At the start of the year, I warned that the crisis we had seen in Wuhan and that was beginning to envelop the West would likely be replicated across much of the developing world with far greater and long-term consequences for us all.

Sadly, this has proven to be correct.

As of the middle of September, India is on track to soon overtake the United States as the country with the highest number of cases. Latin America has experienced the most deaths. And the World Bank has predicted the pandemic could push up to 50 million people in Asia and around 30 million in Africa into extreme poverty this year alone — the first time the rate of extreme poverty in the world has increased for more than two decades.

At the same time, the crisis has exacerbated shifts already underway, including heightened tensions between the United States and China, protectionist proclivities, and a carbon-intensive recovery also risks setting us back in the global fight against climate change. All of this makes the development agenda much harder.

The challenge for global policymakers in this crisis is to ensure that vulnerable people everywhere are protected. If we don’t, we risk a more dangerous and uncertain world. And we will also make our global recovery much more difficult.
I know from my own experience just how important this is.

Even in the midst of the global financial crisis a decade ago, my government remained steadfast in our commitment to increase our level of foreign aid to 0.5 percent of gross national income. Unfortunately, that was subsequently delayed and Australia’s level of foreign assistance is now less than half of this — the lowest it has ever been.

To their credit, the UK government under David Cameron did similarly, legislating in 2013 – in the midst of austerity – a commitment to the 0.7 percent target called for under the Millennium Development Goals at the time.

And even earlier, at the height of the crisis in April 2009, Gordon Brown and I worked hard to ensure that the world’s largest economies all reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the MDGs as they worked through the crisis.

As the holders of the purse strings, parliamentarians have a particularly important role to play in ensuring governments don’t lose sight of the development agenda as they rush to protect their own populations from the devastating health and economic fallout of this pandemic.

Thankfully, the EU and some countries like Norway have already recognised the importance of increasing their foreign aid at this time. But still, the UN Secretary-General’s call for a $2 billion recovery fund has not yet been met, nor have groups like GAVI – that will be critical for vaccine deployment in developing countries – received anywhere near as much as they need to do the job.

In the case of the EU, their proposal to increase their development aid at the height of this crisis is an acknowledgment that this is both the right thing to do, but also that this additional support helps with their own economic recovery. Too often we see foreign aid as a handout, and not a stepping stone to prosperity. I’ve made the same point in Australia, where the country’s economic recovery will be linked to broader recovery across Asia . This is because of trade and because one-sixth of all university students in Australia are from our region, with international education the third biggest contributor to the Australian economy’s bottom line.

Of course, the fact that some countries have been able to increase their foreign aid at this time has also been offset by the actions of others – notably the United States – that have cut their assistance during this crisis, including to critical institutions like the World Health Organisation.

The IMF under Kristalina Georgieva’s leadership has been at the forefront of cushioning this crisis’ impact on the global economy and especially to the most vulnerable. This has included funneling more than $88 billion in financial assistance to countries in need.

The Fund has learnt from the experience of the global financial crisis a decade ago. But still, there are reforms that can be made to the international financial system as a whole that will help ensure we get through what will be a long road to recovery in the best shape possible. This includes ensuring that governments don’t just see their increased support for the IMF as a one-off injection, but the start of what must be an effort to provide more resources over the longer term. And it is important there is at some point a realignment in the distribution of membership shares, especially to boost the role of dynamic emerging-market economies in the IMF’s decision making.

At the same time, actions by the G20 and groups like the Paris Club have also been critical, allowing more than forty countries to suspend debt repayments — meaning they are not making hard choices between servicing these debts and saving lives on the ground. But the challenge for lenders will now be to consider ways to provide more systemic relief rather than simply turning the tap back on once the worst of the crisis seems to have passed, or once their own economic recoveries or domestic political interests demand it.

One area in particular that demands greater attention from the development and finance community in the wake of this crisis is the water, sanitation and hygiene sector.

This crisis has laid bare the importance of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene. As we all know now, hand washing is one of the best frontline defences against the virus. Yet three billion people – almost half of the world’s population – lack access to basic hand- washing facilities, around one-third (2.2 billion people) do not have access to safe drinking water, and almost twice as many (4.2 billion) go without safe sanitation services of any kind.

Water and sanitation has for too long slid down the political agenda globally. And for too long, governments have seen water and sanitation as a drain on national budgets rather than an investment opportunity. The biggest challenge is to persuade governments to view the sector as assets that will yield high economic and financial returns without breaking the bank. Such a shift in mindset will also lend momentum to other long-needed reforms. And it is important we use this crisis to ensure that a shift can occur. This is why the UN’s Partnership on Sanitation and Water for All recently published a handbook for finance ministers which lays out the creative financing opportunities that exist to generate additional support for the sector – I commend this handbook to you all.

Whether we emerge from this crisis stronger or weaker as a global community will depend just as much on the decisions governments take for their own populations as it will on the decisions they take for the peoples of other countries around the world. Now, more than ever, we need governments to be acting as global citizens.