International Development Committee Inquiry on THE Future of UK aid and development assistance
Evidence from Save the Children UK
Save the Children was founded over 100 years ago in London. It is now a global movement operating in over 100 countries, fighting to ensure that all children survive, learn, and are protected.
Progress in poverty reduction has slowed. Government cuts to Official Development Assistance (ODA) are adding fuel to the fire. However, this moment of crisis is also one of opportunity. The UK now has a chance to engage in the long overdue updating and reimagining of its approach to international cooperation to ensure it is fit for purpose to meet the challenges of the day.
Our submission makes two key arguments. In the short term, the Government must make best use of the scarce resources that remain within the ODA budget. In the longer term, the UK should build a new, ambitious approach to international cooperation that is fit for purpose, adequately resourced, and enjoys the political and public legitimacy needed to sustain public financing for it.
The 2025–2029 ODA budget has very limited unallocated funds, leaving little room for prioritisation. In this context, it is critical that the government makes every effort to maximise ODA reaching communities most affected by poverty:
The UK should focus remaining ODA resources where need and impact are greatest, avoiding cuts to the ringfenced humanitarian budget. Prioritising children represents smart investment for boosting shared prosperity and wellbeing, and should be advanced through strong pledges to education funds, renewed global health support, nutrition investment, protection for children in conflict, and backing for grassroots feminist and girl-led groups and other local organisations.
The shifting global landscape requires the UK to reform its approach to international cooperation. Aid cuts are a symptom of the international system’s failures to adapt to rising conflicts, climate crises, political polarisation, and declining human-rights standards. A future-focused system that serves the mutual interest of people most affected by poverty in both higher and lower income countries is urgently needed, geared to support global public goods like poverty reduction, health, climate action, and security. A Global Public Investment model could mobilise and channel public finance to address collective challenges while protecting critical but scarce ODA resources.
The UK should turn the page on the negative narratives around aid cuts and start a new chapter, establishing a compelling, coherent and ambitious vision for the UK’s international cooperation agenda. This should be geared towards addressing global challenges that disproportionately impact families affected by poverty at home and abroad, emphasising mutuality and the interconnectedness of issues and solutions.
This should be funded by bringing together different public financing tools, modalities and regulatory and legal frameworks into a coherent package, with different instruments geared to serve different goals and contexts. ODA serves a unique purpose that other financing modalities cannot and so must remain a central pillar, reserved for use in humanitarian, fragile and low-income contexts. The Government’s commitment to increase ODA beyond 0.3% must be delivered as soon as possible. The government must also act immediately on measures that require little or no additional fiscal effort, including expanding the use of guarantees by shifting existing ones off the FCDO’s books, reviewing the use of Special Drawing Rights, tackling unsustainable debt and championing global tax reform.
A new localisation strategy should shift power to local actors, prioritising flexible, multi-year funding, capacity building, and inclusive decision-making. Locally led programmes can be more efficient, impactful and resilient, improving child protection and community outcomes. Funding and governance must reduce barriers, strengthen local leadership, and embed localisation as central to UK international cooperation.
The Government should rebuild public support for UK aid through fostering co-ownership and co-creation of a renewed agenda for international cooperation, aligned with shared values of fairness, compassion, and responsibility. Communications should emphasise tangible outcomes, global health, climate action, and poverty reduction, connecting these to UK security and prosperity. Framing cooperation as serving mutual interest rather than an act of charity and actively challenging misinformation has potential to foster trust and engagement, positioning citizens as participants in building a fairer, safer, and more sustainable world, and in turn bolstering support for international public finance, including ODA.
The UK should champion multilateral institutions, investing in their reach, legitimacy, and reforms to ensure equitable governance, accountability, and child-focused results. Funding and decisions must prioritise impact over cost-cutting, as well as scaling local solutions, and strengthening coordination across health, education, and humanitarian systems. The UK should support both funding and reform of Multilateral Development Banks and global health and education institutions in line with needs and ideas identified by lower income country partners, advancing efficiency, inclusivity, and crisis responsiveness.
