Launching the FCDO’s new development White Paper last year, Foreign Secretary David Cameron called the UK’s work on women and girls “paramount”. Access to education, empowering women and ending sexual violence were universal, “non-negotiable” rights, central to economic growth and development. The UK would “use research and diplomacy to end the preventable deaths of mothers, babies and children”, and would “deploy policy and investment to defend and advance sexual and reproductive health and rights”.
Which makes the Government’s refusal to calculate and earmark an effective, “non-negotiable” level of spending on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in its response to our January report all the more disappointing.
The International Development Select Committee had called on the Government to set new, measurable targets on ending preventable deaths of mothers, babies and children, and publish regular progress reports in the interests of transparency and accountability. We said they should calculate a minimum percentage of bilateral aid to be spent on SRHR and make that funding commitment on a multiyear basis — a minimum of 5 years where possible.
We have seen the bleak reality when funding is ended or reallocated in the brutal way cuts to the UK aid budget were handled. By 2021 the FCDO had reduced its spending on SRHR by a third and halved its spending on Family Planning. Not only were budgets for future work slashed, but existing projects were reduced or cancelled entirely, often with little or no notice.
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By FCDO’s own calculations, their spending reductions on the Women’s Integrated Sexual Health Programme (WISH) mean results for women and girls would be reduced by approximately 60%. The number of unsafe abortions averted would drop from nearly 300,000 to approximately 115,000, and the number of maternal deaths averted would drop from 2,531 to just over 1,000. The FCDO recognised the “lasting damage to health systems” in fragile, conflict-riven states such as Yemen as a direct result of its reduced ODA spending.
How ill-timed and short-sighted those cuts were.
In more recent evidence in Parliament we heard of how the “forgotten conflict” in Sudan has become a “war on women”. Cultural norms and taboos already meant babies born out of the wedlock are often abandoned in their first days of life. This tragedy is being horribly exacerbated by the number of children now being born, one year into the conflict, as a result of rapes used as a weapon of war.
Maternal health has declined in many parts of the world since 2016, halting 15 years of progress. Last year the UN declared that the world is failing girls and women, with decades of progress on women and girls’ rights, to which SRHR are integral, “vanishing before our eyes”. It is a chilling fact that a girl in South Sudan is more likely to die in childbirth than finish school. The World Bank has declared that we cannot eliminate poverty with half the population “on the sideline”. As long as women and girls are held back like this, global economic growth and development will be held back.
Education for sexual health and reproductive rights, empowerment of the women, girls and marginalised people most impacted by the FCDO’s cuts (by their own admission), cultural change — these things cannot be turned off and on again like a tap; or be effective with an unreliable funding stream.
A report by Equality Now this week shows that most African countries have ratified protocols that guarantee strong rights and protections for women — but that the reality on the ground is just not keeping pace. Women and girls, including very young girls, still lack sexual and reproductive autonomy. Many countries are going backwards on LGBT rights, bringing in repressive not enabling legislation.
Civil society groups trying to make these global treaties a daily reality need long-term, reliable resources that can enable them to bring about progressive, lasting change. Crucially, they need this reliable base to build resilience, so that the rights of women and girls and marginalised people cannot be first to be de-prioritised in the face of each new crisis or emerging conflict – or domestic economic problems in aid donor countries.
For the thousands upon thousands of grieving families who have lost loved ones, livelihoods, futures, and hope – I cannot imagine how much more painful and damaging it must be to know that so many of those maternal and infant deaths were not only preventable, but were being prevented just a few years ago.
Among the frustration and horror is the feeling that it simply doesn’t have to be this way. Of course the UK alone does not have all the answers, but it has traditionally led the way. The abrupt and seemingly arbitrary nature of the cuts harmed the UK’s reputation as a serious, reliable, and credible global player. For organisations and partners on the ground, trust has been significantly damaged. Precious resources already invested were inexcusably wasted.
It is time to put the money back — securely — where we know it can work best, and empower women and girls.
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