What do we do?
Poverty elimination
Since NZAID's formation in 2002, poverty elimination has been central to the agency's mission.
While much global progress has been made towards eliminating poverty and hunger, there are still about one billion people living in extreme poverty and 800 million undernourished people.
In our own neighbourhood of the Pacific, overall progress has been lacking largely because of the situation in Papua New Guinea (PNG), which has the lowest living standards of any country in the Pacific, and which, together with the other Melanesian countries, accounts for 86 percent of the region's population.
East Asia and, to a lesser degree, South Asia, have made large steps towards eliminating poverty . Sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, has experienced only marginal gains.
Because the causes of poverty are multidimensional and interrelated, action to address poverty has to work across a number of fronts.
NZAID recognises development assistance needs to be delivered via a number of channels in order to maximise gains for our developing country partners .
New Zealand operates nineteen core bilateral programmes, of which eight have been targeted for the majority of growth in future on the basis of factors such as relative need, poverty indicators and capacity for New Zealand to make a difference on the ground.
In addition, NZAID's regional programmes focus on themes of regional concern such as education, health, governance and economic growth.
NZAID also works with multilateral agencies and programmes which provide a proven and effective means for New Zealand to address poverty , conflict, governance issues and humanitarian crises worldwide.
NZAID recognises that its development strategies and programmes must be relevant to the local context and incorporate the perceptions of the poor themselves. We therefore engage actively with New Zealand's NGO development community and provide funding to support a wide range of NGO programmes with partners on the ground overseas.
Page Last Reviewed: 6 July, 2006
Document URL: http://www.nzaid.govt.nz/what-we-do/