All children have the right to childhood – the right to be healthy, to learn and to flourish – free from fear and hardship. These rights are fundamental building blocks of healthy and prosperous economies and societies. It is therefore extremely concerning that new analysis from Save the Children shows that progress towards fulfilment of these rights is slowing, with around 750 million children likely to still be living in multidimensional poverty by 2030 across low- and middle-income countries unless current financing and policy trajectories change. The international system that once helped to drive progress is under immense strain from ongoing conflicts, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and stagnating economies. Climate change further threatens hard-won gains.
Government cuts to Official Development Assistance (ODA) are adding fuel to the fire. We estimate that around 62 million people will be impacted in key areas such as health, nutrition, gender equality and education by cuts in UK bilateral programmes, often in areas where the greatest support is needed. This is happening at a time when more, higher quality and better targeted international public finance is needed to tackle shared global challenges, not less. ODA is a unique form of financing that can be complemented by other pubic and finance flows, but not substituted by them. Our analysis shows that, once in-country refugee hosting is accounted for, only 0.22% of GNI will be spent on reducing poverty overseas under a 0.3% GNI budget — the lowest level since records began in 1979.
However, this moment of crisis is also one of opportunity. The UK now has a chance to update and reimagine its approach to international cooperation, ensuring it is fit for purpose to meet the challenges of the day. There is an urgent need for a new, ambitious approach that acknowledges the shared nature of global risks, promotes genuine partnership and reciprocity, and channels international public finance to build collective resilience and shared prosperity.
Our submission presents evidence in support of two key arguments.
a) In the short term, the Government must make best use of the scarce resources that remain within the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget and identify practical ways to maximise available resources within current fiscal and policy constraints.
The government has already allocated most of the 2025-2029 ODA budget, largely due to the promise to maintain existing commitments and because significant new commitments have been made to multilaterals. We estimate the following unallocated funds remain in the medium term (figures in £ billions, current prices):
| 2025/26 | 2026/27 | 2027/28 | 2028/29 |
FCDO ODA budget | 8.7 | 6.8 | 6.2 | 6.9 |
of which budget left | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 1.1 |
% of FCDO ODA budget of which budget left | 5.8% | 5.9% | 4.8% | 15.9% |
Total ODA (including refugee hosting and OGD spend) | 13.5 | 10.0 | 8.9 | 9.4 |
% of total ODA budget of which budget left | 3.7% | 4% | 3.4% | 11.7% |
In short, there is very little remaining in the 0.3% GNI ODA budget for the Government to prioritise.
a) The Government should prioritise spend where need and impact are greatest
The main opportunity lies in maximising the impact that can be derived from the very small amounts of funding that are left. The only other option under current policies and limitations would be to use the unallocated but ringfenced humanitarian budget, but this should be avoided at all cost. Further reductions in humanitarian support would go against stated government priorities, and further reduce available support at a time when needs are rising.
Prioritising investment in children represents smart use of scarce ODA resources. Children make up the bulk of people across the world living in poverty, and suffer disproportionate impacts from poverty and crisis due to their physiology and the lifelong impacts of deprivation in childhood. In the upcoming financial year, the UK should:
The UK should prioritise humanitarian funding where needs are greatest. However, current funding cuts and reform pressures risk reducing support to ‘lifesaving’ assistance, with a dangerously narrow definition of what that constitutes, potentially sidelining community-driven priorities. Children must receive integrated support that includes protection and education, both of which are lifesaving, and should be recognised as such.
Prioritisation decision should be based on the cumulative impact of global aid cuts. In 2025, cuts have been deepest in countries facing severe gender inequalities. A March 2025 UN Women survey of 411 women’s rights organisations across 44 countries found that 90% had been affected by global aid reductions, with nearly half expecting to close within six months. One example is the Somali Women’s Studies Centre, which delivers the Gaashaan programme for survivors of gender-based violence with Save the Children and other partners. UK aid cuts (including the decision to end funding to the Gaashaan programme two years early) have compounded earlier reductions in funding from the US, and anticipated cuts via a sister programme by the Canadian Government.
