At least 1bn doses due from G7 but campaigners say package does not address structural problems
The UK will donate 100m surplus coronavirus vaccine doses within the next year to low-income countries as part of at least 1bn doses due from the G7.
The US has promised to buy 500m Pfizer vaccines at a cost of $3bn for distribution to 100 poorer countries, with 200m to be distributed this year, in addition to releasing 80m of its surplus by the end of June.
Continue reading...‘Don’t do as we did,’ says Pippa Biddle, who highlights colonial structure of industry where unqualified Western tourists pay to volunteer abroad
Seven years ago, Pippa Biddle wrote a blog post about volunteering abroad. She recounted her struggles speaking Spanish to children living with HIV in the Dominican Republic and how local people in Tanzania would spend all night redoing the construction work she and her classmates had done poorly.
“Taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign,” Biddle wrote. “It’s detrimental.”
Continue reading...At least 40 Conservative MPs are fighting on to get overseas funding restored after setback in Commons
Boris Johnson has set himself on a collision course with scores of his MPs as No 10 suggested it would defy an order by the House of Commons speaker to bring a vote on swingeing foreign aid cuts.
Between 40 and 50 Conservative MPs were said to be considering defying the government on Monday before an ambush in the Commons was thwarted, with rebels now exploring options including legal action.
Continue reading...Aid agencies write to Foreign Office minister as pressure grows on Boris Johnson ahead of Commons vote
UK aid cuts of 42% will leave about 70,000 people without health services and 100,000 without water in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement, before the deadly cyclone season, the Foreign Office minister for Asia has been warned.
A private letter sent to him last week by a group of aid agencies working in the area comes before a vote on Monday designed to force ministers to guarantee they will restore UK aid to 0.7% of gross national income next year.
Continue reading...Mark Lowcock says funds slashed affect key issues on G7 agenda, as party rebels prepare to vote for reversal
A senior UN diplomat has warned Boris Johnson that his decision to slash overseas aid is tarnishing international faith in Britain’s trustworthiness at a crucial moment, as he called on the government to back Tory demands for a swift reversal of the cuts.
With Conservative rebels increasingly confident they have enough votes to inflict a humiliating government defeat before the G7 meeting in Cornwall late this week, the head of the UN’s office for humanitarian affairs said Johnson had demonstrated “a failure of kindness and empathy” that was undermining Britain’s reputation.
Continue reading...Intervention means all five living former prime ministers have voiced their opposition to the move
John Major has thrown his weight behind efforts to overturn government cuts to the UK’s overseas aid.
Ahead of a possible Commons vote on the issue next week, the former prime minister said the UK needed to remain “a nation that keeps its word”.
Continue reading...Axe falls on projects for Yemen, Syria, Rohingya refugees and people affected by famine in Africa
The government claimed Britain would be a “force for good” in the world when it defended merging the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office last year, but it soon announced £4bn in cuts to aid.
Charities instead warned that the world’s most vulnerable people would be hit by the “deadly force” of Britain’s new policies.
Continue reading...Using individual children to ‘sell’ schemes to rich donors is similar to ‘poverty porn’ images of past, say experts, as calls grow to decolonise aid
International child sponsorship schemes have come under attack for perpetuating racist thinking, as an apology by a charity to thousands of children in Sri Lanka has sparked a debate over the money-raising schemes.
Plan International last week admitted it had made “mistakes” over its exit from Sri Lanka in 2020, following criticism from donors and former employees that it had failed 20,000 vulnerable children in the country.
Continue reading...World’s poorest nations saddled with ‘imprisoning’ debt, hampering responses to the pandemic, say activists protesting HSBC meeting
Activists at a demonstration outside the annual general meeting of HSBC in London have demanded the bank and other financial giants provide debt relief to African countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
In an attempt to highlight the role of private creditors in the debt crises of the world’s poorest countries, campaigners with “drop the debt” banners gathered outside HSBC’s AGM at the Southbank Centre.
Continue reading...Children’s charity faces claims it failed vulnerable children and misled donors after shutting down activities in the country
One of the world’s largest children’s rights charities has admitted it “made a number of mistakes” when it left Sri Lanka abruptly last year, amid accusations it had misled the public and donors and failed 20,000 vulnerable children in the country.
