In Focus: Global Britain: No Space for Foreign Aid in a Competitive Age?
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Benjamin D. Hennig |
| DOI | 10.1177/20419058211045134 |
20 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2021
In Focus
‘I
know a deep sense of conscience
underpins the view that the amount
we spent on overseas aid is a moral
issue,’ Rishi Sunak told the House
of Commons earlier this year. ‘Many in this
house will know the words “charity is patient,
is kind.” I think of those words and I share
that sense of conscience. That is why we are
maintaining the target, not abolishing it.’
Foreign aid has become a testy subject for
Britain’s Conservative government. The party’s
2019 election manifesto was committed
to maintaining international aid spending
at 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income
(GNI), but in July the government brought
forward legislation to cut overseas aid to 0.5
per cent of GNI. The Chancellor was making
the UK government’s case that the cuts
were a product of the strain that the COVID
pandemic has placed on public nances.
Nevertheless, the debate about foreign, or
overseas, aid has become a controversial
one, dominating the headlines ahead of the
summer recess.
Foreign aid is technically known as Ocial
Development Assistance (ODA) which is
dened by the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Development Assistance Committee
(DAC) as ‘government aid that promotes
and specically targets the economic
development and welfare of developing
countries’. The DAC adopted ODA as the
‘gold standard’ of foreign aid in 1969 and it
remains the primary source of nancing for
development aid. The OECD collects data that
allow a comparison of ODA spending across
the member countries.
Comparative aid spending across
OECD
A commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI
on ODA was first agreed internationally
in 1970 by the United Nations General
Global Britain: No
Space for Foreign Aid
in a Competitive Age?
Benjamin D. Hennig puts Britain’s foreign aid cuts into an international perspective.
Assembly. It has been widely adopted by
DAC members, although few states have
ever reached the target. It was adopted
by the UK government in 2013, eventually
reaching the target in the past three years,
until 2020. It makes the UK not only in
absolute but also relative terms, one of the
largest donor countries of ODA, though
slightly less prominent when breaking the
spending down to its overall population.
In recent years the European Union, in
addition to its individual member states’
contributions, has also become a major
player in ODA spending.
The total amount of country-specic
UK bilateral ODA rose from £4.6 billion to
£5 billion between 2015 and 2019. The
geographic focus of UK spending has shifted
little over the years. Of bilateral ODA the
top 20 countries accounted for over three-
quarters of total bilateral spending. The
largest recipients were Pakistan, Ethiopia and
Political Insight September 2021.indd 20Political Insight September 2021.indd 20 16/08/2021 15:2316/08/2021 15:23
To continue reading
Request your trial