Scarce resources make risk-responsiveness of remaining programmes even more important. In the context of increasing volatility and risk from climate and other crises, all sectors must better integrate risk assessment and management into planning to build resilient systems that can adapt to evolving needs and contexts. Programmes should include crisis modifiers—mechanisms that allow for rapid, flexible adjustments in anticipation or response to emerging shocks. These enable implementing partners to pivot activities, scale interventions, or address unforeseen vulnerabilities without lengthy approval processes, ensuring timely and context-appropriate support to affected populations.
It is also all the more important that, given the complexity and duration of conflicts and crises, the UK’s delivery approach bridges the gap between humanitarian, development and peace. An effective nexus approach requires a shared commitment to improve coherence and complementarity, building on a shared understanding of the root causes of crises, agree shared targets and goals, and prioritise actions that reduce needs, vulnerability and risks.
b) The Government should maximise the amount of ODA reaching communities most affected by poverty and inequality
Reduce in-country ODA spend and return savings to the FCDO: It is positive that the 2025 Comprehensive Spending Review established that the FCDO would no longer be the saver of last resort from financial year 2026/7. However, there is no longer any guarantee that it will be the spender of last resort for unspent ODA. If the Home Office succeeds in the drive to reduce in-country refugee hosting costs as quickly as possible through improved planning and procurement practices, the money saved would not divert to the FCDO as default. It is critical that any savings from in-country costs are channelled to the FCDO for immediate crisis response spending or to ease budgetary pressure in future years.
Continue to invest in British International Investment, but additional to the 0.3% ODA budget, in line with fiscal rules: It has been stated it is highly unlikely British International Investment (BII) will receive further capitalisation from the FCDO’s 0.3% GNI budget. However, the nature of this funding, as a financial transaction, creates clear grounds within the government’s fiscal rules for further capitalisation that is additional to 0.3% GNI. This would be in line with the government’s approach to “deliver a step change in investment spending” through focusing on net financial debt within the new fiscal rules. BII, like the National Wealth Fund, helps to grow the UK economy and is expected to deliver a positive return to the Exchequer. Removing constraints to financial transactions counted within the ODA budget would allow for increased direct support for the government’s growth agenda, as well as providing more space for investments to advance international development and climate objectives.
The shifting global values and funding landscape demands not only adaptation in the UK’s delivery of development and humanitarian assistance, but wholescale reform in its overall approach to international cooperation. Aid cuts can be seen as symptoms of a wider failure of the system to evolve, remain politically salient, and respond effectively to global challenges and their impacts.
Increased conflicts and the climate crisis have increased humanitarian need and diverted resources from sustainable development towards emergency response. Political polarisation and “charity begins at home” narratives are resonating among parts of the electorate and media amid cost-of-living pressures. Meanwhile, human-rights standards and norms are under sustained attack across the world.
a) The UK needs to define a new, ambitious and coherent vision for international cooperation.
To meet today’s global challenges, there is an urgent need for a new, future-focused system of international cooperation that operates in the mutual interest of people most affected by poverty and inequality in higher and lower income countries. A Global Public Investment (GPI)-inspired model, rooted in the idea that all countries should contribute, benefit and engage in equitable decision making, should be the goal. This would help build long-term resilience and shared prosperity by mobilising and directing public finance to address collective challenges such as climate change and pandemic prevention, while preserving scarce but vital ODA resources for poverty reduction and humanitarian response. The UK should join the expanding coalition of governments and organisations working to translate GPI principles into practice through pilots and policy dialogue.
The UK could also make an important contribution to the evolution of the global system by articulating a new, ambitious and coherent vision for its own approach to international cooperation, rooted in principles of mutuality, partnership and equality. The lack of such a vision currently weakens the Government’s ability to make a compelling case to taxpayers that ODA and other forms of international public finance serve a vital, mutual-interest purpose and deliver value for money, while also eroding trust among international partners and diminishing UK influence. The 2026 Development Conference offers an opportunity to articulate the foundations of a renewed approach and signal a new chapter of UK global leadership.
