Policy Updates

On April 16, 2024, UK Deputy Foreign Minister Andrew Mitchell announced an additional GBP100 million (US$119 million) in humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia.

The funding is slated to be used to support Ethiopia’s access to primary healthcare services, support communities in becoming more climate resilient, and provide help for people displaced due to drought and extreme weather.

The pledge was made at the UK co-hosted Ethiopia pledging conference with OCHA. Ethiopia is facing one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with over 21 million requiring assistance, 15 million people facing food insecurity, and 4 million people internally displaced.

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, 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 18, 2024, UK Minister for Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell announced the scaling up of funding to UK’s Global Health WorkForce Program, stating that the current program, totaling GBP15 million (US$18 million), will receive an additional GBP4.4 million (US$5.5 million) to extend into two new partner countries.

The announcement was made at the UK - Africa Health Summit, held in London and organized by the Tropical Health and Education Trust and the Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania - UK Health Alliance. The program supports a partnership approach to promoting professional exchange for mutual learning between UK and partner health institutions.

Mitchell noted that global health was a priority for the UK and highlighted a series of previously announced funding measures aimed at tackling global health in Africa, including funding to support the rollout of the new malaria vaccines in 20 countries by the end of 2025. Mitchell also spoke on the importance of supporting a strong health force in Africa. He highlighted the UK’s global Health System Connect program in Malawi, which helps Malawi ensure a well-equipped workforce able to respond to the changing burden of disease in the future.

On March 11, 2024, the CLARE partnership between the UK and Canada’s IDRC launched 17 research projects designed to build climate resilience and reduce vulnerability in LICs and LMICs, valued at CAD180 million (US$133 million).

The research projects aim to support socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards in African partners and the Asia-Pacific region. Researchers in recipient countries are leading or co-leading the research, which will embed gender equality and inclusion principles and will address a wide range of climate change issues in the fields of agriculture, health, urban adaptation, water security, among others.

On February 22, 2024, UK Foreign Minister David Cameron and Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira met on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brazil to discuss how the international community can respond to major global challenges.

Cameron highlighted the UK’s support for Brazil’s drive to reform global governance. He noted his belief that global governance architecture needed to be amended, but not completely reorganized. The UK Foreign Secretary also emphasized the need to go beyond national ODA budgets and use all resources at a countries’ disposal to achieve the SDGs.

Cameron also pushed for greater global action to tackle anti-microbial resistance, which in previous years was responsible for more deaths than tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria.

On February 20, 2024, the British Medical Journal published an editorial exploring the UK’s evolving role in global health.

The report noted that while the UK has acted as a global-health agenda setter, technical leader, and major donor of global health since 2021, substantial reductions in ODA beginning in 2019 have negatively impacted the UK’s contributions, impact, and reputation in the global health landscape.

The editorial commended the UK government for its Global Health Framework 2023-25 as well as its goals to strengthen global health security, reform global health architecture, strengthen health systems worldwide and advance UK leadership in global health R&D.

However, the authors noted that the UK has been criticized for its overly technical focus on global health security on surveillance and laboratories. Despite the UK being a major donor to the WHO and a supporter of the WHO-led pandemic accord, the editorial asserted that the UK has undermined its positive role with ongoing support for intellectual property protection.

The editorial also noted that while the UK has championed health system strengthening, it has failed to reform the substantial debt repayments that continue to undermine LIC investment in health coverage. Although the authors welcomed the UK’s leadership in global health R&D, they highlighted that the ODA budget can potentially be compromised by parallel objectives aimed at promoting UK R&D.

The authors also highlighted the lack of emphasis on the critical role of health humanitarian funding in the UK’s global health framework and noted the significant cuts made to the UK's health program in Yemen, Syria, and South Sudan.

The journal called for the UK to carefully select partner countries, to focus on co-creation and equal partnerships, to ensure that limited resources focus clearly on accountability, and prioritize increased taxation to fund publicly financed health systems.

On February 6, 2024, the UK government announced GBP100 million (US$119 million) to a new fund to end preventable deaths in Ethiopia, targeted at children, pregnant women, and post-natal women.

The fund aims to help more than 3 million people and will focus on supporting people in the Tigray region.

The fund was announced after UK Minister for Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell returned from a 2-day visit to Ethiopia to witness the ongoing regional humanitarian crisis. Mitchell called for other development cooperation providers to step up and financially support the crisis.

On January 31, 2024, it was reported that UK scientists behind the successful UK COVID-19 jab informed UK Minister for Development and Africa Andrew Mitchell that they did not think the UK was prepared for a next pandemic.

The statement was delivered as Mitchell visited Oxford University’s Pandemic Sciences Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group. Professor Sarah Gilbert informed him during the visit that the fact that the UK government closed down the Vaccine Taskforce in August 2022 and ignored many of its key recommendations is a major global health problem. She noted that if the Vaccine Taskforce had been in place prior to the pandemic, the UK may have been able to respond much faster to the COVID-19 outbreak. The decision to close the taskforce 2022 means a swift response will not be in place if and when a new pandemic emerges.

Gilbert also reminded Mitchell about the dire lack of public funding into vaccines prior to COVID-19 and the need to retain funding in this area. The institute receives US$80 million in UK ODA funding to accelerate the development of vaccines against Disease X, the current term for an unknown pathogen with epidemic potential. The funds come from the GBP276 million (US$350 million) allocated by the UK to CEPI.

Professor Andrew Pollard, a member of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab team, noted that while the UK spends GBP45 million (US$57 million) a year on defense, the relatively neglected field of biosecurity is highly important to the UK's defense and requires more funding. He also noted that while he chairs the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, he has not been invited to join the independent external committee advising the government on pandemics.

Mitchell acknowledged the points raised during the visit and stated that he will take action to address concerns following the meeting.