Inquiry Question: How effectively do the FCDO’s strategy, policies and programmes address the needs of women and girls in extreme poverty?
Gender Equality and Ending Poverty Reduction
The UK has played an important role in supporting poverty reduction and gender equality around the world through international aid and global leadership, and was perceived as such by others, praised in 2011 by the former head of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet, as being "a true champion of gender equality, and a continuous supporter of UN Women[1].
Currently the FCDO’s work on gender equality and women’s rights is guided by the 2030 Strategic Vision for Gender Equality (2018) and National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. Both of these provide robust frameworks to continue progress, adopting a holistic approach to tackling gender inequality that recognise its intersecting and intersectional roots as well as the need for multipronged interventions in support of: universal sexual and reproductive health rights, girls education, women’s economic empowerment, women’s political empowerment and ending violence against women and girls. They also recognise that gender equality is foundational for ending poverty and inequality and delivering prosperous societies.[2]
The UK as a global leader on Gender Equality
In the past the UK has been instrumental to global policy advances including agreeing a standalone goal on gender equality in the Sustainable Development Goals[3], and playing an important role in the UN Security Council in advocating for women’s rights. The FCDO has also recognised the strategic benefits of working with women’s rights organisations, and the need for long term, flexible funding to unlock the potential of their work.
The UK has a strong track record and leadership, on "Leaving No-one Behind", and reaching the "furthest behind first", however, the FCDO has recently made concerning omissions of a comprehensive approach to Gender Equality and women’s rights in its seven priorities, and has implemented aid cuts which have disproportionately impacted women and girls.
The Seven Priorities
In November 2020, the former Foreign Secretary in November 2020[4] raised concerns that the previous multidimensional approach to gender equality had been reduced to a singular focus on girls’ education. The seven priorities include a commitment to girls’ education, which whilst important, is too narrow a focus to tackle the barriers faced by women and girls face across their lifetimes that underpin poverty, including gender-based violence, lack of economic opportunities and rights, and lower decision making power.
UK Cuts to ODA
Over the last two years, political decisions to cut UK aid spending have also resulted in cuts to programme areas that are critical to women and girls. UK Aid cuts, and the way they are being implemented, will have a wide-ranging and long-standing devastating impact on gender equality focused programming, and women and girls will suffer most from reductions in funding to critical sectors[5].
An estimated 20 million fewer women and girls will receive UK Aid support due to the cuts, and major cuts have been made to sexual and reproductive health and rights and girls’ education work. Transparency around the aid cuts process has been lacking. The government has released no overall picture of the cuts and refused Freedom of Information requests. An Equalities Impact Assessment is known to have been drafted by FCDO to inform the 2021/22 allocation process. However, this was not made public.
Gone too is the respected commitment to focus half of UK aid spend on vulnerable Fragile and Conflict Affected States (FCAS). There has been a complete withdrawal of bilateral support from many FCAS countries such as Lebanon, where food insecurity, health issues and protection (including from GBV) continue to disproportionately impact women and girls, and current models do not prioritise reaching the women and girls most vulnerable to the impacts of conflict and crises.
Reinstating Aid budgets for women and girls
In November 2022, the UK Foreign Secretary, Brexit Minister and Minister for Women and Equality Liz Truss announced several commitments on women and girls to be delivered in 2022, including the restoring of the women and girls development budget to what it was before the Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) cut, and through the launch of a Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative[6].
The interest and commitment by SoS Liz Truss to restore levels of aid budget to women and girls is welcome, but Care International UK encourage a return to the more holistic and transformational gender equality framing used previously, to ensure investment in gender equality programming and ensure this is spent in the most transformative way.
Recommendations
As well as returning to spending 0.7% of GNI on aid, the FCDO must make tangible commitments to accelerate progress on gender equality and womens’ rights in order to address the needs of women and girls in extreme poverty. To achieve this, the FCDO should focus on the following strategic commitments:
- Adoption and championing of the Strategic Vision for Gender Equality as a guiding document to achieve gender equality. The FCDO should continue to invest in the Strategic Vision’s five foundation areas – gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, girls’ education, women’s economic empowerment and women’s political empowerment. It is necessary to address the underlying causes of gender inequality in order to make progress.
- Prioritise implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda by ensuring the National Action Plan is integrated into the FCDO’s approach to peace, security, sustainable development and humanitarian policy. All UK business plans, strategies, policies and programmes in fragile and conflict affected contexts should be based on gender-conflict analysis.
- The process of developing all future strategies should also be inclusive, consultative, and based on evidence. There should be a clear commitment to meaningful consultation and engagement with civil society and women’s rights organisations as experts and partners across foreign, security, and development policy and practice.
- Commit to developing detailed implementation plans for the SVGE and clear, transparent and accessible processes that enable civil society and other partners – including girls and young women – to hold the FCDO to account for its delivery.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-backs-un-women-to-invest-more-in-girls
[2] DFID, Strategic Vision for Gender Equality, 2018 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/708116/Strategic-vision-gender-equality1.pdf
[3]https://www.bond.org.uk/sites/default/files/bond_the_uks_global_contribution_to_the_sdgs_online_full_report.pdf
[5] https://insights.careinternational.org.uk/publications/uk-government-decisions-to-cut-uk-aid-are-disproportionately-falling-on-women-and-girls
[6] https://inews.co.uk/opinion/liz-truss-i-want-to-ensure-no-country-can-ever-again-use-sexual-violence-as-a-weapon-of-war-1301907?ito=twitter_share_article-top&s=09