Moving beyond the four “essential shifts”: The four “essential shifts” for Uk development cooperation recently outlined by the International Development Minister, though imperfect, offer a cautious starting point, reflecting important principles of localisation, investment and systems change. However, they remain insufficient without a broader vision explaining why UK international cooperation is fundamental to national security, wellbeing and prosperity; which major global challenges the UK will prioritise; and how the UK will work with others to unlock the scale, and appropriate nature, of finance required.
The shifts also need refinement to avoid unintended consequences, especially any undervaluing of the critical role of public finance in tackling poverty, climate crisis and other global challenges. For example, the suggested pivot “from grants to expertise”, and framing investors as focused mainly on financial rather than also social returns, risks implying grant finance is no longer necessary. Grant-based finance remains indispensable within a wider mix of instruments. Critically, ODA is a relatively small in volume, but is fundamental for tackling issues and supporting people most affected by poverty and inequality in ways that other forms of finance cannot. It also plays a critical role in leveraging broader concessional flows. The UK must move beyond the narrative of “necessary aid cuts” towards a narrative that highlights what international public finance, of which ODA is a critical component, can achieve alongside other tools. Without a strong political and public case for international cooperation, there will be no sustainable mandate to allocate adequate public resources to it.
Tenets of a new approach: There is no shortage of ideas concerning the core ingredients for a new, ambitious approach to UK international cooperation. In a recent essay collection, Save the Children’s CEO Moazzam Malik stressed the rising importance of multilateralism and mutual cooperation, arguing that scarce grants should be reserved for low-income and fragile contexts. Youth activists from the Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network in the DRC and Nigeria have called for rights- and needs-based approaches, while Dr Shukria Dini of the Somali Women Studies Centre urged stronger UK solidarity with women’s-rights organisations (see Question 4 below on the centrality of localisation and shifting power to the new agenda).
At a time when international human rights laws and standards are under direct attack globally, upholding them must be central to the UK’s new agenda. This is emphasised in particular by civil society organisations working in fragile, high-poverty contexts. These norms act as a protective scaffolding for civilians and children everywhere. The Government’s recent decision to adopt the least ambitious option for preventing atrocities in El Fasher, Sudan, citing “resource constraints”, shows the compounding effects of aid cuts and retreat from international law.
Given the protracted nature of modern crises, the UK’s approach must better integrate humanitarian, development and peace efforts. A genuine nexus approach requires shared commitment, coherence and complementarity: building common analysis of root causes, agreeing shared goals, and prioritising actions that reduce needs, vulnerabilities and risks.
The challenge for the UK Government is to use these inputs to the debate as building blocks to shape an ambitious and relevant agenda, working collaboratively with partners, including governments in the global South, local civil society, youth activists and the UK public - to build an approach and identify priorities that reflect shared values and interests.
b) Financing a new approach
As well as articulating a bold and ambition vision for international cooperation, the government must set out how this vision will be financed. ODA and other grant-based financing must be a core component of the UK’s international public finance package, and the government should fulfil its commitment to ramping ODA up beyond 0.3% as soon as possible. A compelling vision for international cooperation, grounded a mutual interest narrative and emphasising the universal impacts of global challenges, should help to rebuild the political and public case for this.
The UK also has a broader set of public financing tools and modalities at its disposal which are being underutilised for addressing global challenges. This includes the government’s international lending or investment tools, guarantees that help reduce risk for partners, and forms of grant-based support not counted as ODA (e.g. parts of the Integrated Security Fund that focus on peacekeeping or security). Domestic spending on research and development also contributes to addressing global challenges, while regulatory and legal frameworks can encourage greater development finance flows.
