Latest news with #aidcuts
The Guardian
22-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘It's a tragedy we've chosen to withdraw': Save the Children boss on Labour's cuts to aid
Labour's deep cuts to the UK's aid budget will touch the lives of 60 million people, and underline the Britain's withdrawal from the world stage, the director of Save the Children UK has warned. Moazzam Malik, a former diplomat and civil servant, has spent the first six months in his post learning more about the plight of children in the UK and abroad. 'It's fair to say, I think my generation of policymakers and politicians haven't done the greatest job in delivering a better future for children and young people and their families,' he says, at the charity's London headquarters. He says that, since Boris Johnson merged the Department for International Development with the Foreign Office five years ago, the UK has increasingly stepped back from engagement with the global south. 'As somebody who's spent 25 years working for Britain representing our country in international forums and on the international stage, it's a tragedy that we've chosen to withdraw,' Malik says. The Conservatives reduced aid from 0.7% of gross domestic product to 0.5% in 2020, during the Covid pandemic – and began spending a rapidly expanding share of that on housing asylum seekers in the UK. Keir Starmer's government announced a further significant cut, to 0.3% of GDP, this year, to pay for defence spending , prompting the then international development minister, Anneliese Dodds, to resign. 'We estimate that the impact of the UK aid cuts that are to come over this year and next as the government moves to 0.3% will touch about 60 million people,' Malik says. 'These are real people's lives: access to a school closes, health services decline, cash protection support falls back. Humanitarian assistance falls back. So this will have real-world consequences. There's no way to avoid that. The scale of cuts is just much too large.' Dodds's successor, Jenny Chapman, has suggested the move to a '0.3 world', marks a shift from 'charity' to a 'partnership' with developing countries – but Malik rejects that characterisation. 'Respectful partnerships: yes, I agree, it's hugely important, but that is not what our partners have experienced. And indeed, as this government goes from 0.5 to 0.3, that is not what our partners will be experiencing. They will be experiencing withdrawal,' he says. 'In a country like Pakistan or Ethiopia or in Nepal, or Indonesia or other parts of the world, their experience of Britain over these last five years is of us not being at the table, trying to work collaboratively to find solutions to the problems that we both face, but as one of exit.' Malik sees the UK's stance as part of a wider shift away from multilateralism in an increasingly complex geopolitical context – including a more insular US. 'Early on in my time as a civil servant – I joined DfID in 1997 – and through the early 2000s, there was a real sense that you could remake the world in the post cold war era and deal with global challenges in a way that was fair, equitable, and that created a better future for everyone: that you could win. And I think that opportunity has been squandered.' Alongside other charity leaders, he is calling on the UK government to engage at the highest level with the UN Financing for Development conference in Seville at the end of this month, which is intended to be a collective attempt to confront challenges including the mounting global debt crisis. 'It would be good for the prime minister to show up,' he said. 'UK leadership requires engagement.' At home, Save the Children has been campaigning vociferously for the government to scrap the two-child limit that stops families receiving universal credit for their third and successive children. This month, Transport for London banned the charity's advert on the issue, deeming it to be too political. Starmer has recently appeared to hint that he is preparing to move on the issue, when the government's long-awaited child poverty strategy is finally published in the autumn. 'We have one in three kids in the UK growing up in poverty. That's a travesty,' Malik said. 'The benefits system is the single quickest thing that the government could do to make a dent in child poverty.' His charity also wants to see a 'child lock', similar to the pensions triple lock, that would prevent low-income families falling behind. Save the Children UK has been carefully rebuilding its reputation since it was condemned by the Charity Commission in 2020 for mishandling allegations of inappropriate behaviour by senior staff members between 2012 and 2015. It recently published an internal review covering a much more recent period, however – late 2023 – suggesting some staff had experienced antisemitism or anti-Muslim hatred at three internal events that included discussion of the war in Gaza. Save the Children accepted the review's recommendations and apologised to 'colleagues have experienced any form of hatred – whether anti-Muslim hate, antisemitism or other – in the workplace'. Malik welcomed the fact the review had been commissioned, and committed the charity to learning from it. 'As somebody who has suffered both Islamophobia and racism personally and violently, I have no truck with hatreds of any sort,' he says. As Malik prepares to visit Somalia, one of the 120 countries in which Save the Children operates, he says the charity will continue to make the case for the UK to engage internationally. 'This is a debate about the nature of the world in which we want our children and our grandchildren to grow up,' he says. 'Britain is an open economy, in an open society. Our future is linked and intimately connected to the state of the world.'
