Gender and Development Network submission to the International Development Committee’s Inquiry on the Future of UK Aid and Development Assistance

13 November 2025

Introduction

The Gender and Development Network (GADN) is the UK’s largest network of organisations promoting gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights globally. Amid significant cuts to the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget, GADN submits this evidence to the Committee’s inquiry to ensure that gender equality and the rights of women and girls in all their diversity remain central to policy and practice as the UK shifts how it will work in its delivery of aid and development assistance. Drawing on our extensive experience, we seek to inform how the UK can pursue equitable and accountable approaches and the changes the government must implement to realise its goal of moving from paternalistic models and relationships to partnerships.

What is needed to achieve the Government’s objectives in terms of transforming its role to one of an investor from that of a donor?

• Where could the UK meaningfully add value to encourage private investment in developing countries and emerging markets?
• What considerations are there regarding questions of accountability, publicity, and efficiency?

1. We agree with the Government’s objective to move beyond the role of donor in finding other ways to work with Global South governments to maximise the resources available to them to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, too much focus on an ‘investor’ role runs the risk of misunderstanding the varied and often limited contribution that private investment can make to ‘development’. Ensuring a much more evidence-based and nuanced analysis in international discourse would be an extremely valuable role the UK could play.

2. In considering the UK’s role as ‘investor’, it is vital to recognise that the benefits of private finance are limited without regulation. All the evidence suggests that the actual amounts of private capital that flow to the countries most in need of additional resources will be minimal, and moreover, that its positive impacts on the SDGs will be even smaller. Return-seeking investment cannot and will not play the same role as public finance or ODA. Beyond this, the Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism warns that “catalyzing private investment at scale may in fact be undermining public policy objectives aimed at sustainable development in the global South, further eroding the role and capacity of the state to provide public infrastructure and services vital to ensuring human rights, development, and climate resilience, and leaving countries more vulnerable to debt crises”. As a result, accountability, efficiency, and human rights protections are all at risk. 

GADN is particularly concerned about the impact of private investment on the rights of women and girls. Because of gender-based inequalities in the economy and society, women are less likely to benefit from foreign private investment and are more exposed to the risks. More than 90 per cent of women in low-income countries work in the informal sector. With lower earnings and worse conditions than men, they are less likely to benefit from formal employment created, and more likely to suffer from labour exploitation. That women also own less agricultural land and often have fewer rights to land than men also reduces the likelihood that they can reap any benefits of private foreign investment. 

Part of the issue is that ODA is increasingly used to mobilise private finance by underwriting risks. At a time when aid flows are diminishing and proven programmes are being cut, the onus must be on donors to prove that their spending is effective in meeting development goals, and this is not happening. The UK could play an important role in leading this more critical discussion to ensure that private finance genuinely benefits the achievement of the SDGs in line with the government’s own goals and Industrial Strategy. In her paper for the G20, Mazzucato (2025) provides valuable evidence on the problems. Consideration of regulatory frameworks like the ‘Ruggie’ guiding principles that would prioritise the upholding of human rights in any business activity could be one part of future discussions on avoiding the risks and promoting genuine benefits of foreign private investment.

3. Given the limitations and associated problems, it is therefore vital that this focus on private capital should not draw attention away from alternative ways to increase governments’ resources, like debt relief and global tax reform, and from the role of governments in achieving the SDGs. GADN therefore suggests that in the move beyond aid, the UK Government should also play an ally role in relation to its influencing work in international fora. This would require the UK to use its influence on the international stage to amplify Global South governments’ calls for a reform of the multilateral system, which would improve their fiscal space. This includes support for:

• The United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation to democratise international tax governance.
• A UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt as a binding, transparent and rights-based legal framework for debt resolution and prevention. This should be in addition to the cancellation and restructuring of sovereign debt in ways that deliver reparative, reproductive and climate justice.
• An urgent reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank voting systems for more equitable representation of Global South countries.
• An end to harmful conditionalities and austerity measures, recognising the disproportionate harm these inflict on women and girls.

These recommendations should be considered alongside further measures, as outlined in the Feminist Forum Declaration for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development.

The statement from Baroness Chapman in response to the Sevilla Commitment provides a possible roadmap that the UK could follow. In addition to leveraging private finance, she also acknowledged the importance of two other strands for action. First, “helping countries to raise more of their own revenues“ by “support[ing] countries to raise more finance domestically” and “work[ing] with all partners to take urgent action to tackle unsustainable debt”. Second, in “making the system work better for developing countries”, she adds that “this means getting behind countries’ own priorities and plans. It means putting women and girls at the heart of everything we do (...), it also means creating a fairer system where developing countries have greater voice and participation to shape the outcomes they need.” Finally, she pledges: “That is why the UK is calling for more voice and representation for low-income and vulnerable countries in the World Bank and IMF.”

4. To be successful in any of these endeavours and roles, it is critical that the UK positions itself as a genuine ally of the Global South on the international stage. This requires the UK to acknowledge its colonial legacy and atone for past and present harm (see question on partnerships below) before advocating alongside the Global South in tackling the range of ways in which progress is blocked.

What needs to change to realise the goal of moving from paternalistic models and relationships to partnerships?

We welcome the government’s commitment to move from paternalism to equitable partnerships. Beyond the localisation agenda, this will require more fundamental changes. As discussed in the 2024 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting’s (CHOGM) Leaders’ Statement, "the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity”. The statement calls for reparatory justice, which would require the UK to acknowledge its colonial legacy and apologise and atone for the past and present harm it has caused. Supporting the reforms to undemocratic global economic governance structures outlined in the question above will be crucial in relation to the UK realising its goal of moving towards equitable partnerships. Not only because they recognise and redress embedded and ongoing historical power imbalances, but also because advocating for these reforms alongside the Global South shows that the UK is serious about moving away from paternalism and being a genuine ally and partner. Partnership will also be built on the understanding that all governments face similar challenges, whether in relation to inequality, pandemics or the climate crisis.

How can the UK Government align its development work with taxpayers' expectation, and ensure value for money?

• How can equity and accountability be better embedded into the way the UK Government delivers its aid budget?

All the evidence suggests that prioritising funding that promotes gender equality and the rights of women and girls in all their diversity is an effective way of ensuring both that aid goes to those who are most marginalised and that aid spend has a multiplier effect in achieving other SDGs. Already, women’s and girls’ underpaid and unpaid work – both in industry and care and domestic work – provides the backbone of our societies and economies. Engaging women and girls in political and economic policy-making, particularly through women’s rights and feminist organisations and movements, ensures effective solutions that reflect lived realities, and is something the UK should continue to promote. Further, the UK has a strong international reputation for its ODA spending on gender equality and should continue to build on this as an efficient way to make an impact – even under an overall diminished aid budget. This must include ensuring that Equality Impact Assessments are used to meaningfully inform any spending cuts.