The government has revealed details on its plans to reduce foreign aid, with support for children’s education and women’s health in Africa faced with the greatest reductions.
The government said in February that it would reduce foreign aid expenses by 40% – compared to 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% – to increase defense expenses to 2.5% after the United States pressure.
A report by the Office of Foreigners and an assessment of the impact show that the largest cuts this year will come in Africa, with less consultation for women’s health and water sanitation with increased risks, he says, from illness and death.
Bond, a British network of aid organizations, said women and children in the most marginalized communities would pay the highest price.
In addition to supporting less for Africa, including major reductions in children’s education, the financing of occupied Palestinian territories will fall by 21% despite the contrary promises.
But the government said that spending on multilateral aid organizations – money given to international organizations like the World Bank – would be protected, including GAVI Vaccine Alliance, and it said that the United Kingdom would also continue to play a key humanitarian role in hotspots such as Gazraine, Ukraine and Sudan.
Baroness Chapman, Minister of Development, said: “Each book must work harder for British taxpayers and the people we help in the world and these figures show how we start doing exactly this by having a clear concentration and priorities.”
The government has said that reductions follow “a strategic examination of online aid” by the Minister, who focused on “prioritization, efficiency, protection of planned humanitarian support and live contracts while guaranteeing the responsible output of programming if necessary”.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that bilateral support – aid to go directly to the beneficiary country – for some countries would decrease and that multilateral organizations deemed underperformatives are confronted with future funding reductions. He has not yet announced which countries will be affected.
Bond said it was clear that the government “depressed” funding “for education, sex and countries suffering from humanitarian crises such as South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, and surprisingly the occupied Palestinian territories and Sudan, which, according to the government, would be protected”.
“It is a concern that bilateral funding for Africa, gender, education and health programs will decrease,” said bond policies director Gideon Rabinowitz.
“The most marginalized communities in the world, in particular those that experience conflicts and women and girls, will pay the highest price for these political choices.
“At a time when the United States has emptied any gender programming, the United Kingdom should intensify, not to go back.”
Foreign aid has been the subject of a meticulous examination in recent years, the only minister of the cabinet admitting that the public no longer supports expenses.
An organization that escaped the cuts was the World Bank. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank Fund for the lowest income in the world, would receive 1.98 billion Sterling pounds in funding from the United Kingdom over the next three years, helping the organization benefit from 1.9 billion people.
Governments of work under SIR Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have undertaken to increase the budget for aid abroad to 0.7% of national income.
The objective was achieved in 2013 under the government of the David Cameron Conservative-Liberal Democratic Coalition, before being registered in law in 2015.
However, assistance expenditure was reduced to 0.5% of national income in 2021 under the Conservatives, blaming COVIR’s economic pressures.
