Category Archives: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

UN Palestine aid agency is ‘close to collapse’ after funding cuts

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UK has cut relief grant for Palestinians by more than 50% from £42.5m in 2020 to £20.8m in 2021

Cuts to the budget of the UN’s relief agency for Palestinians – including a halving of the UK grant – means the agency is close to collapse, the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, has said. The UK has cut its core grant by more than 50% from £42.5m in 2020 to £20.8m in 2021.

Lazzarini, the commissioner general of UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which serves Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza but also in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, said the agency was in an existential crisis due to a $100m (£74m) shortfall this year, but also because of a method of long-term funding that has proved unsustainable.

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Assad regime ‘siphons millions in aid’ by manipulating Syria’s currency

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Government pocketed half of donations in 2020 as central bank forced UN agencies to use lower exchange rate


The Syrian government is siphoning off millions of dollars of foreign aid by forcing UN agencies to use a lower exchange rate, according to new research.

The Central Bank of Syria, which is sanctioned by the UK, US and EU, in effect made $60m (£44m) in 2020 by pocketing $0.51 of every aid dollar sent to Syria, making UN contracts one of the biggest money-making avenues for President Bashar al-Assad and his government, researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Operations & Policy Center thinktank and the Center for Operational Analysis and Research found.

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‘Use your £11bn climate fund to pay for family planning,’ UK told

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More than 60 NGOs call for spending rule change, saying people on frontline of climate crisis want greater access to reproductive healthcare

The UK government has been urged to open up its £11bn pot of climate funding to contraception, as research from low-income countries shows a link between poor access to reproductive health services and environmental damage.

In a letter to Alok Sharma, president of the UN Cop26 climate conference, an alliance of more than 60 NGOs has called for the funding eligibility rules to be changed to allow projects concerned with removing barriers to reproductive healthcare and girls’ education to access climate funds.

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‘I saw children falling down’: panic and despair in Kabul as time runs out

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Faced with crowd stampedes and Taliban reprisals, even those eligible for travel to UK have begun to give up hope

For the past four days, Nangyalai, a 42-year-old minicab driver from south London, has been queueing with his wife and 11-month-old baby outside the Baron hotel on the edge of Kabul airport, trying to get close enough to the entrance gate to show guards his British passport.

There is a sign by the gate stating “British passport holders only”. Inside the hotel, officials are working to grant evacuation visas for thousands of UK nationals and Afghan citizens who have worked for British organisations. Diplomatic staff say they are “processing hundreds every hour”, but there is a growing sense of despair among the crowds who have been waiting outside since the start of the week – and tensions are rising.

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UK imposes sanctions on seven Russians over Navalny poisoning

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FCDO says the individuals, said to be FSB members, will be subject to travel bans and asset freezes

Sanctions have been imposed on seven Russian nationals accused of involvement in the nerve agent poisoning of the key Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, the UK government has said.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) announced that the individuals, said to be members of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), would be subject to travel bans and asset freezes.

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Where UK aid cuts bite deepest – stories from the sharp end

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As women and children lose out on programmes that could change their lives, Britain’s reputation has been diminished

Bukola Onyishi was delighted when she found out that the British government was going to help her realise a dream in one of the poorest parts of Nigeria. With a grant agreement that was meant to last for three years, she was finally going to be able to launch a female empowerment programme for the women of Bauchi state in the country’s north-east, many of whom had fled the militant Islamist group Boko Haram and were now living in abject poverty in camps for the internally displaced.

“The grant made us very happy,” says Onyishi, country director for Women for Women International. “[Bauchi] was the right place to be.” Setting it up was not easy: Onyishi and her colleagues had a job to persuade community elders of the project’s value, encountering deep-seated patriarchal beliefs that surprised even her in their obstinacy. But they came round in the end, and the first 12-month empowerment programme began, teaching 1,200 carefully selected women about everything from their basic human rights to numeracy and business skills.