Former employees and provincial governors who spoke to the Guardian described Plan International’s exit as “irresponsible”, “cynical and indefensible”.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru
Continue reading...Children in overcrowded Cox’s Bazar settlement likely to suffer most from reduced humanitarian spending, say campaigners
The government has been accused of abandoning Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh after cutting aid to the humanitarian response by more than 40%.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) pledged £27.6m to the humanitarian sector’s joint response plan launched this week, compared with £47.5m last year.
Continue reading...Cuts were agreed on the basis of a forecast shown five days later to be too pessimistic, report finds
UK civil servants were given five to seven working days to prepare 30% cuts in the overseas aid budget last summer, including a £730m cut to bilateral aid that it later emerged was unnecessary.
The cuts were agreed in July 2020 on the basis of a single forecast reduction in the size of the UK economy, which was shown to be too pessimistic five days after the cuts package was signed off.
Continue reading...My friend Irene Owens, who has died aged 102, was a typist, switch-board operator, air-raid warden, nursery nurse and one-woman aid provider to Zimbabwe after she befriended Sally Mugabe, the president’s wife.
Irene, known as Renie to her friends, first visited Zimbabwe in 1980 for a conference with the Moral Re-Armament movement (MRA), of which she was a member.
Continue reading...As war forces more to flee, humanitarian organisations facing funding shortfalls and increasing demand are unable to keep pace
The number of people having to leave their homes in the Lake Chad region of central Africa has more than doubled over the past year with agencies warning they are struggling to feed people.
The fighting, which last month claimed the life of the president of Chad, Idriss Déby, has displaced more than 400,000 Chadians, according to the International Organization for Migration, a rise from 169,000 at the start of 2020. More than 65,000 people were displaced in the first quarter of this year.
Continue reading...Former Australian PM wants Boris Johnson to make ‘ambitious pledge’ to support girls at Kenyan summit
The former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has called for Britain to return its aid budget to pre-cuts levels “as soon as possible”.
Gillard, who now campaigns for education in lower-income countries as chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), said she wanted the British government to step up with an “ambitious pledge” for global education when it co-hosts the G7 summit next month.
Continue reading...Rights groups say government and UN inaction has left people lacking food and medicine for weeks
Tens of thousands of Cambodians are going hungry under the country’s strict lockdown as Covid cases continue to rise amid criticism from human rights groups that the government and the UN are being too slow to act.
The south-east Asian country had recorded one of the world’s smallest coronavirus caseloads, but infections have climbed from about 500 in late February to 20,695 this week, with 136 deaths.
Continue reading...With one psychiatrist for 750,000 people and huge stigma about mental health, patients get little help
Radhwan Ali Hassan lives with his mother in a small house perched at the top of a sleepy Yemeni village called Aqeeqah, on the outskirts of Taiz city. From inside his bare-walled room, the 35-year-old hears the distant sound of an ice-cream van. He sees children running past his window and can smell goats, but he cannot remember the last time he walked outside.
Thick metal shackles around his ankles are attached to a heavy chain fastened to the far wall. They clatter as Hassan paces his room, rocks from side to side and smiles vacantly. His pupils are wide, his movements slow.
Continue reading...Save the Children’s analysis finds Britain will spend 80% less on nutrition abroad this year, as hunger levels rise around the world
Britain is set to spend 80% less on helping feed children in poorer nations than before the pandemic, according to a charity’s analysis.
Save the Children said the British government will spend less than £26m this year on vital nutrition services in developing countries, a drop of more than three-quarters from 2019. The estimate of aid cuts to nutrition comes after UN agencies called for urgent action to avert famine in 20 countries including Yemen, South Sudan and northern Nigeria.
Continue reading...Hospital in Zanzibar and support for child workers in Bangladesh among approved projects to miss out as £2.1m of funding cancelled
The UK has scrapped three rounds of grants to small international development charities, prompting fury that it has wiped out funding for 42 projects around the world to save “less than the [£2.6m] cost of the Downing Street press room”.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told charities last week that rounds six, seven and eight of the Small Charities Challenge Fund (SCCF) would not go ahead because of aid cuts, cancelling in total about £2.1m of funds earmarked for new and future programmes, including many that had been approved.
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