Category Archives: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe saga nearing its end, says former Foreign Office chief

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Lord McDonald says UK has been looking at repaying debt to Iran via humanitarian route due to sanctions

Long-running efforts to get Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe back to the UK are nearing their endgame, the recently retired head of the Foreign Office has said.

Lord McDonald, permanent undersecretary at the FCDO until the summer, said for the first time that the UK had been looking at repaying a historical £400m debt to Iran through humanitarian payments that would not be subject to sanctions against the country.

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UK failing to protect human rights defenders abroad, says Amnesty

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New report finds lawyers, journalists and health workers at risk during pandemic have struggled to get help from embassies

The UK government has failed in its pledge to help those on the frontline of the global fight for human rights during the pandemic, according to a new report.

Amnesty International said health workers, lawyers, journalists and rights activists from around the world who were living under constant threat during the Covid-19 pandemic struggled to get support or funding from British embassies.

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Just £12,000 of £40m fund for displaced Chagos islanders has been spent

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MP representing most of UK’s Chagossians says failure to use compensation money to help those facing hardship is outrageous

Less than £12,000 of a £40m fund set up to compensate Chagos islanders who were forcibly evicted from their homeland by the British government has reached those living in the UK.

Four years after it was announced, the Foreign Office fund has distributed less than 1% of its budget in direct support to islanders forced from their homes in the Indian Ocean.

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UK aid cuts of up to 70% a ‘gut punch’ to world’s poorest, experts say

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Decision to reduce overseas aid represents a ‘major challenge’ to partner countries’ Covid responses, FCDO warned

The British government’s decision to slash at least 50% in overseas aid within the next few weeks has been called a “gut punch” to the world’s poorest.

Reacting to the news that diplomats had been ordered to cut billions in aid over the next six weeks, experts warned that many lives would be lost and the UK stood to lose its reputation as a global “force for good”.

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Former Tory MP’s posting as UK ambassador to Cuba raises fresh cronyism claims

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‘Man in Havana’ role usually taken by experienced diplomats goes to ex-trade minister George Hollingbery

Boris Johnson’s government has been accused of fostering a culture of cronyism after the appointment of a former Conservative MP to become the ambassador to Cuba.

George Hollingbery, the former minister and MP until 2019, was announced on Tuesday as the UK’s new “man in Havana”, a post usually taken up by experienced diplomats.

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UK diplomats told to cut up to 70% from overseas aid budget

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Officials have just weeks to slash costs, prompting fears that speed of cuts could cost lives

British diplomats have been instructed to find at least 50% cuts in UK overseas bilateral aid in the next few weeks in advance of the next financial year, the Labour party has said.

Sarah Champion, the Labour chair of parliament’s international development select committee, said: “Our ambassadors have today been instructed by the Foreign Office to cut 50-70% from the aid budget.”

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UK must cancel poor countries’ debt or face Covid-19 ‘financial tsunami’

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International development committee tells government that pandemic and foreign aid cuts fuelling poverty and food insecurity

Billions of dollars of debt owed by poor countries must be permanently cancelled in order to stave off a “looming financial tsunami” caused by Covid-19 and the ensuing global recession, a cross-party committee of MPs has warned.

Debt relief will not be enough to help the world’s most vulnerable economies as they face skyrocketing levels of hunger and unemployment, according to an inquiry into Covid-19’s secondary impacts in developing countries, published on Tuesday by the House of Commons international development committee (IDC).

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UK insists it will not grant EU ambassador full diplomatic status

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Foreign Office says EU should not be treated as nation state, despite 142 countries granting bloc this status

A near-yearlong row about the UK’s refusal to grant full diplomatic status of the EU mission to the UK has worsened, with the leak of letters revealing the EU foreign affairs chief has serious concerns about the status being given to EU officials in the UK.

The issue is likely to be discussed at a EU foreign affairs council on Monday, the first such meeting of member states’ foreign ministers since the post-Brexit transition ended.

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Aid sector is ‘last safe haven’ for abusers, UK investigation warns

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MPs say sexual exploitation still rife despite series of scandals and call for more effective measures

The sexual abuse and exploitation of local women by international aid workers remains “rife”, say MPs, describing the sector as the “last safe haven” for perpetrators.

A parliamentary inquiry found evidence of widespread abuse of beneficiaries, ineffective investigations and whistleblowers forced out of jobs, despite a series of recent scandals that had prompted some reforms.

