Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 21 November 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence
Budget 2024, Official Development Assistance, COP28 and Ongoing Humanitarian Situations: Dóchas
Mr. Dominic MacSorley:
I was in the Rohingya camp a couple of months ago. The Deputy is right to raise the matter because the funding levels are half of what they were before, and there is a problem. Within emergencies, though, there are opportunities. I will highlight one. We were conducting training for 40 national NGOs that were in Rohingya and on the coastal plains. It was a one-week course to ensure that they had knowledge around humanitarian principles and the tools to access funding directly from donors so that, in future, they could act as lanes down paths through which local responses within Bangladesh could take a strong role. Even within these tragedies, we have to consider what opportunities we have to build a better structure and capacity for the future.
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