Although ODA has decreased in recent years, other areas of public financial support have grown, demonstrated by the additional £20 billion allocated to UK Export Finance. The challenge is to maximise international public finance to advance the UK’s vision for international cooperation, including ambitions on poverty reduction and climate action, while at the same time increasing the proportion of the package that is delivered as ODA – a critical form of financing that cannot and must not be substituted for other forms of finance. Furthermore, public financing mechanisms must work together in a coordinated and mutually reinforcing way, with different financing flows and mechanisms targeted and tailored to advance specific goals as part of a coherent strategy and financing package. Achieving this will require an improved whole-of-government approach across strategic, planning and operational levels, both generally and with respect to individual partners.
As part of this effort, the government should harness every opportunity to unlock and channel finance towards global challenges, many of which require little or no additional fiscal effort. At present, several promising avenues remain underutilised which should be acted on immediately:
Over the last few years, the UK has increased its offering of sovereign guarantees, primarily through MDBs like the World Bank, helping them to leverage billions in additional finance for lower-income countries. The fair value of these is held on FCDO balance sheets. However, within a constrained budgetary environment, the FCDO faces significant barriers to issuing more. This is despite there being viable opportunities to support governments in the lowest income countries, such as through offering a portfolio guarantee to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA). There is an urgent need for HMT to take some of the existing fair value of guarantees off FCDO balance sheets so that it can continue to utilize them as an effective tool to support global economic stability and prosperity. This action would bring coherence to government action in this area, given UKEF was provisioned with the capacity to provide a further £18 billion of guarantees in the Spending review
The IMF’s 2021 allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) increased the UK’s reserves by £19 billion, bringing total holdings to £30 billion. While the government has used some of these reserves to bolster IMF lending and support SDR trading operations, more could be done. Future IMF programmes are likely to need additional resources, and opportunities remain to recycle SDRs through both multilateral and bilateral channels. The government should integrate SDRs into a holistic international financing strategy with clear and ambitious targets. It should also deploy them in the most effective ways, including interest-rate subsidies, as already done for the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust. Expanding the UK’s role in SDR recycling would bolster global development while requiring minimal fiscal effort.
Resolving unsustainable sovereign debt must form a core part of the UK’s policy and financing approach to international cooperation. The UK has significant influence over global debt governance, and stronger leadership would improve debt restructuring outcomes, lower interest rates for vulnerable countries, and strengthen partner economies. This would in turn support investment in climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals, while benefiting UK trade and investment interests. The government’s current reliance on voluntary market-based solutions through the London Coalition is inadequate and lacks ambition.
The UK should champion major improvements to the G20 Common Framework. This includes suspending debt payments when countries apply for treatment, delivering deeper and more durable relief that creates sufficient fiscal space for development, establishing clear timelines and greater predictability, and ensuring comparability of treatment across bilateral and private creditors. An enforcement mechanism is necessary to prevent creditor holdouts and unfair litigation. As the legal jurisdiction for 90% of privately held sovereign debt, the UK could make a transformative contribution by introducing legislation requiring private creditors to participate in restructurings on comparable terms. The UK should engage with the LIC-DSF reform through the G20, including pushing for reform of credit rating agencies’ methodologies and exploring scope for including human rights and other factors into debt sustainability analyses.
The UK also plays a central role in promoting global debt transparency, both as the main legal jurisdiction for sovereign lending and as a major World Bank shareholder. To fulfil the FfD4 Sevilla Commitment, the government should advocate for full publication of all loan-level data collected through the World Bank’s debtor reporting system and for significant acceleration toward real-time public disclosure. It should also support establishing a single global debt registry housed at the World Bank. Furthermore, the UK should continue to support a UN-led process to reform global debt governance through a Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, as called for by African heads of state and finance ministers. The UK should also continue to support a UN intergovernmental process to agree reforms to the global debt system.
