Category Archives: Aid

Dominic Raab is challenged to admit 40% cuts to foreign aid for girls’ education

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Former minister Lady Sugg also accuses Foreign Office of cutting key sexual health programmes

Lady Sugg, a former Foreign Office minister, has challenged her onetime boss Dominic Raab to admit he is cutting the UK aid budget for girls’ education by more than 40% as the foreign secretary also suggested UK bilateral aid to Africa would be reduced to a third of what it was two years ago.

She also claimed the government was planning to close its flagship Women’s Integrated Sexual Health programme and impose cuts of about 70-80% to spending on the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition.

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‘Shortsighted’: UK cuts aid to project preparing cities for natural disaster

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From Quito to Kathmandu, millions will be endangered by cuts affecting planning for floods, earthquakes and fires, experts say


UK aid cuts to a programme working to reduce the disaster risk to poor communities around the world could endanger millions of lives and slam shut a brief window of opportunity to build safer cities for centuries to come, experts have warned.

Professor John McCloskey, from Edinburgh University, said the 70% cut to this year’s budget for the Tomorrow’s Cities project was an act of “vandalism” that had wrecked the past two years of collaboration with scientists, NGOs, authorities and communities in Ecuador’s capital Quito, Nairobi, Kathmandu and Istanbul.

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UK aid cut seen as unforced error in ‘year of British leadership’

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With UK hosting G7 and Cop26 this year, decision threatens Britain’s status as a ‘soft power’ superpower

Boris Johnson is said to be having “queasy second thoughts” about a long-term cut to the UK aid programme, faced both by the surprising unpopularity of the measure with his own backbenchers and the fact that most other G7 countries will come to the British-hosted summit in June increasing theirs – in the process endangering the UK status as a soft power superpower.

The official government line remains not to look at the falls in aid spending but the size of the budget as a proportion of gross national income, which is still in excess of most G7 countries. The reduced £10bn budget still puts the UK third in the aid spending league table and if anyone has doubts about the UK’s soft power status, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, likes to cite an Ipsos Mori poll finding for the British Council in 2020 that found the UK was the most attractive country in the G20.

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‘No country immune’ from UK’s aid cuts, says Raab

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Foreign secretary denies that aid organisations are scared to speak out or people are going hungry

The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has told MPs that “no country is immune” from the impending aid cuts, but failed to clarify when specific plans would be made public.

Speaking after the release of the first details of the £4bn cuts to international aid, which have been widely criticised as “draconian” and opaque, the minister confirmed “no stand-alone” impact assessment had been carried out in individual countries but that “we identify risks we see across the board”.

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No impact assessment made of Yemen aid cuts, official admits

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Minister tells MPs that cuts come at ‘terrible’ time, with 16m close to famine as Covid infections double

The UK government has admitted that no assessment has been carried out of how “dire” the impact of the 60% cut in foreign aid to Yemen will be.

Related: UK 'balancing books on backs of Yemen's starving people', says UN diplomat

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Humanitarian system is failing people in crisis, says UN aid chief

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Exclusive: coordinator of UN’s relief operation to say agencies not listening to needs of those in need

The world’s multibillion-dollar humanitarian system is struggling because unaccountable aid agencies are not listening to what people say they need and instead are deciding for them, the UN’s humanitarian agency head will say this week.

In a startling analysis of the programme he oversees, Mark Lowcock, the coordinator of the UN’s aid relief operation since 2017, will say he has reached the view that “one of the biggest failings” of the system is that agencies “do not pay enough attention” to the voices of people caught up in crises.

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‘If we don’t give, people don’t eat’: Yemen focus of UK Ramadan giving

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As Britain cuts aid to war-torn country on brink of famine Muslim charities are directing donations towards feeding population

The Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, which started this week, is the biggest period of giving for UK Muslims.

According to research by the Muslim Charities Forum, in 2018 the UK’s estimated 3.5 million Muslims donated more than £120m to global charitable causes during Ramadan, at a rate of £46 every second.

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‘My son could die’: the disabled Syrian refugees on the sharp end of UK aid cuts – photo essay

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Two centres in Lebanon are among the casualties of cuts to British aid, with devastating consequences for thousands of patients and families

In January, the British government told its diplomats to start finding 50–70% cuts in aid funding. In March, it was revealed it was slashing aid funding to Syrian refugee projects by a third. Among the many casualties of those cuts is a project in Lebanon.

Two centres – in Zahlé and in Beirut – offer specialised services, such as speech and physiotherapy, for disabled Syrian refugees who can’t afford to pay for them.

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‘Out of Trump playbook’: UK accused of ‘abandoning’ women with cuts to aid

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Charity warns of 22,000 additional deaths in poorest countries if Wish reproductive health programme ends

The director of a leading sexual and reproductive health charity has accused the government of “abandoning” women and girls it promised to help, as aid cuts derail a leading Tory programme to reduce maternal deaths and prevent unsafe abortions in poor countries.

The threat to the women’s integrated sexual health (Wish) programme could mean 7.5m additional unintended pregnancies, 2.7m unsafe abortions and 22,000 maternal deaths over the next year, said Dr Alvaro Bermejo, director general of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

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Gordon Brown calls for G7 to act on Covid vaccine ‘apartheid’

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Former prime minister says group should commit to global vaccine drive and slams UK’s foreign aid cut

Preventing poor countries suffering from vaccine “apartheid” will require the G7 group of rich nations to commit $30bn (£22bn) a year to a global immunisation drive, Gordon Brown has said.

The former Labour prime minister said the UK should use June’s G7 summit in Cornwall to rekindle the moral purpose of the Make Poverty History campaign of 2005, paying for its share of the new fund by reversing the government’s “misguided” cut to the foreign aid budget.

