In terms of multilateral aid, Unicef, the Global Fund and the World Food Programme performed well against a set of measurement criteria and are likely to receive funding increases.http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/mar/01/winners-losers-uk-aid-review-reaction
In contrast, organisations, including UN Habitat and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) will lose future DfID funding after they failed to prove they were delivering significant change on the ground.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is criticised for its patchy track record and warned that future support is contingent on better performance.
According to many in the development world, this is no great surprise. However, Oxfam has warned that as the world faces its second food crisis in three years, the government must not abandon the agency.
"It's perfectly valid to acknowledge problems with the agency," says Kathleen Spencer Chapman, head of UK government relations at Oxfam GB, "but DfID must prioritise working with them to make sure these are maintained and that withdrawal is not the easy option."
Regarding bilateral aid, Mitchell had already warned that the UK would no longer pour aid money into better off countries such as China and Russia
In the review on Tuesday, 14 more countries, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Gambia and Angola, joined them, cutting the numbers of countries receiving UK aid from 49 to 27. More controversially, the poorer Niger, Burundi and Lesotho were also on the list.
After sustained criticism, India will retain its £280m aid budget. Another major beneficiary of the streamlined aid budget is Ethiopia, which will become the UK's biggest aid recipient by 2014, making . Kenya and Rwanda will also see hikes in UK aid.
Fragile states will receive 30% of the overall UK aid budget, a total of around £3.8m by 2014. Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen will see the biggest percentage increase.
Oxfam has added its voice to a growing chorus of concern about Britain’s system for deciding on asylum claims, and the suffering it causes, in a report on destitute asylum seekers, who are forbidden to work but cannot claim state benefits.
These men and women, who told their stories anonymously in Coping with Destitution: Survival strategies of asylum seekers in the UK, live in the shadows, penniless and dependent on the charity of others.
“They treat you with no respect, they take advantage of you, you become ‘food for work’, cleaning the house and doing laundry… Living with friends is a hard thing. They get fed-up looking after you if you have no income,” one asylum seeker told the Oxfam researcher during an interview.
“You might use a bus pass, shuffling around all night on the bus. It’s very risky as you go to places you don’t know, spend time at the bus stop during nights, and might be caught... You might have a place to go, but you feel that your friend needs privacy, or you don’t feel comfortable staying there,” said another, outlining the difficulties of daily life.
“I knew a man who worked for three months, and was promised £35
(US$56) every day, and after three months he asked for the wage, but the manager said he would give him just £50 ($80) for three months.
‘But I need £3,000 ($4,800)!’ he said. But the manager threatened to report him to immigration, so what could he do?” the report quoted an asylum seeker as saying.
Some, whose cases have not yet been decided, have administrative problems and find themselves forbidden to work, and also to claim any kind of public support.
Falling into the gap
Most of those who are destitute have had their applications for asylum refused, yet would rather live penniless in the UK than return to their home countries. In 2005 the British government’s National Audit Office estimated that there were between 155,000 and 283,500 people in this position, with no legal source of income.
The assistance available to people seeking asylum in Britain has been steadily reduced over the past 10 years. At one time they could claim normal welfare benefits, and apply for permission to work if they had to wait more than six months for a decision on their application.
Now, the only benefits they can claim are accommodation and a reduced living allowance of £35 (about $55) a week, provided by the National Asylum Support System (NASS).
Once a claim and any appeal have been refused, the support stops and a claimant is supposed to leave the country within three weeks. At this point many asylum seekers try to stay on, without any means of support.
Even in cases where it is difficult or impossible for them to leave because they don’t have the necessary papers, or their home country is considered too dangerous, many choose to disappear rather than stay on in NASS accommodation, where they could easily be found and deported.
Oxfam said cutting off benefits to get failed asylum seekers to return home is “demonstrably failing to achieve its aims. Destitute asylum seekers, who are considered by the authorities to be at the end of the asylum process, are simply not returning to their countries of origin, regardless of how awful things are in the UK.”
Organizations working with asylum seekers say poor decision-making on asylum claims is at the root of many of the problems, since decisions that are seen as arbitrary and unfair encourage claimants to stay on and try their luck with appeals or further applications.
Debora Singer, of Asylum Aid, which offers legal help to asylum seekers, told IRIN that half the women she has been working with, whose asylum claims were initially rejected, had the decision overturned on appeal.
“What that indicates is that something is going very wrong at the initial stage. Border Agency officials, who make the first decision, approach claimants with a culture of disbelief; appeals are heard by immigration judges who have a different standard of proof, and a different attitude to credibility,” she alleged.