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
£5bn UK overseas aid cuts cannot be challenged in court, say government lawyers
Cuts of £5bn to the UK overseas aid budget cannot be challenged in the courts, government lawyers have said, even though ministers have no plan to return spending to the legal commitment of 0.7 % of UK gross national income (GNI). The assertion by Treasury solicitors that ministers are immune from legal challenge over aid cuts comes in preliminary exchanges with the aid advocacy group One Campaign. It is the first step in what could prove a highly embarrassing judicial review. In the spring statement in March the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said she was slashing aid from 0.5% to 0.3 % of GNI. The international development minister, Jenny Chapman, recently said in a Guardian interview that this level of spending was the new normal. The 40% cut, due to be imposed by April 2027, is being billed as necessary to fund a new permanent increase in defence spending required by long-term changes to the security landscape. The previous aid cut, from 0.7 % to 0.5 %, imposed by Dominic Raab, the then Conservative foreign secretary, was billed as temporary. It was accompanied by aspirational timetables for aid spending to return to 0.7%, the target set out in the 2015 International Development Act entrenching that figure as the government commitment on overseas aid. One Campaign says that for ministers to comply with the law, they face a choice of either repealing the act, a vote that some Labour MPs will be reluctant to justify to their electorates, or to set out a credible pathway to return to the target. The campaign said it is impossible for ministers to keep legislation on the statute book that places duties upon them they intend to defy. In their legal defence – a written exchange on the legal merits between government and One Campaign prior to a potential judicial review – government lawyers claimed a section in the act shields ministers from all legal challenge. They said the act's only mechanism for securing accountability is through a ministerial report to parliament. They pointed to a section of the act on the ministerial duty to report to parliament that states the reporting duty 'does not affect the lawfulness of anything done or omitted to be done by any person'. The lawyers told One Campaign that 'this puts beyond doubt that parliament intended the courts would have no jurisdiction'. This interpretation is being contested by the Liberal Democrat peer Jeremy Purvis, who helped draft the legislation and steered it through parliament. He said ministers cannot hide behind the narrow section of the act on minister's reporting duty to claim it ousts the courts. He added: 'This government has not just missed the target but is changing it, and there is no scope to do this. 'The simple fact is the government is seeking to avoid a vote in parliament, avoid the courts and avoid all accountability for reneging on all requirements under the act.' He added the government had set out no pathway to return to 0.7 %. One Campaign says the cuts are likely to be devastating. Its director, Adrian Lovett, said there was no evidence that ministers had met the requirement to undertake impact assessments of the cuts on poverty reduction and gender equality. Ministers say they only have to make such an assessment when cuts to specific programmes are being made.
Japan Times
16-06-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
'No one supports the children': Hunger plagues Mozambique
Sinhara Omar, a widow and mother of three children, relies on wild tubers and fruits to feed her family in the refugee camp where she lives in Mozambique's gas-rich and conflict-torn Cabo Delgado province. No one comes anymore with food, clothing and blankets to the camp in the city of Pemba, where she has lived since she fled a rebel attack on the northern town of Macomia five years ago. "For a long time, they used to support us, but now they've left us. Everyone manages in their own way. We don't get food or clothes, no one even supports the children anymore," she said. Omar and other families in the refugee camp used to receive help from the charity Association for the Protection of Women and Girls (PROMURA). But U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to freeze some $60 billion in aid has tightened the screw in countries around the world as have other aid cuts by international donors. The cuts hit hard in Mozambique, one of the world's most disaster-prone countries where conflict, climate shocks like floods and droughts, political unrest and economic decline have led to a hunger crisis. Volunteers distribute supplies from the World Food Program to residents after Cyclone Chido in Pemba, Mozambique, in December last year. | REUTERS "We had to stop all the activities of the projects that were funded by USAID," said Erasmo Mature, project manager at PROMURA. Not only are Mozambique residents regularly displaced by cyclones but more than 1.3 million people have fled their homes since Islamic State-linked militants launched an insurgency in Cabo Delgado in 2017, according to aid agencies. The World Food Program says about 5 million people are food insecure in Mozambique and need urgent support. "It's dawn, and we have no idea what to give the children to eat," Omar said. During a visit to Mozambique in February, United Nations officials called for urgent action to address the crisis caused by conflict and the effects of two cyclones — Chido and Dikeledi — in December and January. "Global humanitarian funding is under immense strain," said Joyce Msuya, assistant Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs, during the trip. "We cannot abandon Mozambicans at this critical juncture." The U.N. children's agency UNICEF has warned of a "children's emergency" caused by cuts to international aid budgets, with funding for Mozambique forecast to fall 20% by 2026. It says it needs about $43 million this year but so far the budget is only about 35% funded. In last year's devastating drought, fueled by the El Nino climate phenomenon, crops wilted in the fields. Harvests were dismal, and food prices soared. In some districts around the capital Maputo, the effects of the drought are still felt by low-income families who depend largely on subsistence farming. Children pose for a picture in Pemba, Mozambique, in December 2024. | REUTERS In the village of Bobole, Teresa Vilanculos said during the most recent harvest this year, she reaped nothing from her field because the seeds had dried up in the baked soil. She depends upon farming to feed her two grandchildren, and now she has no harvest and no seeds for the next planting season in September. She used to receive seeds through projects funded by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization and the African Development Bank and food from the Red Cross but this is not available any more, she said. She also sells firewood to make ends meet, but it is not enough to pay for food for her grandchildren. "Here, it's normal for us to go through the day without having something in our mouths," she said. UNICEF says Mozambican children face "unprecedented crises" with 3.4 million of them needing aid now. Only 3% of the $619 million the WFP says it needs for Mozambique has been provided by donors this year, and the agency needs $170 million to provide vital assistance over the next six months to prevent a large-scale hunger crisis. For Vilanculos, support cannot come soon enough. "I just feel so sorry for my grandchildren, because they're not to blame for any of this," she said. "Neither am I, but it's hard to see children depending on the solidarity of others to eat."
