CID Code of Conduct Committee Chair