Policy Updates

On April 17, 2024, UK Shadow Foreign Minister. David Lammy outlined the Labour Party’s vision for UK foreign policy if it were to win the next national election in the autumn of 2024.

Lammy grounded the party's vision in progressive realism. He lamented how the Conservative governments since 2010 have turned the UK inwards, threatening its standards of upholdingupholding international law and damaging the UK’s reputation as a global development leadership. In particular, Lammy highlighted the Conservative Party's mismanagement of DFID and the FCO merger, ODA budget cuts, and the exodus of development expertise.

To deliver progressive realism, Lammy argued that the UK needs to be realistic about the state of the modern world. This would begin by recognizing that the previous common consensus that economic globalization would lead to more liberal democratic values was wrong. Democracies have become more dependent on authoritarian states, with the share of world trade between democracies declining from 74% in 1998 to 47% in 2022.

Lammy also pushed to recognize the rise of China's economic and military power, the decline of US hegemony, and the rise of key regional powers non-aligned with specific blocs, able to strike deals with all the great powers as and when they like. This group includes Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, which are capable of ignoring the US, EU, and UK as they conduct business. He noted rising insecurity at the global level, with a strong focus on Russia and the ever-growing climate emergency as significant challenges.

Looking ahead, Lammy asserted that security will remain the central task of British foreign policy, and the two most important allies for ensuring security will be the US and Europe. He acknowledged that the UK must show willingness to share in the collective global security burden, but also noted the need to strengthen its foreign and security ties with Europe. Lammy called for a new geopolitical partnership with the EU driven by closer coordination in military, economic, climate, health, cyber, and energy security issues.

Beyond Europe, Lammy called for a focus on building relationships in the Indo-Pacific region, noting the need to maintain and strengthen ties with Australia, Japan, South Korea and India as pivotal partners. With regard to China, Lammy noted the UK must simultaneously challenge, compete against, and cooperate with China on the world stage.

On development, Lammy called for the UK to partner with the 'global south', particularly fostering engagement on tackling climate change, without which the global climate agenda will fail. He called for the Commonwealth to be revitalized as part of this engagement. As progressive realists, Lammy asserted that the UK needs to also look ahead at the future and how its relationship with other continents will change. He cited that by 2050, one in four people on the planet will live in Africa, yet the continent remains troubled by poverty, necessitating a new 'Africa strategy' beyond ODA to develop win-win partnerships based on mutual self-interest.

Beyond security, the Foreign Office will play its role in revitalizing the UK economy and trade through economic diplomacy. Lammy noted that if he becomes the next Foreign Minister, he will convene a new business advisory council to ensure that the needs of companies inform British diplomatic thinking.

Lammy finally called for putting climate diplomacy is at the center of UK foreign policy, noting that a Labour government would make advancing the fight against greenhouse gases central to its agenda. He advocated for the creation of a new clean power alliance, what he described as a reverse OPEC, of states committed to leading the way on decarbonizing power systems. A Labour government would also help reform international financial institutions to provide far greater support for climate adaptation.

On April 16, 2024, UK Deputy Foreign Minister Andrew Mitchell announced an additional GBP100 million (US$119 million) in humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia.

The funding is slated to be used to support Ethiopia’s access to primary healthcare services, support communities in becoming more climate resilient, and provide help for people displaced due to drought and extreme weather.

The pledge was made at the UK co-hosted Ethiopia pledging conference with OCHA. Ethiopia is facing one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with over 21 million requiring assistance, 15 million people facing food insecurity, and 4 million people internally displaced.

On April 4, 2024, UK Minister for International Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell committed GBP27 million (US$32 million) to improve family planning care and MNCH in Tanzania and a further GBP6 million (US$7 million) to boost vulnerable communities access to green energy in the country.

The announcement was made in anticipation of Mitchell's four-day trip to East Africa. The commitment included:

• GBP15 million (US$18 million) for a five-year initiative to improve Tanzania’s primary health systems, with a focus on saving the lives of mothers and babies;
• GBP12 million (US$14 million) to extend the UK’s Scaling up Family Planning Programme for an additional two years, enabling an additional 900,000 people to receive services; and
• An additional GBP6 million (US$7 million) for a new program to provide vulnerable communities with greater access to clean energy and improved urban resilience.

