Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of the political and security situation in Afghanistan on the safety of women and girls in that country.
Answered by Nigel Adams
We are committed to prioritising women and girls in the UK's response to the situation in Afghanistan. We will use every humanitarian and diplomatic lever to safeguard human rights and the gains made over the last two decades. The UK led work on the recent UN Security Council resolution, demonstrating our commitment to holding the Taliban to account on human rights, humanitarian access, safe passage and preventing terror. Minister for Human Rights Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon addressed the UN Human Rights Council on 24 August to underscore the UK's commitment to protecting the human rights of all Afghan people, including women and girls, and holding the Taliban to account.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he has taken to ensure the protection of female humanitarian workers in Afghanistan.
Answered by Nigel Adams
Alongside international partners, we have continuously emphasised the need for adherence to international humanitarian and human rights law, and have called upon the Taliban to allow safe and unimpeded access to those delivering humanitarian aid, including female aid workers. The UN are seeking commitments from the Taliban to enable humanitarian work to continue; these must include guarantees for female aid workers.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to the Prime Minister's oral contribution of 18 August 2021 on humanitarian funding to support the Afghan people, if he will publish a breakdown of where that money (a) has been allocated and (b) will be allocated.
Answered by Nigel Adams
The UK has provided over £3.3 billion of aid since 2001, improving health systems, promoting private sector-led growth, increasing rural incomes, providing educational opportunities and tackling corruption work, as well as providing humanitarian assistance. Life expectancy increased from 56 years in 2002 to 65 in 2020.
We have committed to doubling our humanitarian and development aid to Afghanistan and the region to a total of £286 million this year. We will use our aid to support the UK's immediate objectives including progress on Counter Terrorism assurance, preventing instability spilling over to the region, supporting human rights and meeting humanitarian needs.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many Afghan staff who have worked, or currently work, at the British Embassy are in Afghanistan as of 18 August 2021; and what steps the Government is taking to evacuate those staff as soon as possible.
Answered by Nigel Adams
We worked tirelessly during Operation Pitting to evacuate safely the overwhelming majority of UK nationals and locally employed Afghan staff. We are now looking at all possible avenues to ensure that any British nationals and local staff remaining in Afghanistan, as well as at-risk individuals who have already been offered a visa to the UK, are able to leave safely if they wish to.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will make it his policy to lead on providing 40 million covid-19 vaccine doses to Nepal in the next three months.
Answered by Nigel Adams
The UK is a leading donor to COVAX, the multilateral mechanism set up to support international co-operation on vaccines, having committed £548 million to the scheme. COVAX has delivered over 1,800,000 doses to Nepal so far with further tranches on the way. As G7 chair this year the UK has also secured a commitment to donate 1 billion vaccine doses to the developing world by June 2022, including 100 million donated by the UK. The majority of these doses will be donated to COVAX. COVAX remains best-placed to allocate vaccines to where they will be most effective. It is helping to support countries to assess vaccine introduction readiness, develop detailed national deployment and vaccination plans, and strengthen delivery systems.
As shareholders and contributors to both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the UK has also pushed hard for multilateral organisations to provide finance to countries for vaccine procurement, including Nepal. The World Bank has now made at least $75 million available to the Government of Nepal for that purpose; a further $165 million will soon be proposed to the board of the Asian Development Bank, which the UK will also support.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of making emergency covid-19 vaccines donations to Nepal.
Answered by Nigel Adams
The UK is a leading donor to COVAX, the multilateral mechanism set up to support international co-operation on vaccines, having committed £548 million to the scheme. COVAX has delivered over 1,800,000 doses to Nepal so far with further tranches on the way. As G7 chair this year the UK has also secured a commitment to donate 1 billion vaccine doses to the developing world by June 2022, including 100 million donated by the UK. The majority of these doses will be donated to COVAX. COVAX remains best-placed to allocate vaccines to where they will be most effective. It is helping to support countries to assess vaccine introduction readiness, develop detailed national deployment and vaccination plans, and strengthen delivery systems.
As shareholders and contributors to both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the UK has also pushed hard for multilateral organisations to provide finance to countries for vaccine procurement, including Nepal. The World Bank has now made at least $75 million available to the Government of Nepal for that purpose; a further $165 million will soon be proposed to the board of the Asian Development Bank, which the UK will also support.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether the Government is planning to set up a challenge fund with match funding for making progress towards the $5 billion Global Partnership for Education replenishment target.
Answered by Wendy Morton
The UK is leading the way in the run-up to the Global Education Summit. At the G7 Leaders' Summit, the Prime Minister announced the UK pledge of £430 million, an uplift of 15% on the last financing period and our largest ever contribution to GPE. This is also the largest bilateral pledge announced so far and with our co-host, President Kenyatta, we are urging other nations to step up their pledges to GPE.
This significant pledge meant we were able to secure commitment from G7 partners of at least $2.7 billion to GPE ahead of the GES. At the Summit, we hope to secure up to $4 billion, which is 80 per cent of GPE's $5 billion 5-year target, and would be the single biggest ever boost to children's education opportunities around the world.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much Official Development Assistance has been spent on education in (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020 and (d) 2021.
Answered by Wendy Morton
Official Development Assistance (ODA) is reported on a calendar year basis and includes sectoral breakdowns such as education. The FCDO National Statistics publication, 'Statistics on International Development' includes this information. Provision ODA spend for 2020 will be published in the autumn. The UK's ODA spend for 2021, including an activity level dataset, will be published in 2022.
FCDO publishes regular open data through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). This operational data covers current live programmes, and will include 2021 spend once business planning is concluded. The raw data can be accessed at the IATI Registry, and is shown on the Development Tracker website: https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made for the implications of his policies of the Gender Equality Forum 2021.
Answered by Wendy Morton
Promoting gender equality and advancing women and girls' rights around the world is a priority for the UK Government. In our G7 Presidency, we have committed to promote our three 'Es' of gender equality: 'Educating Girls, Empowering Women, and Ending violence against women and girls'. We supported these goals during the Generation Equality Forum in Paris. As a Co-Chair of the Gender Based Violence Action Coalition, at the Global Equality Forum the UK launched our flagship programme 'What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale', worth up to £67.5 million which is the first global programme to scale up proven approaches to prevent gender-based violence. We also joined a number of collective commitments with other partners through the Action Coalitions on Gender Based Violence, Feminist Action for Climate Justice, Bodily Autonomy and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and Economic Justice and Rights which demonstrated our broad commitment to advance gender equality. We are building on momentum from Paris through the upcoming Girls Education Summit and COP in November.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department plans to spend more than the £800,000 on aid to Sri Lanka as set out on his Department's Development Tracker in the 2021-22 financial year.
Answered by Nigel Adams
FCDO's 21/22 planned country allocations (budgets) will be published in our Annual Report later this year alongside our audited 20/21 accounts. HMG's final 2021 ODA spend, including country data will be published in the 'Statistics on International Development: Final UK Aid Spend' in autumn 2022. We will continue to publish our spend information by project on DevTracker as always (updated monthly).