Japan Times
04-06-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
From Nigeria to Pakistan, TB testing 'in a coma' after U.S. aid cuts
At a tense meeting in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, health workers pored over drug registers and testing records to gauge whether U.S. aid cuts would unravel years of painstaking work against tuberculosis in one of Africa's hardest hit countries. For several days in May, they brainstormed ways to limit the fallout from a halt to U.S. funding for the TB Local Network (TB LON), which delivers screening, diagnosis and treatment. "To tackle the spread of TB, you must identify cases and that is in a coma because of the aid cuts," said Ibrahim Umoru, coordinator of the African TB Coalition civil society network, who was at the Abuja meeting.
The Independent
19-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Aid cuts forcing people in 70 countries to miss out on much-needed medical care, WHO warns
People in at least 70 countries are missing out on much-needed medical treatment thanks to aid cuts by the US and other nations, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) director has said – in a stark warning about the colossal impact of these moves. The Donald Trump -sanctioned slashing of US-funded programmes under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the most prominent example. But Germany, France and the Netherlands have also taken an axe to aid spending. While the UK is set to cut foreign assistance spending by billions of pounds. "Patients are missing out on treatments, health facilities have closed, health workers have lost their jobs, and people face increased out-of-pocket health spending," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an address to the World Health Assembly. 'Many ministers have told me that sudden and steep cuts to bilateral aid are causing severe disruption in their countries and imperilling the health of millions of people,' Dr Tedros added. The Independent has previously reported how the US and UK cuts are projected to lead to millions more people dying from Aids, an increased risk of famine, and falling access to clean water and education as a result of aid cuts. Meanwhile, the WHO itself is also facing more than a billion US dollar reduction to its budget over the next two years, as its biggest contributor the US is withdrawing funding as part of Trump's plans. As part of the World Health Assembly, the 194 WHO member states will have to deal with an already slimmed-down budget of $4.2 billion (£3.1bn) for 2026 and 2027. That is 20 per cent less than the $5.3bn originally proposed and amounts to $2.1 billion a year. "2.1 billion dollars is the equivalent of global military expenditure every eight hours," Dr Tedros told delegates. But the cuts will mean lsoing staff, the WHO's director general confirmed, with a current plan to cut the agency from 76 departments to 34. 'The organisation simply cannot do everything member states have asked it to do with the resources available today,' he said. As the United States prepares to exit the organisation, China is set to become the biggest provider of state fees - one of the WHO's main streams of funding alongside donations. The WHO conducts a range of activities from developing treatment guidelines and checking the safety of medicines to coordinating countries' emergency responses. It was heavily criticised by the the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response for its response to Covid-19, in particular for not declaring a global emergency sooner. At the same time it has faced criticism - and swirling conspiracy theories - from people who believe global agencies have too much power over national governments. Amid the chaos, there is a glimmer of opportunity, however, as 'many countries also see this as an opportunity to leave behind an era of aid dependency and accelerate the transition to sustainable self-reliance based on domestic resources,' Dr Tedros said. In the UK, as in several other countries, aid cuts are being driven by a decision to spend more on defence. Dr Tedros asked the room to consider that his agency's budget shortfall represented the price of global military spending, 'every eight hours,' and urged countries to also consider preparing for, 'an attack from an invisible enemy'. He pointed out that the Covid pandemic killed an estimated 20 million people and wiped $10 trillion from the global economy. The WHO member states are expected to finalise an agreement on Tuesday which will set out how the world should react to a future pandemic.
