Category Archives: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

‘We’ve been forgotten’: the British embassy security guard in Kabul

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Abdullah says guards who risked their lives for the British cannot understand why they have been abandoned

Abdullah*, 34, was a security guard for the British embassy, employed under contract by GardaWorld, and had a senior management role, looking after other locally employed embassy guards. He and about 180 colleagues had hoped to be evacuated to the UK at the end of August, but the evacuation was stopped by a bomb at the airport. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) made a clear commitment that all GardaWorld staff would be allowed to travel to the UK, but this has not happened.

We’ve heard nothing from the Home Office or the FCDO and life is becoming very hard for everyone who worked for the British embassy. Surviving when there is no income and no work is very difficult. We’re still hoping we will get an email about evacuation plans, but we haven’t heard anything. The UK government is helping footballers and writers to leave the country, but there has been no help for us. We feel like we should be first in line because we risked our lives for the British government. It’s a huge disappointment for all of us.

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UK accused of abandoning world’s poor as aid turned into ‘colonial’ investment

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Rebrand of Foreign Office’s development arm, seen as effort to rival China’s loans, will shift aid to private sector, warn NGOs and unions

The British government has been accused by NGOs and trade unions of “chasing colonial post-Brexit fantasies” at the expense of the world’s poorest as they urge Liz Truss to keep aid focused on poverty reduction rather than geopolitical manoeuvring.

In a joint letter to the foreign secretary, the group criticises the rebranding of the UK’s development investment arm, which will see the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) become British International Investment (BII) next year.

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Women stage global fast to pressure UK over Nazanin Zagari-Ratcliffe

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Participants in women’s fasting relay will demand Boris Johnson repay £400m to Iran for 1970s arms deal

Women around the world will take turns to fast for 24 hours in an attempt to put pressure on the UK government to secure the freedom of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from detention in Iran.

The campaign by FiLiA, a female-led volunteer organisation working for the liberation of women, follows the 21-day hunger strike Nazanin’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, mounted outside the Foreign Office in London until mid-November.

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Liz Truss to take on Brexit brief after David Frost resignation

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The foreign secretary is assuming responsibility for the UK’s relationship with the EU, says Downing Street

The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, is to take over responsibility for the UK’s relationship with the EU after the Brexit minister Lord Frost’s resignation, Downing Street has said.

She will be adding ministerial responsibility to her foreign portfolio with immediate effect.

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How an Afghan reporter was left to the Taliban by the Foreign Office

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‘Fahim’ was cleared to leave Kabul. Then the phone went dead. Now he moves house every two days to evade capture

Fahim, a journalist who had worked with British media organisations, was one of thousands of Afghans who approached the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for help to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban’s conquest this summer.

Told he was cleared to travel with his family to the UK, he was also one of the many left behind as the promised help from the FCDO failed to materialise.

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Whistleblower condemns Foreign Office over Kabul evacuation

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Ex-diplomat claims string of failings within department led to ‘people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban’

Tens of thousands of Afghans were unable to access UK help following the fall of Kabul because of turmoil and confusion in the Foreign Office, according a devastating account by a whistleblower.

A former diplomat has claimed bureaucratic chaos, ministerial intervention, lack of planning and a short-hours culture in the department led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban”.

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Call to British Airways might have averted 1990 Kuwait hostage crisis

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Ambassador warned Foreign Office an Iraqi invasion was under way but this was not passed on to airline

Hundreds of British passengers might have avoided being taken hostage by Saddam Hussein in 1990 if a call by a British ambassador regarding Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had been relayed to British Airways, the Foreign Office has disclosed.

The revelation of the phone call and the decades long cover-up was made on Tuesday under the 20-year disclosure rule, but was known to ministers and diplomats since 1990. The current foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has apologised for the omission.

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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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