Alistair Dutton
Director of Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund
The aid cuts could not have come at a worse time. The World Bank has warned that extreme poverty will rise for the first time since 1998, with the coronavirus crisis expected to push a further 115 million people into that category.
The pandemic threatens women and children disproportionately, reversing decades of progress.
A report by the Centre for Global Development last month also states that it could take ten years of economic growth just to get extreme poverty numbers back to where they were before the pandemic.
Balancing the books on the back of those living in poverty, especially during one of the world’s biggest health crises is not only wrong but myopic. No one is safe from global crises unless we all are, and an increasingly unstable world induced by higher levels of poverty is not good for anyone.
We are also seeing the highest number of displaced people on record who are increasingly making perilous attempts to seek refuge in foreign lands. Rising poverty and climate change will only make this much worse.
No matter how bad we think our situation may be the world’s poorest people are always dealt a worse hand. These people remain the most vulnerable and at risk. Extreme poverty kills, crushes their hopes and denies them a chance of a future. It is dehumanising and undermines people’s dignity and in a world of plenty, is wholly unnecessary.
This year the UK will host the G7 and the UN COP26 Climate Change summit, and we have promised to provide the global leadership that is needed to tackle the climate emergency. However, rather than leading by example, we are reneging on previous commitments and cutting our spending at the very time we are urging others to increase theirs. We were promised global Britain by the UK government but rather we are seeing an inward-facing little Britain.
It’s not too late for the UK government to listen to over 200 organisations that, like me, are calling for it to rethink and, reverse its decision to pull a lifeline away from millions of the world’s poorest people.
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