UK aid cuts are a “death sentence” for children in the world’s most dangerous places, aid charities have warned after an internal government report revealed the impact of budget reductions on the most vulnerable.
The government faced calls from NGOs including Save the Children and Oxfam to restore the aid budget back to 0.7% of national income, after the potential effects of cuts were outlined in grim detail by an assessment produced by civil servants.
The report – which was shared with the international development committee by officials – warned that hundreds of thousands more women will face unsafe abortions and thousands will die in pregnancy and childbirth as a result of UK aid cuts in 2023-24.
Reductions to the Women’s Integrated Sexual Health Programme across Africa would see “the number of unsafe abortions averted [fall] from nearly 300,000 to approximately 115,000; number of maternal deaths averted will drop from 2,531 to just over 1,000”, the report said.
It warned that a 76% cut in aid for Afghanistan will also leave some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls without services.
In South Sudan, 27,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition will go untreated, it said, of which 12% could die. The report said half a million women in Yemen would not receive healthcare.
Gwen Hines, CEO of Save the Children UK, said that the impact assessment confirmed “the UK’s aid cuts are a death sentence for children already living in some of the most dangerous parts of the world”.
“These cuts fly in the face of the government’s commitments to ‘leave no one behind’. We urge them to restore the UK’s aid budget to 0.7% of [gross national income].”
Katy Chakrabortty, head of policy and advocacy at Oxfam UK, said: “It isn’t news to aid agencies that lives are being lost because of aid cuts. However, it is astonishing to see the information available to ministers and those that are making decisions about spending.”
Oxfam raised concern that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was running without crisis reserves at a time when parts of east Africa were experiencing “famine in all but name”.
“People there have been dying due to a lack of food and it’s a slow onset crisis that has never really reached the top of the agenda. The UK government has tried to give what it could but it has no emergency reserves to dip into,” said Chakrabortty.
Jennifer Larbie, Christian Aid’s head of campaigns and UK advocacy, said: “Even when marking their own homework, ministers cannot escape the horrible truth that their erosion of international aid represents a betrayal of the world’s most marginalised people.”
Neil Thorns, director of advocacy & communications at Cafod, the Catholic international development charity, said: “This report shows that tragically ministers knew what the devastating effects of these cuts would be and yet still went ahead.”
“Next year the sole focus for aid spending must be support for the poorest and most vulnerable communities, not any other government priority.”
Plan International UK, who have criticised huge cuts to sexual and reproductive health, accused the government of failing women and girls around the world in a “relentless push to slash overseas aid”.
“Women, girls and children continue to be disproportionately affected by these cuts, despite the government being warned that this would happen,” said Kathleen Spencer Chapman, director of communications, advocacy and UK programmes at Plan International UK.
The assessment was released a month after the FCDO published its programme allocations for the next two years, showing that official development assistance (ODA) spend is due to rise marginally in 2023-24 and then increase by 12% in 2024-25 to £8.3bn.
While the projections signal an increase, ODA spend is yet to return to pre-2020 levels, which is when the government decided to reduce it temporarily from 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) to 0.5%.
Spending on refugees in the UK has increasingly come from the overseas aid budget. A third of the UK’s overseas aid budget was spent by the Home Office on housing refugees in a poorly managed programme that contained few cost-saving incentives, the government’s independent watchdog on aid found earlier this year.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “UK aid spending is due to increase to £8.3bn next year, and will be focused on programmes addressing humanitarian crises, protecting women and girls and supporting the world’s most vulnerable, while delivering value for money for taxpayers.
“While the budget for low-income countries has had to be reduced in the short term to achieve our savings target, it is due to nearly double for these countries the year after, including in Africa where aid will rise from £646m to £1.364bn.”
In a letter sent alongside the full equality impact assessment to the Labour chair of the international development committee, Sarah Champion, the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said the report had been “a key component of allocation decision-making”.
He also included a paper showing the adjustments that were made in response to equality considerations and to “ensure support reached the most vulnerable”.
