Annual Report 2015
The European Union designated 2015 the European Year of Development, and it proved to be the year when the international community adopted the new Sustainable Development Goals and reached an historic and binding climate change agreement. 2015 was a year for development and Ireland played a role we can justifiably be proud of.
In September 2015, following two years of intense consultations and negotiations at the United Nations and four linked international conferences, the leaders of the world adopted seventeen Sustainable Development Goals and 169 associated targets which set the benchmark for progress in fighting hunger, poverty and environmental degradation for the next fifteen years.
The first of the four linked conferences, the March World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Japan, resulted in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The framework takes on board lessons learned over the last ten years, during which time, over 700,000 people have lost their lives due to natural disasters, over 1.4 million have been injured, approximately 23 million have been made homeless, and the economic loss, as a result of the natural disasters over that time, has exceeded $1.3 trillion.
2015 humanitarian response in numbers:
- The Government provided over €140 million in humanitarian assistance globally in 2015, the majority through the Irish Aid programme
- Ireland deployed 32 rapid responders and 305 tonnes of relief items, to 70,000 beneficiaries across Malawi, Nepal and to refugees from Syria, South Sudan and Nigeria.
- In 2015, funding of €3.4 million was provided to support development education through education partnerships and an annual grants scheme.
- 7,000 primary schools, second and third level institutions - the highest number ever - participated in Irish Aid workshops.
- In 2015, the Fellowship Programme enabled 62 students from government ministries and civil society organisations, to undertake postgraduate studies in both Ireland and Africa.