Ministers have been informed that thousands of African women will perish during pregnancy and childbirth as a result of funding cuts to the UK’s foreign aid programme.
An internal evaluation by state workers predicts that nearly 200,000 additional women will undergo risky abortions.
The results of this year’s budget reduction for foreign aid are revealed in their report.
According to the Foreign Office, in order to meet a savings goal, the budget for low-income nations has been temporarily reduced. However, it will later virtually quadruple.
According to an internal report, a 76% reduction in aid to Afghanistan will deprive some of the most disadvantaged women and girls in the world of necessary services.
Additionally, Yemen will be without healthcare for 500,000 women and children.
The findings are from a report that Foreign Office civil servants produced earlier this year to advise ministers before they made budgetary decisions.
The International Development Committee received it from Development Minister Andrew Mitchell as part of his efforts to restore the transparency of UK assistance spending, which was lost when the Department for International Development was combined with the more cloistered Foreign Office.
Such thorough analyses of the effects of prior administrations’ spending cuts were infrequently published.
The department’s Overseas Development Assistance budget, which totals more than £900 million for this year, will be subject to potentially significant cuts, according to the Foreign Office’s assessment.
After the Treasury gave the Home Office permission to spend nearly a quarter of the aid budget housing refugees in Britain, many of these cuts were placed on the Foreign Office.
For the first year of a refugee’s residence in the UK, this is permitted by international law.
However, the price of hotel rooms has skyrocketed as a result of the large influx of migrants and asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats.
The government can now spend less on its international initiatives as a result.
According to the report, the Foreign Office “won’t be able to support critical services for women and girls. Reducing funding will potentially leave some of the most vulnerable women and girls in the world without access to critical services.”
There would be less safety for women in Africa, according to the report, with “the number of unsafe abortions averted from nearly 300,000 to approximately 115,000; the number of maternal deaths averted will drop from 2,531 to just over 1,000.”
According to the report, “fewer preventable deaths will be avoided” in Yemen and 500,000 women and children will go without medical care. If other donors are unable to support it, “it may cause long-lasting damage to Yemen’s health systems,” it said.
The Foreign Office will have to “delay this year, and potentially stop altogether” a campaign against female genital mutilation in Somalia.
Cuts to the humanitarian funding will also result in “27,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition going untreated, of which 12% (3,000) could die” in South Sudan.
A displaced Afghan mother holds her child as she waits outside a UNCHR distribution facility on the outskirts of Kabul with other women to receive assistance supplies.
According to the report, aid reductions to Afghanistan will deprive women and girls of essential services.
The Foreign Office has found a little more money to spend on aid this year using “in-year underspends and other resources” in an effort to lessen the impact of these cuts. This additional funding includes £41 million for Afghanistan, £32 million for Yemen, £30 million for Syria, and £30 million for Somalia.
And Mr. Mitchell stressed in his letter to the Development Committee that assistance expenditure would rise in the upcoming year, with roughly double going to Africa.
The International Development Committee’s chair, Sarah Champion, however, claimed the cuts were “intolerable” and would have a “terrible impact.”
“This incredibly candid analysis of the true consequences makes for depressing reading. It is a litany of the people who will no longer receive support from the UK’s direct aid funding, including those who are disabled, women, girls, and those who are poor and hungry.
According to Ian Mitchell, senior policy fellow and co-director of Europe at the Centre for Global Development: “The abrupt nature of the budget reduction imposed by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last year meant that [the Foreign Office] was] unable to protect the poorest or most vulnerable groups; or even stated government priorities like girls’ education or climate.”
According to a Foreign Office spokesperson, UK aid funding will increase to £8.3 billion in the coming year with an emphasis on responding to humanitarian emergencies, safeguarding women and girls, and helping those in need “while delivering value for money for taxpayers.”
The budget for low-income nations has had to be cut in the short term in order to meet our savings goal, but it is expected to nearly double for these nations the next year, especially in Africa, where aid will increase from £646 million to £1.364 billion.