The commitment for economically advanced countries to provide 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) in the form of official development assistance (ODA) has been reaffirmed in many international agreements over the yearsi . It has been used to measure progress under Millennium Development Goal 8 for countries that are part of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, a committee that is the leading international forum for bilateral providers of development co-operation. The Committee consists of 28 major bilateral donor countries and the European Commission, and 25 of its 29 members are from the UNECE Region. In total, the donor countries from the UNECE region gave USD 129 billion in 2014, up from USD 92 billion in 2005. Over half of this increase was due to Germany and the United Kingdom.
Weighted by GNI, the DAC countries from the UNECE region provided 0.32% of their total GNI as ODA in 2014. This was slightly down from 0.34% in 2005. In 2014, only five countries had reached the 0.7% target. This is the same number as in 2005, just before the latest economic and financial crises. Despite these crises, several countries increased their ODA after 2005. Luxembourg and Sweden did so by as much as 0.28 and 0.24 percentage points. On the contrary, twelve countries reduced their share. Austria and the Netherlands did so by -0.26 and -0.18 percentage point respectively. Austria, Greece, Italy and Spain reduced their ODA also in absolute terms.
