Futures At Risk

Children’s lives and futures are at risk

Decades of progress for children is being undone. Millions of children’s lives and futures are at risk.  

Extreme poverty, climate change and conflict all negatively affect the lives of the most vulnerable children every day, by drastically limiting their access to nourishing food, life-saving health care, protection from violence or quality education. Every child should have these by right.   

In 2015, a commitment to aid spending of 0.7% of national income was put into law and maintained until 2020. But it was reduced – supposedly temporarily – to 0.5% in 2021.  

Now the Government is cutting aid spending to 0.3% – taking the aid budget to less than half of what it was in 2020. This will have a devasting impact on the world’s most vulnerable children.  

Cuts to the international aid budget will undoubtedly risk lives and mean millions of children not having access to critical health care, not having enough to eat and missing out on their learning. The UK Government didn’t protect children in the last cuts to international aid; they must do so now.   

Children’s lives and futures are at risk. We must act now.

What are we calling for?

The UK Government must:  

• Spend at least 25% of aid on children and protect programmes that support the world’s most vulnerable children from cuts, like nutrition, vaccines, education and WASH. 
• Set a clear and realistic pathway back to 0.7%. 
• Stop spending ODA in the UK, so that even with a limited budget, it goes to the world’s most vulnerable and at-risk children.