During his trip, Mitchell also announced a Mutual Prosperity Partnership with Tanzania, which aims to unlock GBP1 billion (US$1. 2 billion) of UK government-backed investment in Tanzania between 2024 and 2030 and increase UK-Tanzania trade.

On March 24, 2024, BOND published a new manifesto setting out the steps the next UK government should take to help deliver on the SDGs and work in solidarity with its partners.

The manifesto is based around seven key asks:

• Act as a responsible and ambitious development partner. This includes returning ODA to 0.7% of GNI and providing new and additional resources for meeting global climate finance and ensuring the ODA program is headed by a cabinet-level minister with dedicated and well-resourced staff;
• Create an equitable and sustainable international financial system that works for people, nature, and the climate. This includes supporting a UN sovereign debt workout mechanism to deal with unsustainable debt in lower-income countries, pursuing an ambitious MDB reform agenda that increases their provision of resources and makes their governance more representative, and supporting a universal UN Framework Convention on tax;
• Recommit to the SDGs and ‘leaving no one behind. This includes ensuring UK development programs focus on those most in need, promoting gender transformative approaches to sustainable development, acknowledging care as an economic issue and a right and build the care economy in line with the 5Rs framework{title"recognition, reduction, redistribution, representation and reward"} for care work, and scaling up efforts to deliver universal access to basic services;
• Do our fair share to tackle the global climate and biodiversity crises. This includes ensuring all ODA is aligned with the Paris Agreement, providing genuinely new and additional grant finance for the Loss and Damage Fund;
• Develop a new approach to UK trade and private sector investment. This includes introducing new legislation that mandates companies, the financial sector, and the public sector operating in the UK to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence. It also holds them to account for failures, reduce the volume of UK funding being used to capitalize BII until it reforms to ensure it does more to contribute to poverty reduction;
• Promoting stability, security and effective crisis responses. This includes providing the UK’s fair share to support humanitarian crises, championing locally led approaches to anticipatory crisis prevention, action and resilience, establishing a prevention-focused national security outlook which focuses on preventing crises as well as responding to them; and
• Protect and promote rights, freedoms and civic space. This includes prioritizing meaningful partnerships with human rights defenders, including indigenous communities, women, LGBTQI+ advocates, migrant rights advocates and environmental defenders, removing restrictions on civil society campaigning domestically, and working with other governments to reverse restrictions on civic space in public debate and policymaking.

On March 11, 2024, the CLARE partnership between the UK and Canada’s IDRC launched 17 research projects designed to build climate resilience and reduce vulnerability in LICs and LMICs, valued at CAD180 million (US$133 million).

The research projects aim to support socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards in African partners and the Asia-Pacific region. Researchers in recipient countries are leading or co-leading the research, which will embed gender equality and inclusion principles and will address a wide range of climate change issues in the fields of agriculture, health, urban adaptation, water security, among others.

On March 8, 2024, University College London published a report entitled, The World In 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International Affairs, which called for the UK to set up a new international affairs department and spend 1% of GNI on international engagement, including ODA.

The report, authored by three senior ex-civil servants, argued that global shifts necessitate a radical re-think of the UK government's instruments for international engagement. Specifically, the report called for a forthcoming UK parliament to create an international or global affairs department to replace the struggling FCDO.

The report criticized the FCDO’s ability to deliver effective partnership, noting the department is outdated, struggling to perform, and elitist. The report called a new department with a long-term mandate around a set of agreed core objectives, which could include the promotion of UK prosperity and security, addressing climate change and biodiversity loss, supporting international development, and championing rights and responsibilities.

The report suggested that the new department would steer long-term strategy and policy, but delegate delivery to a series of semi-autonomous agencies. The report recommended the establishment of a semi-autonomous agency to deliver bilateral international development and climate change cooperation. Funding for this agency would be ringfenced to provide predictable delivery of climate, development and humanitarian cooperation.

The report also called for the creation of a new UK development bank with a broader range of instruments and capital base similar to France, Germany and Japan. It also noted that leveraging capital markets would deliver more robust flows at lower long-term fiscal costs to taxpayers and enable long-term investments in line with UK objectives in a broader range of countries, including non-concessional mechanisms in countries that do not qualify for development assistance.

