The U.K. government should reflect on how cuts to the country’s aid budget will affect people of color, an anti-racism campaigner said Tuesday — the one-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd in the U.S.
Development experts have expressed fears that the effects of reducing the U.K. aid budget, which has dropped from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income, will fall hardest on highly vulnerable populations, particularly in Africa.
During a special inquiry on racism in the aid sector, campaigners told members of the U.K. Parliament who belong to the International Development Committee that a “national conversation” is necessary to confront the country’s colonial past.
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, which controls most of the aid budget, “needs to be part of that conversation,” said Lorriann Robinson, director at political consultancy The Advocacy Team.
An equity index is coming to the UK development scene
“Anyone can write ‘Black Lives Matter’ after the fact,” says Alex Martins, founder of The Equity Index. “We want to look holistically at how development organizations ... continue to prioritize equity.”
“I would really encourage them to look at this current state that we are in, where ministers and the senior leadership at the FCDO are making decisions about how millions of pounds of funding will be cut, and to be thinking about how that materializes in terms of racial groups,” continued Robinson, who is also a co-founder of The Equity Index, which researches inequity in the U.K. development sector.
“Who is making the decisions about cuts that will mean school places that were promised will not be funded, that skilled birth attendants who were promised will not be there, and which racial groups and which people will feel the consequences of those decisions?” she asked.
Robinson said there is an opportunity “right in this moment” for FCDO to “really focus on these issues” and adopt an approach to development that prioritizes mutual interests, rights, equity, and justice over the national interest. Aid is a “small way” in which the U.K. can address historic injustices, she added.
Speakers at the hearing were united in saying that extreme poverty has historical links to slavery and colonialism, meaning imperial history must be properly discussed if anti-racist agendas are to make progress.
Lata Narayanaswamy, an associate professor in the politics of global development at the University of Leeds, said the current development system is linked directly to imperialism, as the first technical assistance advisers formerly worked as colonial officers.
“I would like the U.K. government to lead on having a constructive public dialogue around the colonial legacy,” Narayanaswamy said.
But “the public debate around colonialism in this country is deeply polarized … which is a real shame, because it needn’t be,” she added. “This isn’t about holding individuals to account or blame.”
The current development system still treats local organizations as “second-class citizens,” according to Degan Ali, executive director at Adeso, an NGO based in Nairobi, Kenya. She said that relationships in development structures are “really skewed” and that “the community has almost no power.”
“Who is making the decisions about cuts that will mean school places that were promised will not be funded, that skilled birth attendants who were promised will not be there, and which racial groups ... will feel the consequences?”
— Lorriann Robinson, director, The Advocacy Team“Power is exclusively held in the hands of the donors, who holds the purse strings, and that power is then a domino effect,” filtering down through organizations receiving their money, Ali added. She highlighted that many donors are reluctant to fund local civil society organizations, sometimes because of perceptions that they are corrupt.
The narratives deployed by development agencies, often for fundraising and advocacy purposes, can be “polarized around race” and need to be reexamined, according to Natalie Lartey, advocacy and engagement manager at the International Institute for Environment and Development.
Experimenting with different ways of telling stories about aid “needs to be prioritized — at least for a period — above some of our fundraising targets and outreach goals,” Lartey said, adding that fundraising and communications departments should be “given some room for trial and error.”
About the author
William Worley@willrworley
Will Worley is the Climate Correspondent for Devex, covering the intersection of development and climate change. He previously worked as UK Correspondent, reporting on the FCDO and British aid policy during a time of seismic reforms. Will’s extensive reporting on the UK aid cuts saw him shortlisted for ‘Specialist Journalist of the Year’ in 2021 by the British Journalism Awards. He can be reached at william.worley@devex.com.
