January 2025

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE INQUIRY – THE FCDO’S APPROACH TO VALUE FOR MONEY

WRITTEN EVIDENCE SUBMISSION BY THE UNITED KINGDOM COMMITTEE FOR UNICEF (UNICEF UK)

1. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is mandated by the UN General Assembly to uphold the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and promote the rights and wellbeing of every child. UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories, focusing special effort on reaching the most marginalised and excluded children.
2. UNICEF is also the global custodian for children in the Sustainable Development Agenda and works with governments, partners and other UN agencies to help countries ensure the SDGs deliver results for and with every child – now and for generations to come.
3. The UK Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK) is a UK registered charity that raises funds for UNICEF’s emergency and development work around the world and advocates for lasting change for children worldwide.
4. UNICEF UK welcomes this inquiry and makes this submission with the aim of highlighting the need for a larger proportion of UK international development spending to go towards cost-effective interventions that can reduce extreme poverty and improve the lives and futures of the world’s most vulnerable children.

How does the FCDO currently define the term Value for Money? Are there any other aspects of Value for Money that the FCDO should be considering in its assessment?

5. The impact that development spending has on reducing extreme poverty should be a core consideration in the FCDO’s assessment of its ‘Value for Money’.
6. The Department for International Development’s 2011 guiding document on its Approach to Value for Money[1] identified ‘impact on poverty reduction’ as a key metric by which to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of aid programmes supported by DFID.
7. While the FCDO has not published an equivalent guide on its approach to value for money, ending extreme poverty was identified as one of UK international development’s primary goals in the FCDO’s 2023 International Development White Paper.
8. As such, it follows that impact on reducing extreme poverty should remain a key consideration in how the FCDO determines the cost-effectiveness and Value for Money of development spending.
9. As children make up almost half (46%) of the population of low- and middle-income countries[2], improving the wellbeing of the world’s most vulnerable children is critical to eradicating extreme poverty and achieving progress on other Sustainable Development Goals that the UK has committed to supporting.
10. Many areas of child-focused development offer extremely cost-effective development interventions; for instance, every $1 invested in nutrition returns between $4 and $35[3].  Despite this, since 2013, there has been a sustained and significant decline in the proportion of the UK’s ODA budget being spent on child-focused international development; the proportion of UK ODA spent on child-focused aid fell from averaging 25% before 2019 to just 17% in 2022 [4].
11. An increasing portion of the ODA budget continues to be spent by the Home Office in the UK on refugee costs, despite this spending not contributing to ODA’s objective to eradicate extreme poverty. In fact, the UK reports higher spend per refugee than any other OECD country[5]. The International Development Committee has previously referred to increasing in-country refugee cost spend as ‘unwarranted largesse by the Home Office at the expense of both UK taxpayers and people living in the world’s poorest countries’[6].

How effective is the FCDO at monitoring the delivery and outputs of its programming to ensure its achieving Value for Money? Is there a cohesive approach across the merged FCDO?

12. Despite child-focused international development interventions being highly cost-effective and offering significant impact on poverty reduction and returns on spending, the UK’s child-focused aid spending has declined significantly and disproportionately in recent years. UK aid spending on child-focused bilateral ODA fell by 57% between 2019 and 2022, compared to a 34% fall in non-child-focused bilateral aid spending over the same period[7].
13. More must be done to monitor the FCDO’s level of support for cost-effective child-focused development across a range of key thematic areas – health, nutrition, education, and climate-adaptation. The disproportionate cuts to child-focused bilateral ODA spending indicate that without a child-focused lens and mechanisms for monitoring child-focused spending as a whole, children have been sidelined in the UK’s approach to international development.
14. The UK Government has committed to inclusivity data on reporting including age[8], but this has not been delivered. This data and increased transparency in reporting is critical for improved monitoring of ODA spend and impact.   

How could the FCDO improve its oversight mechanisms to ensure Value for Money of its ODA budget?

15. The FCDO could improve its oversight mechanisms to ensure its ODA budget delivers high value for money child-focused interventions by adopting a new strategic approach with an accompanying evaluation process to child rights in UK international development. This should include developing and implementing a child rights strategy that champions children and youth across development and diplomatic efforts.
16. The FCDO should apply a child-focused lens to the monitoring of UK development assistance, including child rights impact assessments, disaggregated data on age, sex and disability, and a children and youth consultation mechanism.
17. The FCDO should invest in child rights expertise and capacity within the department, including a Child Rights Envoy and a dedicated team.
18. We also recommend that the Government commits to 25% of ODA being child-focused to ensure children no longer disproportionately bear the brunt of ODA cuts and commits to a clear roadmap for returning to the legal commitment of spending 0.7% of Gross National Income on ODA, as well as phasing out the use of ODA for in-country refugee costs.