A British parliamentary committee has warned that thousands of women in developing nations will die in pregnancy and childbirth and close to a million people will be left without healthcare thanks to recent cuts in Official Development Assistance (ODA).
With more than £900 million slashed from this year’s ODA budget, countries in extreme crisis such as Afghanistan and Yemen will see a drop in British aid by as much as 76%, leaving nearly a million women and children without critical health care. The report also warned that 27,000 children in South Sudan suffering from acute malnutrition will no longer receive any form of aid from Britain. Furthermore, an estimated 1,531 women will die during childbirth this year, while some 200,000 women will die due to unsafe abortions as result of British foreign aid spending cuts.
Nearly all of these reductions in aid this year were imposed on the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) by the Home Office when the FCDO was required to spend approximately one-quarter of its budget on housing refugees in Britain, primarily from Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Labour MP Sarah Champion, chair of the International Development Committee which commissioned the report, said:
“The evidence submitted to the Committee told us that cuts to British ODA would take a human toll, but our assessment of the real impact [of these cuts] makes for grim reading. It is a litany of suffering, hungry, and disabled people who will no longer be supported and the dire consequences that they will face.”
Gideon Rabinowitz, policy director at Bond (a UK network for international development organizations) said that the parliamentary report “illustrates the devastating impact of cuts to the UK aid budget.” The FCDO countered the baleful warnings of the parliamentary committee report by saying that its foreign aid budget is expected to rise significantly next year, where nearly double the amount will be spent on Africa (rising from £646 million in 2022 to a projected £1.3 billion next year).
Countries most affected by British aid cuts
According to the parliamentary assessment, here are the countries which have been most affected by British foreign aid cuts:
All told, a total of £900 million was shaved off this year’s foreign aid budget in order to finance the hosting of refugees and asylum seekers in Britain.
However, despite the humanitarian implications of these reductions in UK aid programs, the majority of people (61%) in Britain believe that ODA spending takes away money that should be used for domestic needs. Furthermore, only 14% of people in Britain think that the government should return to its pre-pandemic commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on development aid.
Further fall-out from aid cuts
According to the parliamentary committee’s report, other impacts resulting from the drastic reduction in ODA spend will include a “severe” decline in improving gender equality, saying that large budget cuts to nations such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Myanmar will negatively affect some of the world’s most vulnerable and marginalized people.
Currently, many British ODA projects targeted people with the greatest needs, including women and girls, gender-based violence survivors, people with disabilities, internally displaced people (IDPs), unaccompanied children, and children suffering from malnutrition, and that slashing aid to these groups will “inevitably impact” the British government’s equality and inclusion objectives.
Furthermore, the report noted that ODA spend has recently pivoted from low-income countries to low-medium-income countries (as part of the FCDO’s Aid for Trade strategy), despite the fact that 90% of the world’s poor live in low-income countries.
See also: UK’s FCDO says committed to poverty reduction via aid for trade amid calls for higher efficiency
Other key findings from the parliamentary report on foreign aid cuts:
- The 76% drop in spending on Afghanistan at a time when the de facto authorities (the Taliban) have imposed new restrictions on women and girls will leave millions of women and girls without critical services right when they need it most.
- The 46% reduction in Pan-African spending on WISH (Women’s Integrated Sexual Health Program) will result in more than 100,000 deaths from unsafe abortions and more than 1,500 deaths during childbirth.
- 500,000 women and children in Yemen will no longer receive any form of healthcare whatsoever.
- 41,700 teachers in Ethiopia will go without training while 333,000 children will not be supported in assisting school.
- More than 101,000 people in South Sudan will go without information on their Gender-Based Violence (GBV) rights, 1,860 people will not be taught how to prevent and respond to GBV, and 14,880 people will not be reached with specialized services to protect them in case of violence and/or rape.
- All programs to stop female genital mutilation (FGM) will be ceased in Somalia, despite the issue affecting 90% of girls in the country.
- At least 8,000 children with disabilities will be denied an improved learning environment in Ethiopia.
- At least 27,000 children in South Sudan who suffer from severe acute malnutrition will not be fed.
- More than 126,000 internally displaced people living in camps in Myanmar, predominantly Rohingya, will be cut off from all aid as well as some 430,000 Rohingya currently confined to their villages.
- A number of projects in Afghanistan will cease to be funded by Britain, including the World Food Program, Save the Children’s education initiative for girls, and all polio vaccinations. Britain will also cease funding the Gender and Mine Action Program, which treats casualties of the explosive remnants of war, primarily children.
- All support for programs treating disability, inclusion, and mental health in South Sudan will cease.
In response to the parliamentary committee’s report, Andrew Mitchell, the FCDO minister in charge of development and Africa, said that all future ODA programs will be adjusted to “ensure that support reaches the most vulnerable.”
Prior to 2020, the British government was committed to spending 0.7% of annual GNI (Gross National Income) on foreign aid, but this was slashed to 0.5% during the pandemic, a level where it has remained ever since. Further compounding the issue is that much of the ODA spend after 2020 was either in the form of Covid-19 vaccines or in-country refugee hosting costs, which led to additional funding cuts to existing healthcare and nutrition programs in developing countries.
In 2019, the UK spent £15.1 billion in total ODA, but this fell to just £11.5 billion in 2021 and £12.8 billion in 2022. This year’s aid budget came in at only £7.4 billion (the amount does not include aid due to be spend by other departments but FCDO). The FCDO has vowed to see that figure rise to £8.3 billion next year, a significant increase but still well below pre-pandemic spending.
