Thomson Reuters Foundation: Charities alarmed as aid spending shifts from poor countries to refugees
“…Official development assistance (ODA) reached a record $131.4 billion in 2015, a rise of 6.6 percent in real terms from 2014, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures released on Wednesday. Of that total, $12.1 billion was spent on hosting and processing refugees in rich countries — around double the amount spent in the previous year. The Paris-based think tank said the rise in spending on refugees in donor countries did not have a significant impact on development programs because half the donors used money from outside their aid budgets to cover these costs. However … [a]dvocacy group ONE, which campaigns to fight extreme poverty, said rich nations should tackle the root causes of forced migration instead of using aid money to host refugees in their own country…” (Taylor, 1/4).