Additionally, the report recommended a flexible spending commitment for international development alongside defense, noting that potentially 1% of GNI should be set aside for planned spending on climate, humanitarian, development, and ‘soft power’ priorities.

Finally, the report called for the UK parliament to ensure that the UK has a cadre of specialized, outward-facing staff and that decision-making and authority should be further delegated to people working in embassies.

On February 29, 2024, ICAI, the UK’s international assistance watchdog, released its rapid review of the UK’s international climate finance commitments.

The review found that 55% of the UK’s GBP11.6 billion (US$13.9 billion) ICF commitment will not be disbursed until the last two years of the pledge.

The review also found that GBP1.7 billion (US$2.1 billion) of existing funding was recounted as ICF spending, due to a change in counting methodology. In essence, existing climate-related core contributions to multilateral development banks are included alongside 30% of humanitarian programs operating in the 10% of countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Due to the delay in disbursements and changes to the counting of ICF, estimates of the commitment's prioritization in the ODA budget have been significantly reduced from 83% reported in July 2023 to 28% in 2024, reducing potential trade-offs between climate funding and other priorities.

The review also recommended that the UK government:

• Should produce a detailed plan for meeting its ICF commitment;
• Clarify through which channels the funding will be allocated and disbursed, e.g., multilateral, bilateral, research;
• Clarify how much funding will be spent on adaptation; and
• Publish annual reports on the progress made towards meeting its commitment.

On February 2, 2024, it was announced that Norad joined the partnership launching the GGC launched on the London Stock Exchange, alongside the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, USAID, the GCF, Prosper Africa and the FCDO's MOBILIST program.

The GGC will provide guarantees for institutional investors buying green bonds on the London Stock Exchange, as well as green bonds in the private credit market.

Norad has invested NOK52 million (US$5 million) in the GGC. By 2035, the GGC aims to mobilize US$5 billion in climate financing for partner countries. The launch comes as the IEA urges low- and middle- income countries to increase their investment in renewables by 700% to continue economic growth while limiting the effects of climate change.

The UK-Japan 21^st Century Committee is set to hold its 40^th joint meeting from February 2-4, 2024, focusing on key topics including bilateral foreign policy, international security, climate change and energy, global health, and AI.

This event continues the tradition of high-level dialogue and cooperation between the two nations. Originally established in 1985 by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, the UK - Japan 21^st Century Group, formerly known as the UK - Japan 2000 Group, serves as a vital platform for fostering mutual understanding and collaboration. Comprising leaders from the private sector, public sector, and civil society, the group’s annual conferences alternate between the UK and Japan, addressing a wide range of critical issues from educational and cultural exchange to global security and economic policies.

At the 39^th joint meeting in January 2023, held at the University of East Anglia in the UK, key discussions revolved around recent political and economic developments in both countries, global health challenges post-pandemic, and the evolving security landscape, particularly in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The conference also delved into economic security, emphasizing the need for resilient supply chains and cooperation in the face of global economic disruptions. Cooperative dialogues, rooted in shared values and strategic interests, underscored the group’s ongoing commitment to enhancing the UK - Japan partnership in various global contexts.

On January 19, 2024, the UK government announced that it has accepted all the recommendations made by the ICAI's review of the Blue Planet Fund, which included GBP500 million (US$599 million) in ODA for a DEFRA-managed fund aimed at protecting the marine environment and reducing poverty in low- and middle-income countries.

The review also recommended:

• Improving DEFRA management of the fund and appointing more staff to manage the fund;
• Strengthening cross-government strategic oversight over the fund. The UK government will conduct a rapid review to explore how to strengthen the functions of the JMB, the FCDO and DEFRA body responsible for oversight of the fund;
• Focusing all programs under the fund are focused on poverty reduction as their primary focus. DEFRA has committed to commissioning a review of the global evidence base on the linkages between poverty, and protecting and restoring the marine environment; and
• Ensuring greater effort is made to engage partner stakeholders in the programming process. DEFRA is committed to ensuring that partner voices are heard in all future programming.