The UK needs real global partnerships – otherwise people will be left behind
KWe are clearly facing an emerging humanitarian emergency here, and the situation will only get worse as the rainy season arrives. “Our cities are burning, our villages are being wiped out, living here has been replaced by literal survival, and it’s as if we’ve become invisible to the world.”
As I sit in a crowded conference room in London, the words of my colleague from Juba, South Sudan, echo around my head. Outside, the UK capital is humming under a familiar gray sky, the weather mild and manageable. A country on the front lines of the climate crisis is a far cry from the brutal, stifling heat and impending rains it describes.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper convened the Global Partnerships conference this week to tackle “shared challenges” after announcing last year that the UK would cut nearly £6bn from its overseas budget by 2027 to fund an increase in defense spending.
The UK government has framed these cuts as “reforms”, but global cuts are already having a devastating impact on the people they are supposed to support: access to clean water and sanitation is under threat, climate shocks are hitting with increasing frequency, and progress on gender equality is being rolled back. Reducing aid is a political choice, and one that risks turning our backs on communities already living with the consequences of the problems they caused.
In March, when the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) first announced its priorities for the overseas aid budget, Ms Cooper confirmed there was a reduction in “direct grant funding” for many countries in Africa. While Oxfam welcomes the preservation of allocations to Sudan, cuts elsewhere will hit countries such as neighboring South Sudan, which hosts almost half a million Sudanese refugees and is one of the world’s most fragile and climate-affected states.
At a time when local organizations need more flexible and direct support to respond to rapidly changing crises, cuts to aid risk are further weakening locally driven responses and concentrating decision-making in remote systems rather than communities.
My mind went back to the conversation I had with my colleague in Juba. “Armed actors arrived in the middle of the night, taking everything they could: vehicles, equipment, assets.” He explained how quickly reality can change; One moment clear water is flowing, the next moment it is gone. Communities need to be able to evaluate how money is invested and do so quickly.
Colleagues and communities in the Global South say the same thing. At a time when many countries are facing the compounding effects of conflict, climate change and economic systems shaped by colonial legacies, reducing direct support would only deepen existing inequalities.
If the government is serious about reforming aid, this means leaving paternalism behind in favor of genuine partnership, heeding calls from the Global South to transfer power and resources to local communities, and recognizing that decisions cannot be channeled through large, distant systems. Whether it is flooding in Mozambique or cholera outbreaks on the rise globally, it requires flexible, agile financing that can respond in real time.
With less aid, how the remaining budget is used is more important than ever. The government says it is turning to “investment partnerships” through British International Investment (BII). BII received significant aid funding despite evidence that it invested in private health and education companies linked to serious human rights abuses. Only 14 percent of BII’s investments are in the world’s least developed countries, which risk deepening poverty and inequality rather than reducing them. If the government is serious about moving from aid to investment, it must choose the right partners, ones that are truly locally driven.
There is also a broader question about the global financial system itself. High levels of debt and an unfair international tax system continue to drain the resources of many countries in the Global South – money that could be invested in public services, crisis response and long-term resilience. At the same time, Oxfam research shows that billionaire wealth is growing at an extraordinary rate: last year the world saw the creation of a record number of billionaires with a collective wealth of $18.3 trillion, while almost half the world’s population continues to live in poverty. There is enough money to fight poverty and climate collapse, but political choices continue to preserve concentrated wealth while aid budgets are cut. A true partnership approach should apply here too, with the UK supporting Global Majority-led efforts towards reforms that include debt relief, fairer tax systems and more resources at home.
We need to rethink how development is financed and delivered. This means radically reforming the global development system, tackling inefficiencies, embracing innovation and ensuring every pound goes further for the people it is supposed to support. This means using new approaches, from impact investing, where money is invested to achieve both social benefit and financial returns, to results-oriented finance, where funding is tied to the delivery of agreed results. This also means radically reforming the way international NGOs operate, moving power and resources closer to communities, and rethinking the role of organizations based in the Global North.
We have a rare opportunity to change course. FCDO’s Global Partnerships conference should be a moment to reset and build a more responsive, more equitable and more effective development model, and to move beyond incremental change towards the radical reform the sector has long needed, putting power and finance where they belong.
Richard Hawkes, CEO of Oxfam Great Britain
This article was produced as part of The Independent. Rethinking Global Aid project
