Policy Updates

On June 11 and 13, 2024, the UK Conservative and Labour parties released their election manifestos, containing limited references to international development, ahead of the national election on July 4, 2024.

International development did not feature prominently in either manifesto, instead being overshadowed by domestic affairs.

The manifestos showed both stark differences and intriguing similarities on the subject of international development. Both parties committing to maintain the merger of the FCO and former DFID into the FCDO. Labour committed to strengthening the development function within the FCDO. Both parties also committed to a return to providing 0.7% ODA/GNI, but only when the fiscal circumstances allow.

The Conservative Party’s manifesto committed the party to:

• Ensuring all ODA spending is allocated in line with a strict national interest test, notably without a definition of the test;
• Working with partners to deliver the UN SDGs and tackling poverty;
• Maintaining a focus on fragile states;
• Ensuring that MDBs deliver more funds to partners in need and work to deliver debt relief;
• Expanding international campaigns on girls’ education, women’s rights and reproductive health and standing up to those persecuted for their faith;
• Scaling-up high-impact, cost-effective global health interventions, including MNCH services, nutrition, and AMR while continuing support for Gavi and the Global Fund; and
• Maintaining climate leadership while retaining the current government’s international climate finance commitments.

The Labour Party focused on modernizing UK development assistance and committed to:

• Rebuilding Britain’s reputation in international development to ensure leadership;
• Taking a new approach to partnerships with the 'global South' based on mutual interest and genuine respect;
• Ensuring UK ODA is focused on a new mission to eliminating poverty and promoting sustainable lifestyles;
• Renewing expertise and focus on key areas, including supporting economic transformation, tackling unsustainable debt, empowering women and girls, supporting conflict prevention, and unlocking climate finance;
• Driving climate leadership, both domestically and abroad, and creating a new Clean Power Alliance to lead on climate action; and
• Improving the accountability and transparency of ODA spending by working closely with the ICAI to ensure the highest standards are applied to UK ODA spending regarding ODA effectiveness, transparency, and scrutiny.

On May 16, 2024, international NGO Christian Aid released a new report, titled Between Life and Debt, that outlined the devastating debt crisis engulfing Africa and calling on the UK government to address the crisis through legal intervention.

The report, which draws on testimonies from Christian Aid partners in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Zambia, revealed that:

• Total external debt service by all African countries was US$85 billion in 2023 and US$104 billion in 2024;
• In 2023, African countries spent over 50 times more on external debt than they received in aid from the UK (and 50% more than total assistance to the region);
• 25 African countries spend more on debt than education; and
• 32 African countries spend more on debt than healthcare.

The report asserted that the debt problem is largely due to Western private lenders, who have lent to Africa at extremely high interest rates, far higher than other sovereign lenders like China. Total external debt service by all African countries to private creditors was US$39 billion in 2023 and US$47 billion in 2024, and that private creditors charge the highest interest rates of 6.2%.

Christian Aid argued that the UK government has the unique power to help remedy the crisis, given that most private creditors, due to colonial history, are governed by British law. The organization called on the UK to step up and take action to change UK law to compel private creditors to cancel debts and stop the crisis.

On May 14-15, 2024, the C7 summit was held at the UN FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, organized by the Italian Civil Society Coalition that led, coordinated, and moderated the C7 2024 process.

Approximately 400 global representatives took part in the event, as well as international decision-makers, including FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu, Italian G7 sherpa Ambassador Elisabetta Belloni, Cardinal, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Pope’s envoy for the Russian-Ukrainian conflict Matteo Maria Zuppi, and Director of the UN SDG Action Campaign Marina Ponti.

The official C7 communiqué that listed the international civil society recommendation to the G7’s Leaders around seven key issues was released at the event, which included:

• Economic justice and transformation;
• Climate, energy transformation, and environmental justice;
• Global health;
• Principled humanitarian assistance;
• Peace, common security, and nuclear disarmament;
• Human mobility and migration; and
• Food justice and food systems transformation.

On May 2, 2024, the UK government responded to the ICAI, the UK’s aid watchdog, recommendations for tackling fraud in UK ODA funding.

The FCDO thanked ICAI for reviewing the UK's approach to combating fraud in ODA funding released earlier in 2024. The FCDO partially accepted ICAI’s first recommendation to take a more robust and proactive approach to anticipating fraud. The FCDO noted that it was actively exploring the cost-effectiveness of creating an FCDO Fraud Intelligence Unit and was expanding its Fraud Liaison Officers’ Network to strengthen oversight.

The FCDO also partially accepted the second recommendation to strengthen its fraud in its top 20 ODA recipient countries, noting that it will reinforce the mandatory annual assurance assessment across control and risk areas and expand its Fraud Liaison Officer's network.

The FCDO fully accepted the final two recommendations, which called for new fraud management guidance to be written for capital investments and to increase the Head of Mission’s oversight and accountability for fraud risks relating to centrally managed and other government programs.

On April 29, 2024, UK Deputy Foreign Minister Andrew Mitchell highlighted the fundamental importance of comprehensive SRHR at the UN’s 57^th session of the Commission on Population and Development.

Mitchell noted the encouraging progress in improving SRHR since the turn of the century, with a 20% fall in unintended pregnancies and a doubling of the number of women using contraceptives. However, he emphasized that tough challenges still lie ahead, with maternal mortality and rights stagnating and female genital mutilation cases increasing.

Mitchell called on the international community to ensure that the forthcoming UN Summit of the Future, taking place September 2024 in New York, focuses on the issue of SRHR as a top priority. Mitchell also announced US$8 million for a new maternal and newborn health and rights program as the start of a much larger pledge the UK intends to make in 2024 and called on other countries to join the UK in the endeavor.

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 19, 2024, UK Ambassador Archie Young called for the need to support women and girls’ sexual health rights in his speech to the UN’s 68^th Commission on the Status of Women.

Young noted how fundamental these rights are to eradicating poverty and empowering women, and noted that women's and girl's rights are a personal priority of the UK Foreign Minister. Young stated that the UK is committed to widening the international coalition of support for SRHR, strengthening international commitments and actions in support of SRHR, and tackling disinformation about SRHR in the multilateral space.

On January 27, 2024, it was announced that the UK has joined the US and other nations in freezing its funding for the UNRWA for Palestinians in the Near East in light of allegations that 12 UNRWA staff took part in the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel.

The UK government noted that while it remains committed to getting vital humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, it was temporarily pausing future funding while the allegations are reviewed. The UK was the third-largest donor to UNRWA in 2020, but its funding fell sharply in 2021 and 2022. No recorded funding was delivered in 2023.

Assistance workers and Palestinian advocates have stated that freezing funding could have dire impact on humanitarian relief to Gaza.