Britain's overseas aid cuts 'impaired' support for Middle East crises

Reduced funding has had 'significant impact' on security projects, committee of MPs has said

Smoke rises from a building in Khartoum as the Sudanese army fights against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Cuts to the UK's overseas budget has hit its ability to offer help in conflict zones. AFPShow less

Cuts to Britain’s overseas funding have impaired its ability to offer help during recent crises in the Middle East, an influential committee of MPs has said.

The decision taken by former prime minister Boris Johnson to reduce the Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding in 2021 has had a “significant impact” on aid efforts, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy said.

In 2022, the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund’s (CSSF) budget was reduced by £401 million ($496 million) to £858 million, a reduction of 32 per cent.

Programmes aimed at stabilising conflict areas in the Middle East and North Africa have been halted altogether, while others have had their budgets cut in half.

This has hit areas of high instability, including Libya, Sudan and Tunisia.

“These cuts may have impaired the government’s ability to respond effectively to recent crises in the Middle East and Sudan,” the MPs’ report said.

The report also highlighted concerns that the reductions would prove to be “a false economy”, with a lack of funding exacerbating problems.

“We are concerned that the cuts are likely to impair the ability of the UK government to anticipate conflict, prevent escalation, and respond effectively to areas of known instability across the world," the report said.

Refugees from Sudan's civil war sit around a fire in Wadi Halfa near Egypt. AFP

Projects in the Mena region and South Asia faced the largest cuts. Security and justice reform programmes in Nigeria and East Africa were closed, while security programmes in Afghanistan and Pakistan were also halted.

Tunisia faced a drop from ODA funding of £15 million in 2021 to £2 million this year.

Libya’s funding was reduced from £12.4 million to £6 million, and Algeria’s £8.5 million ODA programme was closed down.

“Organisations questioned the decision to cut programmes in regions with high incidences of instability, such as the Middle East, impairing the ability of the UK government to seek proactively to prevent conflict,” the report said.

Sudan cuts

The CSSF’s programme in Sudan was closed in 2021 “in response to ODA constraints” while those in neighbouring South Sudan and Ethiopia were also shut down.

Witnesses to the inquiry “questioned the coherence of these funding decisions” in respect to Britain’s foreign policy aims in the Horn of Africa and broader Red Sea region, “especially given the later outbreak of conflict”, the report said.

Dr Kate Ferguson, of Protection Approaches, a charity that tackles atrocities, criticised the cuts to programmes in Sudan.

“It is very difficult to say that it was strategic or informed when you look at the Horn of Africa more broadly, where risks of violence, of instability and of myriad polycrises are really metastasising, with big regional and global impacts,” she said.

The Halo demining charity, which works extensively across the region, told MPs that the cuts were “not consistent with the aim and potential of the CSSF fund given the frequency and impact of conflict in the Mena region”.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a letter to the International Development Committee that work was under way “to identify whether CSSF funding can be used in future to support relevant objectives in Sudan and the possible regional repercussions”.

The CSSF was established in 2015 to tackle security challenges overseas, focusing on those that threaten Britain’s national security.