Weekly Action - 20 November 2023 - Development White Paper

Development White Paper

This Monday 20 November the government published its new International Development White Paper, setting out the government’s plans on international development over the next few years. Arise members fed into the consultation on the paper through taking an Arise weekly action earlier this year. The new paper contains many of the things Arise members called for. The white paper is a welcome and much needed reset of the government’s international development policy, to truly focus on ending extreme poverty and tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, rather than just pushing UK foreign policy interests. However, it is vague on how the many good intentions and initiatives set out in the paper will truly be funded. The UK’s overseas aid has slipped to 0.5% of Gross National Income (GNI), and a third of it is being spent supporting refugees at home. Those costs are important of course, but shouldn’t come out of the international aid budget, which should immediately return to the internationally agreed standard of 0.7% of GNI, and be spent entirely in developing countries.

UK aid has had a literally lifesaving impact for millions of people around the world over many years. To take just one example, more than 150,000 people, including many malnourished children, in Chad have been provided with emergency food supplies in recent years. Cash assistance has also been given to over 1,600 households in the country, enabling them to purchase food and building materials, and clean safe water has been provided for 10,500 people. More than 10,000 people received protective clothing and medical kits to reduce the spread of Covid-19 during the pandemic.^[1] In the past year UK aid has supported flood victims in DR Congo, Rwanda and Pakistan, immunizations against deadly tropical diseases, earthquake victims in Turkey, Syria, and Morocco, people suffering drought in East Africa, and provided essential water and sanitation amongst many other areas. A recent Arise weekly blog took a deeper look at the importance of overseas aid.

Reducing poverty around the world

As Christians, we know that God has a special care for those suffering in extreme poverty, and wants to see all cared for and their poverty ended. As the Psalms say, “He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry … The LORD watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow” (Psalm 146: 7 – 9). Arise’s 4 Shifts Report and Campaign looks at the lessons from the Bible, and at what has worked in the past, to successfully lift nations out of poverty. It finds that aid from developed nations like the UK is an important temporary boost to support low-income countries as they develop themselves, until they can move beyond the need for aid. For that 2 essential shifts are needed. 1) Nations need to develop strong and fair national economies to create jobs and wealth. 2) They can then tax these to provide social spending and basic services like healthcare, education and social protection (pensions, unemployment benefits, incapacity support etc.) to ensure all benefit, not just the richest in society. All nations that have developed successfully have followed this route, and the international community should do all it can to support other nations to take the same approach. The Development White Paper goes a long way towards supporting these essential shifts, but not all the way, and is vague on how they will be funded.

This week, will you take action as part of Arise’s 4 Shifts Campaign, and urge the UK government to step up its efforts to help low-income nations develop the good jobs and universal access to basic services that can massively reduce extreme poverty?

Take Action

Speak out in advocacy

Contact David Cameron, the UK’s new Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, via social media. Ask him to immediately scale up UK overseas aid back to 0.7% of Gross National Income and focus this on:

Supporting developing nations to lift themselves permanently out of poverty by developing a proactive national industrial and economic development strategy to create a diverse national economy that progressively moves up the value chain from agriculture to manufacturing to services to the knowledge economy.
Supporting developing nations to develop effective tax systems to collect tax at an amount equivalent to at least 45% of the national economy (one third from income taxes, one third from wealth taxes and one third from other taxes), and to spend at least two thirds of this on healthcare, education and social protection (pensions, benefits etc.).

Contact him on Twitter at: @David_Cameron, on Facebook at: David Cameron, or search for him on your favourite social media platform.

Pray

Pray for all those living in extreme poverty. Pray their nations will develop, creating booming green economies, jobs, good wages, and key public services like education and healthcare to lift them permanently out of poverty. Pray the UK will immediately scale up overseas aid back to 0.7% of GNI and focus this entirely on reducing poverty.

Give

Give to Christian organisations like Cafod, Christian Aid, Tearfund or World Vision who do crucial work supporting the most marginalised and reducing poverty in countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Practical Action

Spread the message further by getting in touch with us at info@ariseuk.org and requesting a speaker from Arise to come and give a talk in your church.

Ethical Consumption

Support developing nation economies by buying products and services with the Fairtrade mark, where a much higher proportion of your money goes to producers in the developing world.

Encourage us and others by letting us know what actions you have taken – message us at info@ariseuk.org, or via Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Find out more

It’s great to take this action as individual Christians, but even better to come together with others to pray, discuss, worship, learn, have fun and take action together. Contact Arise if you are interested in joining or starting a local Arise group in your church or area. If you are already in an Arise group, take this action to your wider church, and get them all to do it too.

Find out more about how God is at work in the world, and the role we all have to play in that work, in the Arise Manifesto.

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[1] UK aid support vulnerable people in Chad using millions of pounds recovered during corruption case, Gov.UK, (29 Nov 2021), https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-aid-supports-vulnerable-people-in-chad-using-millions-of-pounds-recovered-during-corruption-case