No way out
Women asylum seekers were especially vulnerable. “I have been in meetings where the whole room was full of destitute women,” Singer said. She knew a homeless pregnant woman who spent three months sleeping in one of London’s railway stations.
Oxfam’s researchers found women who had turned to prostitution to support themselves; others who had entered into relationships with men purely to get food and a roof over their heads.
The misery can sometimes be overwhelming. The International Federation of Iraqi refugees told IRIN that one of its members in Britain recently killed himself in despair at his situation.
In 2010 Osman Rasoul, an Iraqi Kurd, jumped to his death from the seventh floor of a Nottingham apartment block. His claim for asylum had been refused and his benefits stopped, so he was sleeping on the streets and living on food parcels and donations from a local charity while preparing a fresh case.
The UK Border Agency defends its speed and rigor, saying the percentage of its decisions overturned on appeal is comparable to elsewhere in Europe.
Hugh Ind, the agency's regional director, said in a statement: “We do provide financial support while claims are being dealt with, and no asylum seeker need be destitute while they have a valid reason to be here. But we strongly believe that funding those who have found not to be in need of protection would act as an incentive to frustrate the system and stay in the UK.”
Within the UK, support for asylum seekers is a politically tricky subject. Britain’s right-wing populist press demonizes asylum seekers, and advocating state benefits for those whose claims have been refused is likely to be controversial.
IRIN asked Helen Longworth, Oxfam's UK Poverty Policy Manager, whether an organization like Oxfam should be calling for failed asylum seekers to receive public money, when they shouldn’t even still be in the country?
“We never need to force anyone to make a choice between destitution and persecution. So many people who have turned to us for sanctuary have not been given a fair hearing,” she said.
“If they are refused asylum here, they have to resort to living on their friends’ sofas, surviving on handouts from charities, entering into overtly transactional relationships and sometimes illegal work, including sex work,” Longworth told IRIN.
“In short, they are forced to live in destitution by government policy itself. There is never any reason that our government should do that to any person, no matter what their ‘status’, especially someone who has asked us for help.”
In a hard-hitting attack on UK policy, published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, three experts based in Bangladesh say the UK's strategy against the disease is aimed at preventing its spread to the west, rather than tackling the living conditions in deprived communities where TB is endemic.
Bruce Currey, Professor Quazi Quamruzzaman and Professor Mahmuder Rahman, all based at Dhaka Community Hospital in Bangladesh, accuse the UK's department for international development of glossing over the deaths of nearly half a million people.
The Department for International Development's (DfID) factsheet on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, issued in December 2008, claims that in southern Asia, "progress in halting and reversing the spread of tuberculosis" is "almost met, or on target". It describes mortality as moderate.
"The Crown's term 'moderate mortality' covers up an annual tuberculosis death toll, estimated by WHO, of almost half a million people (460,003), mostly poor, in south Asia," say Currey and colleagues.
The three experts praise the UK's leadership at the G8 meeting in Okinawa in 2000, which pledged to "Reduce TB deaths and prevalence of the disease by 50% by 2010".
But, they say, the commitment was then watered down. The Millennium Development Goals, formulated by the United Nations in September the same year, put tuberculosis in a category with other infectious diseases and committed to "have halted and begun to reverse the spread" of all of them by 2015‚ " five years later than the target the G8 named".
Patrick Watt, Save the Children's director of development, said last night: "What is the real driver of aid allocation? Is it poverty, is it need and the ability to use money effectively or is it the agenda of the National Security Council? We do need to have a balanced approach to aid allocation that reflects the principles of the 2002 International Development Act which stipulates that all aid should be for poverty reduction."
An Oxfam policy adviser also expressed concerns about aid being delivered through "military structures" that could risk civilian aid workers.
The row broke out after the government decided, in the strategic defence and security review, to double by 2014 the £1.9bn that is spent on what are known as "fragile and conflicted states". This echoes the thinking of Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, who told the Guardian in January: "We would build on what [the Department for International Development] is today and make it even more successful and perhaps wire it in a little bit better into the Whitehall constellation."
It is understood that the government is planning to narrow the list of priority fragile countries, which currently includes Nigeria and Kenya, to just five. They are expected to be Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq.
The Department for International Development (DFID) has particular concerns over Sierra Leone, where Britain has been closely involved in nation building since a military intervention in 2000.
