Select committee: International Development Committee
Recommendation 12
Eighth Report - Covid-19 in developing countries: secondary impacts
Published 26 Jan 2021
Paragraph 85
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
International Development Committee Humanitarian crises monitoring: coronavirus in developing countries: secondary impacts All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Gender-based violence has increased during the pandemic, with the risk especially acute for groups such as adolescents, migrants, refugees and displaced people. At the same time, access to support services has become more difficult. Therefore, it is disappointing that a specific commitment to the protection of women and girls from gender-based violence is absent from the FCDO’s revised framework for UK ODA. We recommend that the FCDO use the UK’s presidency of the G7 and COP 26, as well as its co-presidency of the Generation Equality Action Coalition, to publish a list of objectives which it will seek to achieve in combatting gender-based violence during its tenure and to set out how it will monitor progress on achieving them. It should also ringfence existing funding commitments to projects which seek to tackle gender-based violence. The FCDO should ensure that delivery partners administering programmes against gender-based violence can account for how their work is reaching survivors of gender-based violence and their support systems.
From: International Development Committee, Eighth Report - Covid-19 in developing countries: secondary impacts (HC 1186), paragraph 85, 26 January 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 26 April 2021.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government agrees on the need for a strategic approach and for efficient aid spending, but states there are "no plans for a separate covid-19 strategy" and "no immediate plans to publish a global health strategy".
- On ODA, it describes the move from 0.7% to 0.5% of GNI as a "temporary decision" and says it "will return to the 0.7% target when the fiscal situation allows".
- On debt, the UK "will work with G7 and G20 partners to take a coordinated view on a further extension of the DSSI"; it is "willing to cancel debts where required in order to restore debt sustainability".
- On sexual and reproductive health, it does not ringfence contraception funding, saying ringfencing "could provide unnecessary limitations of choice for women and decrease integration between services".
- On nutrition commitments, the Department is "undertaking an internal review" and "will update as soon as is feasible"; it agrees that cash transfers can help different groups respond to secondary impacts.