Bernard Broughton

Background

Studied Arts Law at Macquarie University. In final year co-founded the Macquarie Legal Centre in western Sydney. Graduated in 1979 and worked initially as a Research Officer for Austcare (Australians Care for Refugees) and then as a Research Officer for the Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly of the NSW Parliament on Aborigines. In 1981 joined the big city law firm Allen, Allen and Hemsley as a solicitor. It wasn't for me, and in early 1984 I flew to Ethiopia to assist with the famine response, working with Save the Children UK as a volunteer.

NGO Employment

Save the Children transferred me to Uganda where I worked as a logistician assisting victims of armed conflict. I then gained extensive field-based humanitarian and development experience with Oxfam GB in Uganda and Somalia (1984–1989); management experience as a director of CARE Australia (1989–1990); repatriation and human rights monitoring experience with the International Federation of the Red Cross in Cambodia (1991–1993); and multi-sector relief and recovery experience with Oxfam GB in South Sudan (1993–1995). I also worked briefly as an emergency response coordinator for Caritas in Timor-Leste (late 1999–early 2000).

Consulting

I returned to Australia in 1995 and thereafter worked mainly as an independent consultant until I retired in 2025. For the most part I contracted through Project Design & Management Pty Ltd, a company I co-founded with close friends in 1991.

My focus was leading independent evaluations of humanitarian interventions and development assistance projects. I was versatile, rigorous and reliable. I also designed development assistance projects and humanitarian monitoring and evaluation frameworks, and provided training. My clients included bilateral donors (including the Australian and UK governments), various UN agencies, multilateral development banks and NGOs. My most frequent clients were AusAID/DFAT, the UN World Food Programme, Oxfam, The Fred Hollows Foundation, and the Asian Development Bank.

I worked across Africa, Asia and the Pacific — 34 countries in all. Sectors included humanitarian action and sector reform; human rights and protection; disaster risk reduction; food security and nutrition; agricultural and livestock development; micro-finance; primary health care; water and sanitation; and pandemic and emerging infectious disease prevention and response.