UK aid cuts: A statement from Seenaryo’s CEO

Victoria Lupton is Seenaryo’s Founder and CEO.

We at Seenaryo have signed a letter from 138 international development organisations criticising the government’s decision last week to increase defence spending by slashing the aid budget. This is an easy decision for the government, which knows that international development spending is not a vote winner: according to a YouGov poll, 65% of voters agree with the decision.

However, it is also a decision that is both morally wrong and self-defeating. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to die as a result, which is particularly painful as it comes a month after Trump’s disastrous USAID cuts – which are estimated to have led to 15,000 deaths in the past month alone.

The international development sector is not perfect. However, there is no current alternative to allow the world’s most vulnerable communities to develop sustainably. Britain’s rearmament should not be funded at their expense. Not only is this decision against the interests of global justice; it is also self-defeating as it makes the world less stable and further threatens peace at a time when global conflict is at its highest point ever recorded. Britain’s safety and security requires robust investment not only in defence but in international aid that supports education and community development, as well as life-saving emergency response.

For decades, the UK has been a global leader in international development. In the 1970s, the United Nations set a target for 0.7% of GNI (Gross National Income) to be spent on official development assistance (ODA). The UK reached this target in 2013, one of the first countries in the world and the first G20 country to do so. The previous government slashed that target to only 0.5% in 2021 following the ravages of Covid. Last year, the incoming Labour government made a manifesto commitment to return to 0.7% aid spending. Instead of following through on that aim, it has now cut the target to only 0.3%. Almost half of this will not even be spent overseas but rather on UK hotels for asylum seekers – marginalised communities across the world paying the price for Britain’s broken asylum system.

There are other ways to fund the increased defence budget. A war levy is one; a wealth tax on the super-rich is another.

These cuts will transform Seenaryo’s communities and the ecosystem within which we work – especially in Jordan which was until a month ago the largest recipient of US aid globally aside from Ukraine and Israel. Four of our partner organisations in Jordan have already either closed down entirely or are radically scaling back their operations. Dozens more will follow; it will be a huge challenge for us to sustain our work, as funding becomes more and more constrained in the months to come. Indeed, the whole sector will be squeezed, meaning, for example, a generation of refugees in Jordan will not receive an education; programmes supporting social cohesion in Lebanon will be terminated, risking civil conflict in a country reeling from a highly sectarian war with Israel; and women across the region will lose opportunities for protection and work, leaving them at risk of exploitation.

At Seenaryo, we extend our solidarity to all our partners, colleagues and participants. These decisions by the US and UK governments will make our work harder and our communities in the Arab region more vulnerable, at a time when they have already been decimated by recent wars and crises. We call on the UK government to urgently reassess its position.