Policy Updates

On April 14, 2024, the C7 published a statement ahead of the G7 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Capri from April 17-19, 2024, where the group called on the foreign ministers to take concrete action to promote human rights as well as the common interests of humanity and the planet.

The C7 advocated that the G7 ministers reaffirm their commitment to developing long-term peace-building strategies that address persistent structural challenges at the basis of conflicts, ensure food security even in fragile settings, and address a profound transformation of food systems. The group also called upon their governmental counterparts to ensure safe and regular migration channels and commit to protecting migrant rights.

On April 8, 2024, Canada’s IDRC announced a new CAD70 million (US$51 million) partnership with the UK's FCDO to fund the AI4D partnership.

The partnership builds on the IDRC’s AI4D Africa partnership with the Sida, which has worked closely with African communities since 2020 to support AI development through high-quality research, responsible innovation, and talent strengthening.

The research is slated to focus on innovative, sustainable, and responsible AI that supports the establishment of research networks and policy labs. It will also help mitigate the risks of this disruptive technology, including the identification of existing biases in AI systems.

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 April 2, 2024, it was reported that GBP600 million (US$719 million) of the GBP900 million (US$1.1 billion) anticipated increase in the UK FCDO’s ODA for 2024/25 will be spent on private sector investment.

The allocation is due to former Foreign Minister Liz Truss’ commitment to double financial transactions, or funding for private sector investments, to GBP1.2 billion (US$1.4 billion) in 2024/25. As a result of this commitment, GBP600 million of the increase must be allocated to private sector investments via BII and other development finance institutions rather than as frontline assistance.

On March 28, 2024, UK Minister for Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell committed to increasing humanitarian ODA to Sudan to GBP89 million (US$106 million) in 2024/25 in the face of growing humanitarian need in the region.

The commitment was made by Mitchell while on a trip to Chad, where he acknowledged the growing number of refugees from Sudan arriving in the country.

Some of the funding is slated to go to UNICEF for emergency and life-saving food assistance and nutrition, water and hygiene services for 500,000 children and to support survivors of gender-based violence. The funding will also support the WFP to provide assorted food commodities, including cereals, pulses, oils, and salt for thousands of people.

On March 25, 2024, the UK’s ICAI published the findings of its review into the FCDO’s management of fraud risk at the country level, which found underinvestment in the central anti-fraud team despite robust mechanisms and processes in place to tackle fraud, resulting in staff overseas lacking sufficient support.

The review found that underinvestment stemmed from a number of factors. The COVID-19 pandemic limited travel and reduced support, ODA budget cuts often impacted monitoring and evaluation, reducing oversight, and the FCDO merger led to new financial systems being put in place that took time to implement and train staff, resulting in inefficiencies. The review recommends that the FCDO:

• Take a more robust and proactive approach to anticipating and finding fraud in assistance delivery;
• Focus on the 20 ODA partner countries and ensure there are dedicated, well-trained and sufficiently senior resources to manage fraud risks; and
• Increase the Head of Mission's oversight of and accountability for fraud risks.

On March 25, 2024, the UK’s NAO, the UK's independent public spending watchdog, released a new report assessing the merger of the FCO with DFID that found that, in some overseas posts, there has been a loss of dedicated senior development roles that reduced the capacity and credibility of the FCDO.

The report found that the number of expert development adviser roles, for example, fell by 14% from 867 in 2019 to 747 in 2022. The FCDO currently rates the risk of losing international development expertise as severe in recognition of the problem. The report also found that the merger, which took place in 2020, was undertaken without a clear vision, the timetable was unrealistic.

The NAO calculated that the merger has cost the UK government at least GBP24 million (US$30 million) but noted that there has been no systematic collection of the potential benefits and savings of the merger, making it difficult to evaluate the cost properly.

The report ended by noting that three years into the merger, there is still work to be done to fully integrated the two departments and ensure futher benefits.

On March 25, 2024, amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Sudan, Open Canada is criticized the government of Canada for its inaction to address the public health and nutrition crisis, as well as the government’s lack of focus on the African continent as a whole.

The humanitarian crisis in Sudan followed the outbreak of war in April 2023, with 8 million people displaced, roughly half the population (approximately 25 million people) in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, a cholera outbreak, and a widespread famine predicted by June 2024.

Open Canada criticized the government for its passivity in the crisis, with neither Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nor Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly having spoken publicly about Sudan since shortly after the outbreak of war. While Canada evacuated its Sudanese embassy in April 2023, it did not follow other donor countries in maintaining the presence of a senior official in the region to assist in conflict resolution or support key international humanitarian and development organizations. Open Canada also noted that, unlike the EU, UK, and US, Canada has not imposed sanctions on Sudan.

The group also criticized Canada's apathetic approach to the region more broadly. Canada announced a new Foreign Policy Engagement Plan for Africa in 2022, however, the strategy has since been transitioned into a “framework” with the Canadian government yet to release any details of the plan. Open Canada called on the Canadian government to implement a proper engagement strategy in Africa, particularly amid the growing humanitarian, development, and security crisis in Sudan.

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.