Tag: Aid

Like many of our peers heading to summer music festivals, we got up at the break of dawn and took a train out of London. We were also en route to an event that would have many thousands of people. We were going to see one act in particular – and we were anxious about […]

The UK began its £56m aid project in 2018 with the stated aim of supporting “Brazil’s economic openness and sustainable infrastructure”. Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain with fascist politics, has been Brazil’s president since the start of 2019.  He is running for re-election this Sunday against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who […]

Egyptian dictator Abdul Fattah al-Sisi assumed power in 2014 after a military coup had overthrown Egypt’s first democratically-elected leader the previous year.  Since then he has presided over a human rights crackdown in the North African country, locking up thousands of political prisoners. Arbitary arrest and torture are widespread.  Sisi’s Egypt, which is set to […]

The UK government is spending £103m from its aid budget to promote ‘economic development’ and ‘poverty reduction’ in official enemy China while its austerity policies in Britain helped force 600,000 children into poverty.

The UK programme, lasting from 2017 until 2023, is run through the Foreign Office’s Prosperity Fund, which claims to promote “inclusive economic growth needed to reduce poverty in partner countries”. Its budget is £74.5m.  But government project documents point to “prosperity interventions” that “will open up new markets” with “UK business able to benefit”.  The […]

A controversial Whitehall body — the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund — has used large amounts of money from the British aid budget to support the opposition in Syria. Declassified outlines the extent of this funding for the first time.

The British government has surreptitiously given £450,000 from its overseas aid budget to establish an ‘anti-corruption’ coalition in Venezuela through a controversial fund which claims to ‘tackle instability and to prevent conflicts that threaten UK interests’, it can be revealed.

Newly-discovered documents show how UK covert operations in Syria helped ‘shape perceptions’ of the war. The British government effectively ran Syrian opposition groups’ media offices and created publicity material aimed at Syrian and UK audiences, challenging the idea the UK has played a small role in the conflict.

British aid sponsors private hospitals for better-off patients from India to Zimbabwe, risking diverting doctors and money away from treating poorer patients who will be hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

With some Western governments failing to follow the World Health Organisation’s advice on tackling coronavirus, right-wing figures in the US and UK are seeking to discredit the UN body as pro-China. But Britain and the US themselves are the WHO’s largest funders and among its major influencers.

The UK government, which has been widely criticised for its slow and inadequate response to the coronavirus crisis, has failed to heed five areas of advice from the World Health Organisation – despite being its second largest state funder.