24 November 2015: Achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will remain central to the UK’s development aid strategy and is in the UK’s national interest, according to the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UK Treasury and as presented in a restructured spending plan accounting for 0.7% of the UK’s national income. Among other features, the budget includes a new £1 billion, five-year commitment to global public health, focused on malaria and other dangerous diseases.
A forward by George Osborne, Chancellor, and Justine Greening, Secretary of State for International Development, notes that “aid spending has sometimes been controversial at home, because people want to know that it is squarely in the UK’s national interest.” The report recognizes the pursuit and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the commitment to “leave no one behind” as being in the interest of the UK’s own security and prosperity. Delivering the basics of development and finishing the job of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will remain central to the country’s approach to international development, it says. Osborne and Greening also stress the desire to “meet our promises to the world’s poor and also put international development at the heart of our national security and foreign policy.” The report highlights the need for change in addressing new challenges, such as migration, political instability, terrorism and more frequent natural disasters.
The restructured budget is organized into four strategic objectives: strengthening of global peace, security and governance; strengthening of resilience and response to crises, including climate change; promoting global prosperity; and tackling extreme poverty. A more streamlined process for allocating funds to specific projects will also be implemented, with a focus on value for money, according to the report, ‘UK aid: tackling global challenges in the national interest.’
Reflecting the changing global context and the strategies that were laid out, the UK government will be directing more funding to fragile and conflict-affected states, namely Syria and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Also, to comply with the better-value-for-money approach, the UK government will be continuing the move away from traditional general budget support to more targeted forms of financing.
DFID’s country programme portfolios, informed by this new strategy, will be announced in early 2016 with the publication of its Bilateral Aid Review (BAR) [Publication: UK Aid: Tackling Global Challenges in the National Interest] [DFID Press Release]