Hannah Bond and Taahra Ghazi, co-CEOs of ActionAid UK, said: “Today the true impact of the government’s reckless decision to slash its Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget has become painfully clear.
“We’re pleased to see the Foreign Secretary acknowledge that women and girls disproportionately bear the brunt of poverty, violence and conflict by promising to make them a priority – but without backing up this pledge with increased long-term funding, it rings hollow.
“The announcement that international climate finance will be reduced is a huge betrayal for women and girls on the frontline of the climate crisis and of this government’s own manifesto commitments on climate and gender equality – and comes at a time when urgent scaling up is needed as the frequency and scale of climate emergencies intensifies. This finance should never have been taken from ODA in the first place: the government could and should be raising funds through progressive taxation and fines for big polluters, and the banks which finance them.
“If supporting women and girls is truly to be a priority for this Government, it’s clear that wider structural reform is needed. ODA alone was never enough and the Government has a key role to play in reforming the economic and political systems that violate the rights of women and girls in the first place – from championing UN Tax Convention reform, to supporting meaningful debt relief through the G20, to introducing robust corporate accountability legislation in the UK.”
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Hannah Bond, co-CEO of ActionAid UK, is available as a spokesperson. Please contact the press office at uk.media@actionaid.org or on 07753 973 486