The UK should play a constructive role in reforming the international tax system so it generates maximum revenue for development, poverty reduction and climate action, and should support an ambitious UN Tax Convention. With the OECD stalled, the Convention offers a rare chance to curb tax dodging, ensure the richest and polluters pay, raise domestic revenue and strengthen partnerships with the Global South. The UK should back fair allocation of taxing rights through unitary taxation, support environmental taxes, champion coordinated taxation of ultra-rich individuals with strong transparency measures, and help establish ambitious global transparency standards.
Moving from paternalistic models and relationships toward a more equitable, decolonised system of international cooperation will require a localisation strategy. As the Government recognises, its efforts should include ”prioritising the development of a local leadership strategy as a cross-departmental piece of work that places lower- and middle-income countries at the centre”.[2] Locally led-change processes are more trusted, sustainable, context-sensitive and quick to adapt to changing circumstances — strengthening protection, child well-being, and community resilience even through crises.[3] Critically, for the current funding context, delivering programmes through local partners has been shown to be up to 32% more cost-efficient than those implemented solely by international actors.
A new strategy is needed to provide a clear vision that enables cross-departmental and sectoral cohesion. It would also enable a roadmap charting a practical route for achieving immediate, mid- and long-term goals. Global aid cuts have accelerated change in this area, but safeguards are required to meet recognised challenges and support transition, including to ensure that local and national actors survive simultaneous withdrawal of funding from multiple sources. This new strategy should be understood as a core part of the wider approach to international cooperation, and not a “nice to have” or an add-on.
In defining its strategy, the Government must consider how to leverage existing progress and address ongoing challenges. This should include using funding modalities and governance to reduce barriers, for example through prioritising multi-year flexible funding to build local leadership, ensure communities (including children) are consulted, and reduce complex reporting requirements. This requires having a diverse ecosystem of pooled funding, investing in locally led funds and consortia, and ensuring that frontline responders have real ownership over the use of resources. Initiatives such as the START Network have been successful in overcoming some of the barriers local and national actors face in accessing traditional pooled funding mechanisms and enabling locally led responses.
This work must also look beyond funding to ensuring equitable decision-making, shifting power to local and national actors for example through support for advocacy platforms for local and national civil society. Progress toward localisation in humanitarian response, including through the “humanitarian reset”, should see lessons learnt applied to longer-term approaches.
Local expertise and knowledge of political and operating contexts and needs are invaluable and often unmatched by the UN or INGOs. The UK should move from an “external expert model” to centring local voices, including allocating budget and capacity to strengthen local agencies through capacity building and training. This should extend to a trust-based approach to funding that is adaptable and reviews risk appetite regularly, ensuring a more equal distribution of risk between donors and local and national actors.
Local action in humanitarian settings is particularly important given humanitarian access is often limited for INGOs. Here the UK must have a realistic risk appetite and appropriate compliance and due diligence measures that don’t act as a barrier for local and national NGOs to be equal partners.
The UK Government should recognise the power it has to shape incentive structures through funding, including the role it can play in reducing barriers faced by INGOs attempting to shift power to local and national actors through funding modalities. For example, in recent years the UK has included requirements for local organisations to be joined as direct funding recipients (rather than sub-grantees) in calls for grant applications, reducing the power imbalance between large INGOs and local partners through financial independence and direct access to decision-making spaces and the UK Government. This should continue to be prioritised and become a key performance outcome for the FCDO.
The Government should begin by recognising that public support for UK ODA will not be rebuilt through messaging alone, but through genuine co-ownership of a new agenda for international cooperation. The narratives that once underpinned broad political consensus on development no longer resonate amidst economic fragility, domestic pressures and culture-war polarisation. Despite this, the fundamental values that underpin global cooperation - fairness, compassion and shared responsibility - remain strong across the UK population.
Polling consistently shows that the public care about the outcomes aid delivers, even if the term “aid” itself has become politicised and detached from those results. For example, recent More in Common polling commissioned by Save the Children found that 77% of people believe improving global health and preventing pandemics is important; 76% support upholding international law; 74% prioritise tackling climate change; and 65% back eradicating global poverty. This suggests a disconnect between the values people hold and the way the Government talks about international cooperation.
