A newly published report by UK MPs warns that reductions in British aid threaten to further exacerbate the challenging health conditions of many women and girls around the world. Many sexual and reproductive health programs have been forced to close due to funding shortages, putting people in emerging and low income countries at risk and these unexpected cuts have affected the UK’s overseas reputation, states the report.
The UK’s aid budget has been significantly reduced since 2020 as a result of numerous pressures on the country’s budget in recent years. As a result, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) allocated £7,635 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2022, a dramatic decline compared to £11,785 million in 2019. This unforeseen reduction has had an extensive effect on the FCDO’s work on sexual and reproductive health, as the agency’s spending on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights has dropped threefold since 2019. The FCDO has also reduced its spending on Family Planning by 50% and cut spending on Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health by around 37%.
See also: Thousands will suffer and die as a result of UK foreign aid cuts
According to the report, in 2020 alone, around 300,000 women globally died due to childbirth and pregnancy complications. The vast majority of fatal cases, around 95%, were registered in low and lower-middle-income countries, with 70% of cases recorded in sub-Saharan Africa. Cases of newborn deaths were also distressingly high. During the first month of life, 2.4 million babies died globally in 2020, with 43% recorded in sub-Saharan Africa.
Fig.1. The percentage of bilateral ODA spent on population policies/programs and reproductive health between 2009 and 2022
Source: The FCDO’s approach to sexual and reproductive health
The former director of the London Representation Office for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) explained that the abrupt cut in aid posed challenges for those agencies involved in aid delivery projects. For instance, UNFPA received only a few days’ notice of an 85% cut to its Supplies Program. In some cases, programs had to close without any notice.
MSI Reproductive Choices, a global charity working in 37 countries, has stated that:
“Whilst we know the UK’s ODA budget is currently under huge pressure and understand that hard choices need to be made, the abrupt and seemingly arbitrary nature of some of the cuts have harmed the UK’s reputation as a serious, reliable, and credible global player and interlocutor with both international and national stakeholders”.
International Development Committee Chair, MP Sarah Champion, called on the UK
“to make a new, meaningful commitment to women and girls and particularly the sexual and reproductive health and rights issues that so unequally impact them. It is time to put the money back coupled with impact and progress measured against meaningful targets. Our shared global Sustainable Development Goals are stalled or going into reverse: we will not progress until the rights of women, girls and marginalized groups are prioritized and funded”.
The report pointed out the need for the government to set “new, real targets on ending preventable deaths of mothers, babies and children by 2030” further stating that “it should calculate a minimum percentage of bilateral Official Development Assistance to be spent on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and make funding commitments on a multiyear basis: a basic requirement to maximize the effect and impact of aid spending that the UK has been failing on for too long”.
DevelopmentAid notes that in 2017, the number of women who died following complications during pregnancy or childbirth also stood at about 300,000, according to the World Health Organization. The number of children who died in the first month of life stood at about 2.5 million and over 290,000 women died due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth in 2017. The year 2017 marked a stagnation in the progress made in the maternal mortality rate which had fallen by 38% between 2000 to 2017. No data for 2021-2023 is yet available.