There the government of President Ernest Koroma has been accused of corruption in recent mining deals.
“I’m watching particularly carefully how Sierra Leone intends to exploit its mineral [resources],” Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. “It is an important issue that requires openness and transparency and if not I am prepared to act.” Mr Mitchell also said the focus would be on “making British aid more effective in reducing poverty through improved transparency and value for money.”
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, which has promised to spend 0.7 percent of national income on overseas aid by 2013, is faced with a record budget deficit and is eager to ensure taxpayers' money is being spent wisely.
"Organisations that demonstrate value for money and the greatest impact on poverty could receive a cash boost," the international development ministry said in a statement.
"Those that fail to meet the tough criteria could have their funding reduced or stopped altogether."
Britain gives less than half of its aid budget to multilaterals and donated about 3 billion pounds ($4.33 billion) to such bodies last year.
The coalition has pledged to protect aid funding from the big spending cuts required to reduce a deficit running close to 11 percent of national output, but it is unclear whether the level of funding to multilaterals could be cut within that.
The review, which starts straight away, will judge whether the institutions are effectively delivering value for money and in tune with Britain's international poverty reduction aims.
n an attempt to persuade the director to retract the allegations from the film, to be televised in Britain tomorrow, Geldof wrote a meandering and at times emotional explanation of his work.
In it he said he had significant influence over world leaders in the run-up to the 2005 G8 summit. He contrasted the achievements of his Live 8 campaign with the global coalition of anti-poverty campaigners, which he characterised as ''a bit lame'' and almost entirely ineffectual.
Claiming that ''all … the combined lobbying might of the total NGO community'' failed to ignite public opinion over global poverty, Geldof drew attention to the powerful impact of the Live 8 concerts, which were televised simultaneously to audiences around the world. ''They are the vast billions watching,'' he said. ''Brought together around the electric hearth of the TV or computer screen by the Pied Pipers of Rock'n'Roll.''
He also defended his proximity to world leaders: ''Like it or not the agents of change in our world are the politicians. Otherwise you're always outside the tent pissing in. They stay inside their tent pissing back out at you. This is futile. My solution is to get inside the tent and piss in there.''
The film in question is Starsuckers, a polemic against media and celebrity that includes a string of allegations about Geldof. They include the suggestion that money raised from the 1985 Live Aid concerts to tackle famine in Ethiopia was misspent, leading to deaths, and criticism that the successor concerts two decades later, Live 8, overshadowed a mass movement of campaigners in the Make Poverty History coalition.
Jane Waldfogel, professor of social work at Columbia University, spent a year examining Labour's record and found it had turned the tide of child poverty in a way that was "larger and more sustained than in the United States". Her book, Britain's War on Poverty, shows that the number of children in "absolute poverty" had fallen by 1.7 million since 1999. Latest figures show 13.4% of British children remained in "absolute poverty" whereas in the US the figure was approaching 20%.
Prof Waldfogel, who spent the last year at the London School of Economics, said she was bemused by the political debate over "broken Britain". She said: "It's just not right. Progress in the United States stalled in 2000 and then child poverty rises again. The gloom and doom about the state of children and families in Britain is not justified by the data."
Relative poverty, says Waldfogel, has risen but this is due to the wealthiest in society seeing incomes balloon – leaving the rest behind. However, redistribution had provided real benefits for the poor.
Sustaining government spending would be difficult in the recession, she admitted, but the solution was to shift the burden by increasing the minimum wage or lengthening working hours.
In international terms, Britain's ranking of "wellbeing of young people" also improved: compared with other rich nations, this measure saw the UK move up from 17th place in 2001 to 12th in 2006.
It is easy to see why a not-for-profit company is a better deal for the taxpayer – any efficiencies are ploughed back into the health system, rather than servicing dividends for shareholders. But if the success of the company does not benefit employee-owners – or managers – financially, what does the notion of ownership really mean?
“It’s very satisfying – we can make things happen and co-owners’ talents are being liberated,” says Mrs McGregor. Both women exude a radiant enthusiasm rarely apparent in the private sector, let alone the NHS. Mrs Pritchard points out that most people who join the health care professions are motivated by a desire to help patients. Some never lose that commitment, but the system does not nurture it and many are worn down by bureaucracy. “Things don’t happen because it’s someone else’s responsibility, and decisions aren’t made,” she says.
At Central Surrey Health, staff are empowered to deal with the problems. “The question is not what are you going to do about X or Y, but what are we going to do about it,” says Mrs Pritchard. Recently, the business has automated its referrals system, getting rid of cumbersome paperwork. This has resulted in lower costs, and shorter referral times.