Before deciding what to communicate, the Government should engage citizens to explore the values they hold about Britain’s place in the world, and to co-design a vision for international cooperation that aligns with those values. The Government could then move beyond defensive communications about the size of the aid budget, towards a more positive story about what the UK achieves in partnership with others, and why it matters at home as well as abroad. Such an approach would also have potential to help build a movement of informed citizens who see themselves not merely as donors, but as participants in a fairer, more secure world.
Communications should connect global outcomes to everyday concerns. Rather than abstract statistics, people should hear tangible results that reflect identified values. At a time of retreat from humanitarian norms and widespread violations of international law, the government should position the UK as a champion of humanitarian principles and the rule of law by clearly communicating how principled UK action improves the lives of children and their families. Crucially, the story should also show how these efforts make Britain safer, healthier and more prosperous.
At the same time, the Government should actively challenge misinformation, reaching beyond traditional media into the channels and networks through which people now access their information and shape their views. For too long, hostile voices have been allowed to dominate debate, presenting development work as wasteful or corrupt. Official communications should be clear, transparent and evidence-based. Cutting ODA while using the same narrative as those who oppose it has already undermined public trust; the Government must now change its tone and lead with confidence.
This renewed narrative should be rooted in a narrative of mutual benefit and shared investment, not one-way charity. Research shows that framing international cooperation as a “win-win” for the UK and its partners - building self-sufficiency, fostering innovation and tackling global risk - consistently increases public support. Narratives should also align with the public’s strong concern for climate action, showing how development partnerships can simultaneously reduce poverty and emissions.
Acting together at scale through multilateral cooperation and institutions has the potential for broader and more sustainable change than fragmented bilateral action. The UK should champion and invest in multilateral institutions with reach, legitimacy and proven results, while pushing for reforms that improve impact and outcomes for children and that instigate more equitable governance. Multilateral institutions need to scale local solutions and strengthen accountability to track results. All investments, from infrastructure to digital transformations, should apply a child-lens to assess impacts for children, and align with human capital development goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and climate-resilience efforts that safeguard future generations. The UK should work internationally to help build a coalition for multilateral action, stronger collaboration and genuine, equitable burden-sharing.
Reform efforts must be driven by an impact imperative rather than the need to find cost savings in the context of ODA cuts. The current push for multilateral institutions to ‘do more with less’ is at risk of undermining impact and leading to a retreat to areas perceived to be ‘core business’ at the expense of more innovative and high risk/high impact, needs-based interventions and approaches, including retreat from efforts to bridge the humanitarian development divide .
Across multilateral institutions, the UK should support efforts to:
a) Promote equitable governance
Power in the development and international co-operation architecture remains concentrated amongst high income countries. The UK should redouble efforts to make this system more equitably governed, ensuring lower-income countries and CSOs have more powerful influence in decision-making. This must be strategic and sustained, not piecemeal. By giving affected countries and communities a proportionate ability to shape the systems that determine their financing, we move away from a charity-style “aid” paradigm towards genuine co-operation. As the co-chair of the ongoing World Bank Group shareholding review, the UK is well placed to secure better voice and agency for client countries across operations and management structures.
b) Ensure value for money
With an increasing proportion of UK ODA’s channelled in, and through, multilateral institutions and agencies, there is a critical need to ensure ongoing reform process deliver increased impact, through improved value for money. It is necessary to improve surveillance and monitoring to understand ongoing challenges and opportunities for strengthened multilateral operating models. This can draw on the UK’s own practises, and be informed by enhanced review process, including scaled up and meaningful consultation with partners. This evidence and learning can be a key tool to bring into governance discussions within multilaterals. The UK, often as a key stakeholder, can play an important constructive role, ensuring monitoring and evaluation systems are robust and feedback into improved structures and processes.
