In Kasai, one of the poorest parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, tens of thousands of girls are going to school for the first time thanks to a UK programme – reducing the risk that they will be forced into child marriage or face lives scarred by violence.
But now this project is being abandoned as hundreds of millions of pounds – soon to be billions – is stripped from our aid budget, which means 170,000 children will miss out on the lessons that would have transformed their lives, ministers admitted in a document published this week.