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‘Step up’ and face Grenfell inquiry, minister tells cladding firm bosses

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Stephen Greenhalgh said executives should not ‘hide behind’ rarely used French law

The UK government has demanded that executives who supplied combustible cladding to Grenfell Tower “step up to the plate” after their refusal to give evidence to the public inquiry into the disaster provoked anger among the bereaved and survivors.

On Sunday, Stephen Greenhalgh, the building safety minister, escalated a legal and diplomatic dispute over the position taken by three current and former executives at the French division of the US company Arconic. He told them to stop hiding behind an arcane French law.

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UK pledges an extra £47m in aid as agencies warn of ‘catastrophic hunger’

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Coronavirus, conflict and cuts to UN funding are increasing the risks of food insecurity and acute malnutrition in 2021

The government has promised £47m in extra emergency aid for 2021 as it becomes clear that the coming year will see a dramatic rise in people struggling for food.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Wednesday it will provide more aid for food, water, hygiene and shelter in 11 countries, including £8m to Africa’s Sahel region, where the UN has warned of catastrophic hunger.

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Senior Tories fear £4bn cut to overseas aid will be made permanent

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MPs campaigning against chancellor’s plans believe they can ‘humiliate’ the government into U-turn

Senior Tories fear that the cut to Britain’s aid budget will become permanent, amid a growing campaign inside and outside parliament to reverse the decision.

Conservatives opposed to the move are already vowing to “humiliate” the government by forcing it to stand by its manifesto commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid – a vow chancellor Rishi Sunak said he would breach in his review of public spending last week. He announced that £4bn would effectively be cut from the aid budget by reducing it to 0.5%, despite pleas from Tories and the archbishop of Canterbury.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s release shows dangers of making deals with Iran

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Talks over other dual-national detainees risk encouraging Tehran to see hostage-taking as a winning strategy

The release of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the British Australian academic, is a bittersweet moment for the relatives across the globe of other Iranian dual nationals still trapped in Iranian jails. Many families celebrated her release, but also asked themselves again whether their own governments are doing all they can to bring their loved ones home.

Sherry Izadi, the wife of a 66-year-old British-Iranian construction engineer, Anoosheh Ashoori, jailed for 10 years, told the Guardian: “It is extraordinary the lengths the Australian government was prepared to go to secure her release. They seem to have persuaded the Thai government to exchange three Iranians accused of terrorism in return for her release.” The three-way negotiations between the governments took six months.

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UK aid cuts ‘unprincipled, unjustified and harmful’, say experts and MPs

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Cuts announced by Rishi Sunak will hit girls and women in poorest countries hardest, with charities predicting huge numbers of deaths

The UK aid cuts announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak could see a million girls lose out on schooling, nearly three million women and children go without life-saving nutrition and 5.6 million children left unvaccinated, causing up to 100,000 deaths, charities, aid experts and MPs have said.

They described the slash in funding to overseas aid, from 0.7% to 0.5% of Britain’s gross national income, as “unprincipled, unjustified and harmful” just as a global health crisis is throwing decades of progress on poverty, healthcare and education into reverse.

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UK’s foreign aid budget to be reduced to 0.5% of gross national income

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Chancellor announces £4bn cut in spending, breaking Tory pledge to keep to 0.7% target

Britain’s overseas aid budget is to be cut from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%, slicing more than £4bn from the annual package and breaking a Tory manifesto commitment made only a year ago.

The cut was announced in the spending review by Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, which also saw a large three-year increase for the defence budget. Sunak clearly decided to brush aside warnings from across the political spectrum that Britain’s commitment to foreign aid symbolised an outward looking and generous UK.

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Boris Johnson urged to commit to aid budget after defence boost

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Nearly 200 charities and NGOs call on PM to keep spending at 0.7% rather than 0.5% of GDP

Nearly 200 charities and aid organisations have called on Boris Johnson to reconsider plans to cut billions from the international development budget by reducing it to 0.5% of GDP.

Save the Children, Greenpeace UK, Christian Aid, VSO International and others urged the prime minister not to cut Britain’s aid spending while the world was in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic.

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UK aid budget facing billions in cuts

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Treasury seeking to slash target for aid spending from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%

The Treasury is planning to slash billions from the overseas aid budget despite the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, praising the government’s 0.7% aid target on Monday as representing UK values in front of aides to Joe Biden.

The Treasury wants to cut the aid budget from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5% next year and plans to make the announcement as part of next Monday’s one-year spending review.

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