The Foreign Office announced that, it has effected a budget cut for low-income nations for the immediate future to meet its saving objectives, but in the long term, it will increase the budget.
According to research conducted by civil servants in the Foreign Office, many women and children stands at a huge risk of perishing in the course of childbirth or seeking medical attention, due to aid reductions effected by the government.
The civil workers’ research threw more light on the negative impacts that would accompany the the government’s foreign aid budget cut.
The study postulates that, some of the world’s most vulnerable women and mothers, would have to endure massive hardships and might also be cut off from crucial services, due to a massive 76% budgetary cut in aid allocations for Afghanistan.
In Somalia, the Foreign Office will have to “delay this year’s, and potentially stop altogether” campaign to combat female genital mutilation.
Additionally, over 500,000 Yemeni women and children would be cut off from essential medical care and “fewer preventable deaths will be avoided.” “It may cause lasting damage to health systems in Yemen, if other donors are unable to fund,” it said.
Not all, over 27,000 children would be in danger of suffering from severe acute malnutrition, of which 12% of the children stand at risk of death, as a result of changes to the humanitarian budget in South Sudan.
The study further underscored that, the integrated sexual health program would be duly affected by the aid cut, and would decrease “the number of unsafe abortions averted from nearly 300,000 to approximately 115,000. The number of maternal deaths averted will drop from 2,531 to just over 1,000 across Africa.”
The findings serve as evaluations conducted by Foreign Office civil servants earlier this year to provide ministers with information before budgetary decisions are taken.
According to the Foreign Office civil servants report, the Foreign Office has been forced to effect these cuts, after the Treasury department permitted the Home Office to spend around one-quarter of aid allocations to accommodate asylum seekers.
Per international Law, the UK is mandated to cater for asylum seekers for the first year. On the contrary, there has been a spike in hotel room prices, as a result of the large influx of migrants and asylum seekers crossing the sea in tiny vessels.
All these expenditures have been considered as a contributing factor for the government’s budgetary cut in its international priorities.
Also, the Foreign Office “will not be able to support critical services for women and girls. Reducing funding will potentially leave some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls without critical services,” the report revealed.
As part of his efforts to restore transparency to UK aid expenditure before the Department for International Development was amalgamated with the traditionally secretive Foreign Office, Development Minister, Andrew Mitchell presented it before the International Development Committee.
Such thorough analyses of the effects of prior administrations’ spending cuts were scarcely disclosed.
The department’s Overseas Development Assistance budget, which is estimated to be worth more than £900 million this year, has been subject to some significant cuts, which the Foreign Office lists in its evaluations.
The changes, according to Sarah Champion MP, and chairperson of the International Development Committee, are “intolerable” and will have a “terrible impact.”
“This astonishingly honest assessment of the real impact makes grim reading. It is a litany of the people living in poverty, suffering hunger, women, girls, disabled people who will no longer be supported by the UK’s direct aid spending.”
Sarah Champion MP, chair of the International Development Committee.
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