That attitude perhaps owes less to the notional 1p share in the company that each employee holds, and more to the culture within the business. There is a lack of hierarchy and plenty of opportunities, through staff forums, to discuss how things are – and should be – done.
“I’m more engaged and more involved, and I know more about the business,” says Suzy Marsh, a podiatrist who transferred from East Elmbridge and Mid-Surrey Primary Care Trust. Financially, she agrees, she is no better off, but staff have kept their NHS pensions, which was, not surprisingly, “the biggest concern during the transition period”.
Politically, with inevitable public-sector cost cuts over the next few years, both political parties are espousing structures to improve the efficiency of the health service. Mrs Pritchard and Mrs McGregor are convinced that the Central Surrey Health model is replicable. We will soon find out. Twenty similar businesses are about to be created under the Department of Health’s “right to request” scheme, which allows all front line PCT staff to apply to set up as social enterprises to improve services. The first wave of approvals includes dental services in Bedfordshire and mental health services in North East Lincolnshire.
His annual policy speech set a steady course for the country – with a growth target of 8%, as in previous years – but left the government room for flexibility as he cautioned that the global economic outlook remained uncertain.
China is reining back spending after last year's massive stimulus package, while seeking to maintain confidence at home and abroad. The 11.4% increase will take total spending to 8.45tn yuan (£800bn), but is less than half of last year's 24% rise.
The country is on course to overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy, after double-digit growth in the final quarter of last year took growth in 2009 to 8.7%, the highest of any major economy.
But addressing the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber-stamp parliament, Wen warned: "We must not interpret the economic turnaround as a fundamental improvement in the economic situation.
"There are insufficient internal drivers of economic growth."
Making the case for increased social spending, as he has done in recent years, he added: "We can ensure that there is sustained impetus for economic development, a solid foundation for social progress, and lasting stability for the country only by working hard to ensure and improve people's well-being."
To understand how a child can slip through the cracks it is necessary to see what occurs when they first arrive.
Heathrow is a 24-hour airport and there is no respite from arrivals. Statistics show 90 per cent of unaccompanied children and young people touch down outside the hours of 9am-5pm.
Therefore a dedicated care team from Hillingdon is on call around the clock to respond rapidly if they receive a call from the UK Border Agency (UKBA) telling them a child in need has arrived.
Not every unaccompanied child is a victim of trafficking; many arrive genuinely to claim asylum. It is the job of UKBA to determine the specifics of each case, while Hillingdon's teams are needed to safeguard the welfare of the child, irrespective of the circumstances.
Speaking to councillors at last Thursday's policy overview meeting were Jane Graver, head of care at a residential home in the borough, and Paula Neil, the home manager.
Ms Graver said: "When a child arrives at Heathrow, immigration is their first point of contact and we work closely with the staff. We need to place the child immediately.
"We are there to offer support, especially in the first few days and weeks of their arrival, when they most need it. We are informed if the child may be high risk, and we do our own risk assessment. If they come with a phone, we may detain it."
...
For every story of illegally trafficked children, there is a success story. Recently the Gazette's Citizen of Courage award went to Akhtar Jan, now 23, who arrived unaccompanied at Heathrow aged 16, unable to speak English. Granted asylum, he went on to achieve A-level results good enough to gain him a place to study medicine at Queen Mary's University.
Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the trust, which campaigns for equality of opportunity in education, said: “It is a tragic indictment of modern society that our children's future life prospects depend so much on their family background, not their individual talents.”
The trust responded by calling for more help for children from poor backgrounds. Its suggestions, which it argued would not add to pressure on public spending, included taking funds aimed at extending free nursery education among three- and four-year-olds, and using them instead to give 25 hours a week of nursery education to two- to four-year-olds from families in the poorest 15 per cent.
The research suggests that low income in itself makes some difference to children's educational level through lack of access to opportunities afforded by, for example, a car.
However, the same research also indicates that some parenting styles associated with but probably not caused by low income help explain the gap between the knowledge of poor children and other young people. For example, only 45 per cent of children from the poorest fifth of families were read to daily at the age of three, compared with 78 per cent of children from the richest fifth of families. Many studies find regular reading with a parent enlarges a child's vocabulary.
Today we have our own real-life Robin Hood in Richard Curtis, the comedy writer. Among his Merry Men are Bill Nighy and other celebrities including Bono, and representatives from a range of organisations — Oxfam, Save the Children, Action Aid and others.
