The UK government has revealed plans to cut foreign aid, with support for children’s education and women’s health in Africa facing the biggest reductions. The cuts follow a 40% reduction in foreign aid spending, from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3%, to increase defence spending to 2.5%. According to a Foreign Office report and impact assessment, the biggest cuts this year will come in Africa, with less spent on women’s health and water sanitation, increasing the risks of disease and death.
Baroness Chapman, minister for development, said, “Every pound must work harder for UK taxpayers and the people we help around the world and these figures show how we are starting to do just that through having a clear focus and priorities.” The government claimed that spending on multilateral aid bodies would be protected, including the Gavi vaccine alliance, and that the UK would continue to play a key humanitarian role in hotspots such as Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan.
However, aid charities have criticised the move, saying the cuts would impact the world’s most vulnerable people. International Development Committee chair Sarah Champion said it appears the cuts “will come at the expense of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.” Liberal Democrat international development spokesperson Monica Harding warned that slashing UK aid spending to its “lowest level this century will have an appalling impact on some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.”
Bond, a UK network for international development organisations, said it was clear the government was “deprioritising” funding “for education, gender and countries experiencing humanitarian crises such as South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, and surprisingly the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Sudan, which the government said would be protected.” Bond policy director Gideon Rabinowitz said, “The world’s most marginalised communities, particularly those experiencing conflict and women and girls, will pay the highest price for these political choices.”
Unicef, a UN agency providing aid to children, said the cuts “will have a devastating and unequal impact on children and women” and called the move “deeply short-sighted.” Philip Goodwin, Unicef UK chief executive, said, “We urge the government to adopt a new strategic approach that places vulnerable children at the heart of its aid programmes and policies… At least 25% of aid should be directed to child-focused initiatives, ensuring that children’s health, nutrition, education, and protection are prioritised.”
British-founded charity Street Child told the BBC that some of its work to help children get access to education in Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo would come to an end because of the cuts. CEO Tom Dannatt said education was the greatest long-term builder of hope, and he described reducing the support as “sad and short-sighted.” “So children who used to go to school will not go to school, and so, more children will be found roaming the streets and ploughing fields and not developing their critical faculties,” he said.
One organisation that escaped the cuts was the World Bank. The Foreign Office confirmed that the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s fund for the world’s lowest income countries, would receive £1.98 billion in funding from the UK over the next three years, helping the organisation benefit 1.9 billion people.