The UK “strongly disagrees” with the US approach to aid for global health, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has said – including Donald Trump’s dramatic expands of the so-called Mexico City policy, which restricts organisations receiving US funding from providing or promoting abortion services overseas.
Organisations that receive US assistance must now ensure that none of their activities, even those funded by other governments, conflict with Washington’s positions on abortion, gender identity or diversity programmes.
Giving evidence to parliament’s International Development Committee, days after the UK released details of its 40 per cent cut to the aid budget, Ms Cooper said that the UK would continue to prioritise those areas that the US has said it will no longer fund.
“We strongly disagree with that approach, which runs completely counter to our approach,” the foreign secretary said. “Things like sexual health services, and direct support for women and girls, and LGBT rights are hugely important parts of our development work and are rooted in core UK values.”
Ms Cooper added that we should not get “drawn into a sense” that women’s rights are going backwards the world over. “That is just not the case. We and many other countries will continue to be champions for those issues,” she said.
Some 14 countries have now signed bilateral aid agreements with the US – known as health compacts – which include restrictions on how the money should be spent, as well as other stipulations about data sharing.
The $2.1 billion (£1.6bn) agreement with Nigeria, for example, included “significant dedicated funding to support Christian health care facilities”, the US State Department said, and was “negotiated in connection with reforms the Nigerian government has made to prioritise protecting Christian populations”.
Last week, Nigeria’s chief government spokesperson told The Independent that such arrangements risk “fanning the flames” of division in the country split 50:50 between Muslim and Christian populations.
Also giving evidence to the International Development Committee, development minister Jenny Chapman said that the UK would continue to prioritise funding for water and sanitation, despite heavy bilateral cuts coming for water programmes in the UK aid budget.
Specifically she said that the “biggest player” in boosting access to clean water now is the World Bank, adding that the most effective way of funding such work is for the UK to fund multilateral bodies such as that.
When asked why two-thirds of the UK’s three-year £850 million grant to the Global Fund – a key multilateral body funding HIV, tuberculosis and malaria treatment – was coming in year three of the funding programme, Chapman said that it was because the UK had to wait for aid programmes to finish over the next two years before more funding was available for the Fund.
“We’ve got to make this cut to our overall budget over three years,” she said. “We have had to back load [for the Global Fund] because it’s the only way to get the overall amount. And we took a view that getting that overall amount for the Global Fund really mattered.”
On the question of UK funding for HIV funding, which she confirmed to The Independent last week would not be protected in full, Baroness Chapman suggested that many decisions are as much about boosting the effectiveness and efficiency of aid programmes as they are about making cuts.
“I don’t want you to think we are just backing out of things, because we’re really not,” she said. “This is about making sure that we are able to secure the gains that we have made, before we move on.”
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