Curtis's proposal, launched this week, is to impose a 0.05 per cent tax on international bankers' transactions. He's calling it the “Robin Hood” tax. Diverting 50p from every £1,000 the banks trade in shares, bonds, derivatives and foreign currency could raise up to £250 billion per year. The money would be spent on under-resourced public services in the UK and other countries where the banks do business, and to help fight global poverty and climate change.
It's smart: the size of the levy is not such that the banks would be mortally wounded. And as Curtis points out, we pay VAT at 17.5 per cent every time we go to the shops: why shouldn't the banks pay 0.05 per cent every time they buy or sell a financial product?
It's cleverly designed: half the revenue would be kept by the country where the deal took place, and the remaining 50 per cent split between reducing global poverty and tackling climate change. For leaders of developed nations struggling under public deficits, those sorts of sums for their own country's public services would be a godsend. It's hard, too, to argue against serious cash going to Africa and elsewhere, and alleviating climate change (£60 million-plus going to poorer nations to reduce their emissions would be enough to free the deadlock of the recent Copenhagen summit).
It would be a brave politician who would denounce the Robin Hood tax now. For Curtis's cunning is also in the timing: he's linking banks' unpopularity with the biggest challenges facing the planet. Come to that, which banker is going to put their head above the parapet and say their organisation, having made billions, can't afford a measly 0.05 per cent?
The ONS analysis found that the difference in income for the richest and poorest households was lower for pensioners than for people who were not retired.
But it added that income inequality increased during the past three decades, particularly during the period between 1977 and 1990.
There has also been a pronounced shift in the source of pensioners' income since 1977.
Money from occupational pensions and annuities accounted for an average of just 18pc of retired people's income in 1977, with the state pension accounting for 53pc.
But by 2007/08, the latest period for which figures are available, the state pension made up only 37pc of the money pensioners had coming in, with occupational pensions and annuities accounting for 36pc.
According to the research, commissioned from the New Policy Institute, an additional 260,000 children were pushed into severe poverty during the four years of a UK economic boom, between 2004 and 2008. Our research indicates that this number is likely to have stayed the same over the last two years, as the recession has wiped out any progress that government action may have achieved.
This means that 13% of the UK’s children now live in severe.
The recession is likely to have increased severe poverty by a further 100,000 children but rises in tax credits and benefits are expected to have bought the numbers back down to pre-recession figures. But as unemployment continues to climb, there is a real danger that the number of children living in severe poverty could still rise even higher.
England accounts for the biggest increase in severe poverty, with more than 1.5 million children now living in families that earn 50% below the average UK income and missing out on daily essentials such as enough food and clothes. London is home to around one fifth of all children in severe poverty in the UK — over 300,000 children — the biggest proportion of any UK city.
The annual Ethical Consumerism report showed the total market for sustainable goods and services was worth £36 billion in 2008, up from £13.5 billion in 1999.
The rate of increase in household spending on ethical products outstripped the growth in overall consumer spending, which increased by 58% over the decade.
But the market for goods which were environmentally-friendly, sustainable or supported poor people remained a small percentage of the £891 billion spent by households last year.
Some sectors saw phenomenal growth, including Fairtrade goods which pay a premium to farmers and producers in poor countries in a bid to help them work their way out of poverty, according to the survey.
The Fairtrade market, which now covers products from developing countries ranging from coffee to cotton, was worth just £22 million in 1999.
Last year sales of Fairtrade products had grown to £635 million and the Co-operative is predicting it could break the £1 billion barrier in 2010.
Father Tim Jones, parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York, broke off from the traditional Nativity story to say that sometimes shoplifting was the only option for poor families and certainly better than "prostitution, mugging or burglary" as a way of making money.
Mr Jones, who previously worked as a prison chaplain, told his congregation: "My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small, family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. I would ask them not to take any more than they need, for any longer than they need."
He said he offered the advice "with a heavy heart", and wished society would recognise that bureaucratic ineptitude and systemic delay had created an "invitation and incentive to crime for people struggling to cope".
Mr Jones cited an example of an ex-prisoner who had received less than £100, including a crisis loan, in the six weeks since his release.
He said his advice did not contradict the Bible's eighth commandment, not to steal, saying God's love for the poor and despised outweighed the property rights of the rich.
He added: "Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. "The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are.
"Rather, this is a call for our society no longer to treat its most vulnerable people with indifference and contempt."
