The recent Equality Impact Assessment, published by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), shows the devastating and wide-ranging impact of the cuts to the UK’s official development assistance on the most marginalised people, including people with disabilities.
The cuts are undermining the ambition of the FCDO’s own Disability Inclusion and Rights strategy. Despite repeated commitments on the prioritisation of women and girls, this assessment shows significant cuts across areas that are critical to securing their rights. The UK committed to leave no one behind, but is doing exactly that – so is failing people with disabilities and those living in the world’s poorest communities.
Given budgets will increase next year, it is critical that allocations are made in a way that considers how to reach the most marginalised people, and that steps are taken to accelerate a return to spending 0.7% of gross national income on development assistance.
What is particularly concerning is that these cuts are not even the full picture. They follow a series of previous cuts, and their impact is amplified from the knock-on effect.
While it is positive that the FCDO has published the Equalities Impact Assessment, something Sightsavers has called for previously, we are still concerned about the lack of programme-level data available and the impact this has on the government’s ability to assess the full impact of these cuts.
The Promise in Peril campaign culminated at the SDG summit with a declaration reaffirming commitments to achieving the global goals that explicitly references disability rights.
Dr Jalikatu Mustapha trained with Sightsavers between 2012 and 2016, becoming the only female ophthalmologist in the country.
Sightsavers’ education, research and policy teams will join the global education community at the UKFIET international education conference on 12-14 September in Oxford, UK.
Want to hear more from Sightsavers? Join more than 170,000 supporters who receive inspiring emails about life-changing projects and ways to support our work.
You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in each email, or by contacting our Supporter Care team via [email protected]
For more information see our privacy policy