c) Prioritise results, accountability and country-ownership
The UK should adopt a results- and accountability-led approach to reform. A twin track of (1) increasing funding for effective multilateral mechanisms and (2) leveraging the UK’s voice on boards and committees could drive institutional change that yields system-wide, longer-term gains in efficiency and responsiveness. In the sphere of global health, the Lusaka Agenda sets out principles to improve co-ordination and accountability in partnerships, and to reduce duplication and complexity, which could help guide reform efforts in other sectors.
d) Coordinate for effective responses and impact
Without effective coordination, the multilateral system can lead to duplication of effort and inefficiency. There is significant fragmentation in the funding and institutional eco-systems for health, WASH, nutrition and social protection – despite how interlinked they are, and how mutually reinforcing integrated solutions could be. Some crisis events have spurred greater external engagement and collaboration, technically, operationally and financially. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a diverse set of entities, stakeholders and organizations came together through ACT-A to agree common objectives, collaborate and deliver at scale. While not without flaws and challenges, this example illustrates that with sufficient institutional and political will, improvements in international cooperation are possible. Important lessons can also be drawn from the FCDO’s effective coordination across multilateral funds for education (ECW/GPE/IDA). The UK has a critical role to play in cultivating this, bringing institutions and stakeholders together for more efficient and effective working.
e) The World Bank
The World Bank, as the largest provider of international concessional finance, will play an increasingly important role given global aid cuts. Its ability to be more efficient and effective across its operations will be key to supporting its client’s needs. Whilst we welcome the ongoing reform process to support this, through the evolution roadmap, we are increasingly concerned that financial model reforms are being framed around pushing the Bank to do more with less shareholder resources. This not only risks the Bank’s future financial sustainability, but crucially its ability to deliver its vision of ending poverty on a liveable planet. We urge the UK, as a key shareholder, to deliver not only its promise to support a bigger, better and fairer bank, but also to show critical leadership to ensure the institution has the resources, through enhanced innovation and inclusivity, and maintains its focus of support on the world’s poorest people, who are increasing living within fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
f) Global Health Institutions
As major powers retreat from institutions that protect global health security and promote health equity, UK leadership in this space matters more than ever. This includes financing the global health architecture - such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Child Nutrition Fund, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It also means supporting urgent reforms to make this architecture more efficient, less fragmented and more driven by country needs and priorities. To restore legitimacy and clout, there must be a significant shift in power and decision-making to global-majority countries, consolidation with fewer, clearer-mandated actors and less stifling bureaucracy and stronger civil-society oversight.
g) Multilateral Education Aid Architecture
The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) deliver strong value for money, reach the most marginalised children, and provide efficient channels for achieving UK objectives on equity, human rights, and sustainable development. Continued UK investment in both funds is essential.
As the UK and other donors review the multilateral aid architecture for education, continued UK leadership is vital. Any reforms must strengthen, not dilute the global capacity to deliver Education in Emergencies (EiE). The UK should champion the 10 principles that have been published by INEE and endorsed by the Global Education Cluster, the Global Campaign for Education and international, national and local NGOs. Ensuring these principles guide future reforms will help ensure coherence, reduce duplication, and maintain the system’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to crises affecting children’s learning
h) Humanitarian Reform
The UK should seek to influence ongoing reform initiatives including the Humanitarian Reset and UN80 initiative, to create a more efficient effective humanitarian system that builds on previous initiatives such as the Grand Bargain, the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, IDP solutions, the Flagship Initiative, Charter for Change. These efforts should prioritise putting people at the centre and shift power to affected communities, and local and national actors. Given the disproportionate physiological and temporal impacts of crisis on children, the needs and rights of children affected by crisis must be prioritised throughout these initiatives.
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[1] Due to the length of our submission we have included this summary as requested
[2] Recommendation 68, Assessing Value, Ensuring Impact: The FCDO's Approach to Value for Money in Official Development Assistance
[3] Our recent analysis across more than 40 countries where Save the Children supported Community-Led Action (CLA) demonstrates that when communities set their own priorities, lead implementation, and invest time and resources, they develop a strong sense of ownership that drives better outcomes and lasting impact.