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Boris Johnson announces end to UK military mission in Afghanistan – video

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Boris Johnson has announced the end of Britain’s military mission in Afghanistan, following a hasty and secretive exit of the last remaining troops 20 years after the post-9/11 invasion that started the 'war on terror'. Speaking in the Commons, the prime minister confirmed to MPs that the intervention, which claimed the lives of 457 British soldiers, would end even as the insurgent Taliban have been rapidly gaining territory in rural areas as UK and other forces withdraw

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UK minister confuses Zambia with Zimbabwe at Kenneth Kaunda funeral

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Slip by James Duddridge at funeral of liberation leader derided as evidence of enduring colonial attitudes

James Duddridge, the UK’s minister for Africa, appeared to confuse Zimbabwe with Zambia in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.

Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991. He was respected across the continent as one of a generation of Africans who fought to free their nations from colonial rule.

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Dominic Raab’s mobile number freely available online for last decade

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Exclusive: Finding raises questions for security services weeks after similar revelations about PM’s number

The private mobile number of Dominic Raab, the UK foreign secretary, has been online for at least 11 years, raising questions for the security services weeks after the prime minister’s number was also revealed to be accessible to anyone.

Raab’s number was discovered by a Guardian reader using a Google search. It appears to have been online since before he became an MP in 2010, and remained after he became foreign secretary and first secretary of state – de facto deputy prime minister – in 2019.

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UK aid cuts imposed with no transparency, says watchdog

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Icai review cites lack of access to officials and papers to assess aid budget since Foreign Office-DfID merger

UK aid cuts have been imposed with inadequate transparency, according to an independent watchdog, which said it was becoming increasingly difficult to interact with the government.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai), a public body that reports to parliament, said the lack of cooperation, partly due to the disruption of aid cuts, has meant it was unable even to assess whether recommendations it had previously made had been followed.

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UK aid cuts to Bangladesh NGO a ‘gut punch’, says charity head

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Withdrawal from long-term partnership catastrophic, says Brac, affecting women and girls’ education and those in extreme poverty

The UK government’s funding cuts to the world’s largest international non-governmental organisation are a “gut punch” after a successful 10-year £450m partnership, according to a director.

Asif Saleh, executive director of Brac Bangladesh, said the cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of girls without an education, millions of women and girls without access to family planning and hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty without support.

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UK aid cuts will put tens of thousands of children at risk of famine, says charity

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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.

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UK cuts grants for small aid charities to save ‘less than cost of No 10 press room’

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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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UK sends oxygen concentrators and ventilators to India – but no Covid vaccines

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Foreign Office says Britain ‘first out of the blocks’ with help but Labour calls it a drop in the ocean

The UK has been “the first out of the blocks” with help for India, but will not send vaccines to the Covid-ravaged country until Britain has surplus supplies, the Foreign Office minister Nigel Adams has told MPs.

He said the UK was responding to the Indian government’s needs, and had been the first country to provide practical support “in the face of heartbreaking scenes that had shocked us all”. He said he had friends of Indian heritage who were “at their wit’s end”, and vowed the UK would be at the forefront in providing aid.

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UK to slash funding for overseas water and sanitation projects by 80%

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Scale of aid cut emerges in leaked FCDO memo, prompting experts to describe it as ‘a national shame’

The UK is to slash funding for lifesaving water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing nations by more than 80%, according to a leaked memo.

The cuts have been described as “savage”, “incredible” and “a national shame” by experts highlighting that sanitation and handwashing is a key line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction to the bilateral aid budget was revealed as details emerged of cuts in the foreign aid budget.

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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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‘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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DRC aid agencies appeal to UK Foreign Office to suspend ‘disastrous’ cuts

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Fears of 60% reduction in budget for country where 27.3m said to be experiencing acute food insecurity

A consortium of 19 aid agencies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo has issued a last-minute appeal to the UK Foreign Office to suspend planned aid cuts to the country, where a third of the population faces acute food insecurity.

The Foreign Office, the second largest provider of aid to the war-torn country, has told aid agencies that cuts are very likely. Although the size of them is not yet agreed, one report has suggested a 60% reduction in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office budget for the country. The FCDO’s aid programme for Congo was worth £180m in 2019.

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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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