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Aid agencies can be harmful, says Somaliland tycoon

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Ismail Ahmed, a refugee turned multimillionaire, says his country has had to battle ‘negative PR’

Aid agencies are hindering development and undermining efforts to attract investment in Somaliland, according to a former World Bank and UN official turned entrepreneur.

Ismail Ahmed, founder of the money-transfer company WorldRemit, claims Somaliland, his birthplace, has had to battle “negative PR” from aid agencies exaggerating their role to protect their interests. Somaliland declared itself a sovereign state independent of Somalia in 1991, but it is not recognised internationally.

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Cutting aid will damage UK leadership of G7 and Cop26 summit, PM told

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Ex-ministers and serving Tory MPs among those criticising decision to cut UK foreign aid by a third

Boris Johnson has been told by a number of Tory former ministers and serving MPs that he risks jeopardising Britain’s leadership at the G7 and the Cop26 climate summit this year if he goes ahead with plans to cut UK aid by a third over two years.

Sir David Lidington, who was Theresa May’s de facto deputy prime minister, will tell an Institute for Government conference on the G7 on Tuesday: “Sadly, the proposal to drop the UK’s commitment to 0.7% [of gross national income] will make it harder to achieve the prime minister’s ambitious objectives for both the G7 and the climate summit.”

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‘Lives will be lost,’ warn Syria aid groups as UK cuts funding by a third

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Reduced £205m offer at UN pledging conference comes with 90% of Syrians living in poverty

Syrians and aid organisations have warned that “lives will be lost” as a result of the UK’s decision to cut aid funding to the conflict-stricken country.

The UN hoped to raise $10bn (£7.3bn) from governments and donors at a virtual two-day pledging conference for Syria – the biggest appeal yet to help both people inside and those displaced outside the country.

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British aid cuts to leave tens of thousands of Syrians ‘paperless’

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Norwegian Refugee Council says move to pull funding for its legal support programme will leave many in ‘destitution’

Tens of thousands of Syrians will no longer receive legal support, leaving many “in utter destitution” without documents they need to work, travel or return home, after the British government pulled £4m in funding from a charity programme, according to its director.

News of the cut to a Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) project supporting refugees and internally displaced Syrians, comes amid reports of a planned 67% aid reduction in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) budget for Syria, which would place hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

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UK aid budget cut unlawful, legal advice to Tory rebels says

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Government could face judicial review if it does not reinstate its spending commitment, advice adds

The government will be in clear breach of the law and exposed to a judicial review if it presses ahead with a multibillion-pound cut in the UK’s foreign aid programme, according to legal advice given to Tory backbenchers.

Advice issued by the QC and peer Ken Macdonald said No 10 had acted outside the law when it abandoned its commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.

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‘We choose good guys and bad guys’: beneath the myth of ‘model’ Rwanda

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President Paul Kagame – long feted by leaders in the west – is accused of serial human rights abuses in expansive new book

A devastating new book will accuse Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame – long feted by his prominent international supporters as the model of visionary new African leadership – of being a serial human rights abuser, including for his role in a sustained campaign of assassinating his rivals in exile.

Written by Michela Wrong, the author who covered the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when more than 800,000 people – largely ethnic Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus – were killed by Hutu militias over 100 days, Do Not Disturb represents one of the most far-reaching historical revisions of Kagame and his regime.

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Boris Johnson says UK wants to work with China, though it poses ‘great challenges for an open society’ – live

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Latest updates: PM says UK’s greatest ally will be US as he makes statement to MPs on defence review

In his Sky News interview Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, said the security and defence review said that the UK could use nuclear weapons to respond to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. That was a “big change” in policy, he said.

He was referring to this passage on page 77 of the document (pdf).

The UK will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968 (NPT). This assurance does not apply to any state in material breach of those non-proliferation obligations. However, we reserve the right to review this assurance if the future threat of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological capabilities, or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact, makes it necessary.

Here is the Scottish government’s summary of the latest plans for easing lockdown restrictions in Scotland. And here is a graphic summarising what it says.

Scotland’s indicative route out of lockdown. If we all stick with it and get the virus more under control as the vaccines do their work, there is hope for a much better summer on the horizon ☀️ pic.twitter.com/gTKHtJTNn5

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MPs will not get vote on cut to UK aid spending, says Boris Johnson

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PM confirms cut temporary amid opposition from his own party including former ministers

MPs will not get a vote on the government’s plans to slash aid spending, Boris Johnson has said in the of Commons, confirming that the cut is intended to be temporary.

The former shadow international development secretary Andrew Mitchell said Johnson was at risk of setting an illegal budget if it did not meet the legal obligation to spend 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) on aid.

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Aid spending cuts may not get put to Commons vote, No 10 suggests

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Denying MPs their say could head off Tory rebellion but potentially open government to legal action

A planned reduction in aid spending may not go to a vote in the Commons, Downing Street has indicated, which would head off a likely rebellion by Conservative MPs but could expose the government to legal action.

Pressed repeatedly on whether the cut in the aid budget from 0.7% of national income – which is set out in law under the 2015 International Development Act – would be subject to a Commons vote or a new act, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson declined to confirm this.

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UK ‘balancing books on backs of Yemen’s starving people’, says UN diplomat

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Exclusive: former DfID secretary Mark Lowcock shocked by decision of Johnson’s government to cut aid

Ministers have decided to “balance the books on the backs of the starving people of Yemen” in an act that will see tens of thousands die and damage the UK’s global influence, the head of the UN’s Office for Humanitarian Affairs has said.

Speaking with rare bluntness after the UK more than halved its funds to help Yemen, the former permanent secretary at the Department for International Development Mark Lowcock said he was shocked by the decision. It is understood he was given no chance to appeal to the UK to rethink.

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