NGOs' concerns on the specifics of the UK's Integrated Review refresh

The closure of a specialized conflict prevention fund, poor gender programming, and a continued lack of aid funds in the United Kingdom government’s foreign policy strategy have caused jitters among aid organizations in the U.K. The Integrated Review Refresh, released last week, updated the 2021 iteration of the document — intended to guide the U.K.’s international policy, including development. It was mainly updated to reflect Russia’s war in Ukraine, but other changes included increased defense spending and designating China an “epoch-defining challenge.” The 2021 review, published while Boris Johnson was prime minister, generally received a poor reception from development advocates — though some liked certain aspects of it, such as a focus on climate change. Now, the aid budget remains at the reduced level of around 0.5% of gross national income, and there appears to be little appetite from the government to increase it, despite vast amounts being spent domestically. But the refreshed document laid out seven international development priorities and established structural changes in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office favoring development. The document has “more development talking to foreign policy,” said Richard Reeve, coordinator of the Rethinking Security network. And while he said development was “basically excluded” from the earlier iteration of the document, he said that the structural changes in the new version “restore the status quo ante from three years ago” — from before the Department for International Development merged into the Foreign Office, to form FCDO in 2020. Reeve added that creating a position for the International Development Minister Andrew Mitchell on the National Security Council is “really important … so we can talk about alternative approaches to just bombing people, sanctions, or coercive aspects.” Whither stability? But the review also contained some more unwelcome surprises. The closure of the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, or CSSF, came as a surprise to many of the organizations working with the body, whose specialisms included preventing conflict and peacebuilding in fragile states. CSSF will be folded into the new U.K. Integrated Security Fund, or UKISF, which will have a broader range of activities, including domestic security and sanctions. Despite its increased size and mandate, UKISF’s budget will be £1 billion (about $1.2 billion), compared to CSSF’s 2018/19 budget of £1.2 billion, which was a mix of aid and non-aid funds. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said UKISF “will allow the U.K. to deliver on the core priorities of the Integrated Review, from fostering security in fragile states to deterring cyber threats and holding human rights abusers to account.” But the move triggered anxiety among development organizations focusing on conflict, which are currently scrambling for further information about the move. Devex understands CSSF’s partners have been told there will be no change to funding for the next financial year. “CSSF has been developing an architecture over the last five years; it’s clearly learned from things like ICAI reviews,” said Lewis Brooks, advocacy adviser at Saferworld, referring to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, a development policy watchdog. “Throwing that away would feel pretty nonsensical.” Brooks added that the fund has seen some “really important successes … some of them are in terms of really important areas where CSSF has piloted and innovated,” pointing out its work on gender equality, including setting up help desks to advise other parts of government on the subject. “Are those key issues going to be carried over into [the] new fund?” asked Brooks. Meanwhile, Katherine Nightingale, head of advocacy and policy at CARE International UK, said getting rid of the fund “leaves lots of unanswered questions,” and that it was “crucial that fragile and conflict affected states do not lose out with this new focus.” The move “looks like a way of spending more on defence-related stuff and hard security, so [there is] some concern that means less for conflict resolution and peacebuilding,” Nic Hailey, executive director of International Alert, a peacebuilding NGO, wrote to Devex — with the caveat that details have yet to emerge. The anxieties around CSSF were underscored by widespread concern among specialist NGOs over what they saw as a decline in the U.K.’s role in peacebuilding and conflict resolution, despite being the largest donor in that area in 2016, spending $514 million. It has now slipped to fourth place, spending $184 million in 2021, behind Germany, the European Union, and the United States, according to research from charities Saferworld and Mercy Corps. The CSSF merger was accompanied by broader missed opportunities in the review for the U.K.’s work on conflict, according to experts. “The development narrative is about sustainable [development], investment and partnerships, but we've seen conflict tear apart years of patient progress,” wrote Hailey. A commitment to spend half of the aid in fragile and conflict states — previously held by DFID — was not in the review, prompting Hailey to add that the U.K. has “gone backward.” “It looks like another bad year for UK aid spending taking all this together, with real risks of partners losing confidence in UK follow-through on plans,” said Hailey. War on women Despite the recent publication of FCDO’s women and girls strategy — accompanied by a cut to sexual and reproductive health spending — there were also concerns about how the new document approached gender. Among the seven development priorities outlined by the document was to organize a “collective response to the accelerating, well-financed and organised attacks on the rights of women and girls, including online.” “We will work to improve education, health and rights, support empowerment, reduce gender-based violence, and amplify the role of women’s rights organisations,” it added. But the document lacked “a serious focus on gender equality” according to Care’s Nightingale — which she said meant FCDO’s gender strategy fell “at the first hurdle.” “The Review contains just a few references to women and girls, mostly confined to one paragraph, and doesn’t recognise that women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate change,” she said. “Women’s freedoms are being rolled back around the world, if the Government is committed to promoting women’s rights, it needs to use all of the levers of the Integrated Review to do so.’’ And because of the aid cuts, CARE is “still waiting on the FCDO to implement its commitment to return funding for women and girls, which we estimate requires £1.9 billion,” added Nightingale. While the FCDO’s women and girls strategy featured in the review, Alastair Carr, policy manager at Conciliation Resources, a peacebuilding NGO, said he found it “really weird” the U.K. women, peace, and security national action plan did not. “That seems like a bit of a gap for me,” said Carr. The document lacked an “integrated response” to “less geopolitical issues” such as climate, gender, and conflict, which “are all really interconnected,” said Carr. “I think this was the moment when a lot of organizations like ours were hoping the government would be establishing and recognising these links and coming up with a response to that, and I didn't see that in [the document],” he added.