Overseas Development Assistance (ODA, also known as ‘aid’) alleviates poverty and contributes to sustainable development around the globe. Among other things, it helps ensure that children are able to go to school, runs immunisation programmes to stop people dying from preventable diseases, and supports work to stop people dying from hunger and malnutrition. Most people in the UK believe that we have a moral duty to stand alongside people facing poverty around the world, and in 2015, countries around the world including the UK signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promising to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.
Aid won’t achieve that by itself, as big global changes are also needed, including reduced inequality, fairer economic systems, and action on climate change. Since 1990, nearly 1.1 billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty. More recently, however, some of his progress has been reversed, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
ODA from donors such as the UK has made a big contribution to the social and economic development of many countries. UK aid has:
- Helping to reach 1 billion children through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, helping to immunise 130 million children just since 2021.
- Reached over 50 million people, including children under 5, women of childbearing age and adolescent girls through nutrition programmes from 2015 to 2020.
- Supported over 15.6 million people to gain a decent education between 2015 and 2020.
Poverty is not just about a lack of income, but about access to essential services and a say in one’s future. Ensuring that everyone in the world has access to these things, including the most marginalised people, who are often “left behind”, is also at the core of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The UK has in the past been one of the world's leading aid donors, but since 2021, the Government cut UK aid from 0.7% of our national income to just 0.55%, a reduction of around a third from its peak in 2019. In addition, last year, around a third of the ODA budget was spent on supporting vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.
These changes make little difference to the UK’s domestic economy, but have a huge impact on the help we can provide around the world. This means that hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty, including women, girls, and disabled people, will not be reached by the UK’s ODA budget, for example, via nutrition and health programmes.
It is vital that the UK’s ODA budget returns to the international target of 0.7% of national income as soon as possible - though the Government currently projects this not to happen before 2027/28.
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