We should not underestimate the devastating impact of aid cuts on the global outlook for women’s health (UK aid budget cuts are ‘death sentence’ for world’s most vulnerable children). The international development committee’s report on aid funding allocation has revealed that critical healthcare services will be withdrawn from some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls.
In Afghanistan, for example, maternal mortality rates are already nearly three times higher than the global average. According to data for 2020 from the UN Population Fund, for every 100,000 live births in Afghanistan, 620 women die. The prospect of further stripping away support and resources is shocking not only for the girls and women of Afghanistan, but globally.
The possible rates of unsafe abortion and maternal deaths that could otherwise be prevented are devastating. A global and collaborative approach to funding, policy, education and healthcare provision is vital to grant reproductive autonomy to every girl and woman. After all, reproductive rights are human rights.
Prof Geeta Nargund
Co-founder, Ginsburg Women’s Health Board; senior NHS consultant
• Andrew Mitchell, the development minister, is to be commended for highlighting the devastating impact of aid cuts. During the 10 years I chaired the Commons international development committee, we saw the transformational effect of the UK’s aid spending, in building resilience and capacity, and reducing poverty. This was swept away by Boris Johnson’s slashing of the aid budget and forcing the merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office, with massively disruptive consequences.
The small increases proposed in the forward budget nowhere near restore the cuts. Worse, they could be compromised by the extravagant, open-ended call on aid funds by the Home Office for barges, hotels and flights to Rwanda. Sadly, many people have suffered or died. Our reputation has been lost, and much of the expertise that gave us world leadership in the quality of UK aid has been dispersed.
Mitchell deserves support for beginning the process, but it will take a change of government to complete it.
Malcolm Bruce
Liberal Democrat, House of Lords
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