LONDON — In the development world, the United Kingdom is praised for spending 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance — one of only a handful of donors to meet this United Nations benchmark.
But the country’s aid bubble was shattered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to merge the Department for International Development with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office last month.
The closure of DFID, while not entirely unexpected, led to questions about the merits of spending 0.7% of the country’s wealth on overseas development, particularly in the context of austerity and, later, the Brexit vote that polarized the country. DFID’s budget grew over the past decade, protected by the commitment, while many of the U.K.’s domestic services were hollowed out.