Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent steps her Department has taken to promote peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
The UK is committed to reducing violence and conflict and building sustainable peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Since 2014, DFID has provided £40m to supporting peace in DRC. We work through NGOs and local partners to support a range of activities including: intra and inter-community dialogue and dispute resolution; trust building between communities and local security actors; and targeted social and economic support to communities recovering from violence.
The UK funds the UN Peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, and DFID provides technical assistance to help it deliver its mandate to build stability and peace.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of her Department’s programmes on ending violence against children.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
DFID is committed to reducing violence through dedicated investments to protect children, alongside interventions embedded in wider development and humanitarian programming.
All DFID programmes, including those preventing violence against children, are subject to high levels of scrutiny to ensure they are effective and are making the best possible use of resources to maximise impact on poor people’s lives. Before approval is given to DFID programmes to begin implementation, a business case will go through a robust design and assurance process, based on HM Treasury’s five case model. All DFID programmes are then subject to continuous monitoring and an annual review process that assesses results achieved and value for money.
DFID has invested in rigorous evaluations of interventions to prevent violence against women and children across 12 countries in Africa and Asia through its What Works to Prevent Violence Programme. This has demonstrated significant reductions in violence. For example, a school-based programme in northern Afghanistan led to a 50% reduction in children’s peer violence and corporal punishment at school.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how many staff her Department has appointed to prepare for contingency plans in the event that the UK leaves the EU; and what estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of those contingency plans.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
DFID’s assessment is that we would not require any additional staff in the event that the UK leaves the EU. DFID is currently working with the Cabinet Office to understand the needs of other government departments for short term support and will seek to match these to DFID resource identified as being available for redeployment.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the effect of the Government's proposed Withdrawal Agreement on her Department's future provision of Official Development Assistance.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
Under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK would honour its share of the total commitments made to the EU budget and off budget instruments during the period of our membership. This includes Official Development Assistance through the EU budget external action instruments and off-budget funds, such as the European Development Fund.
We remain committed to spending 0.7% of our national income on development assistance. In time, we will have more flexibility to consider how we use the proportion of our aid budget currently channelled through the EU on an annual basis. Where it makes sense, the UK remains open to working with the EU to maximise combined development impact in areas of our mutual interest.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to identify (a) people and (b) communities that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
DFID’s general programme management guidance encourages all Business Cases to consider the Climate and Environment impacts of our activities on poor people. This includes ensuring that our interventions do not increase communities’ vulnerabilities to climate shocks and trends; as well as improving their sustainability and climate resilience.
DFID has also undertaken specific country growth diagnostics which include assessment of climate vulnerability and resilience. Bespoke regional climate analyses with national summaries of climate risks for every DFID priority country have been prepared to help this process and the programming of resources at country level.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to consult with refugee communities on the effectiveness of UK aid programmes.
Answered by Alistair Burt
We are clear that refugees and host communities must have the opportunity to engage meaningfully with the decisions that affect them. DFID works with partners to consult beneficiaries and engage directly with affected communities. This includes community outreach to Rohingya in Bangladesh, a new inter-agency mechanism to better manage refugee feedback and complaints in Uganda, and through refugees sitting on utility boards in Ethiopia to make decisions about water supply and treatment. We also pushed to ensure refugees were part of the consultations on the new Global Compact on Refugees. We welcome the “strong partnership and participatory approach” with refugees that the final Compact emphasises.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much funding her Department has allocated to new programmes providing education for children in refugee camps.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK has been at the forefront of pushing for quality education for refugee children. UK support for UNICEF’s No Lost Generation Initiative helped provide education and support to more than half a million displaced Syrian children. We have committed more than £400 million extra to the Girls’ Education Challenge, to ensure up to 1.5 million marginalised girls are supported to access a quality education and learning - including 20,000 girls in refugee camps in Kenya. We are a founding member and one of the largest donors to Education Cannot Wait, aiming to reach 8 million children in emergencies by 2021. And we also provide direct support, whether through teacher training programmes to camps in Ethiopia or in the key role we played in developing Uganda’s first ever education response plan, which aims to support more than 550,000 refugee and host community children.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to support disabled people in refugee camps.
Answered by Alistair Burt
DFID published its first Disability Inclusion Strategy in 2018, committing to strive for equitable access to essential humanitarian services for all people with disabilities, including refugees and the forcibly displaced. Our support ranges from rehabilitation services, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs for refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, through to community help desks, accessible latrines and supported food distribution in camps in Tanzania and in Uganda. We provide mental health and psychosocial support, including matching donations to War Child to support 400 children traumatised by war in the Central African Republic. We are also pressing the UN’s Refugee Agency to ensure protection and assistance programmes are accessible to all vulnerable groups, including those with disabilities.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to protect vulnerable people in refugee camps.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK is strongly committed to the protection of refugees, all of whom are vulnerable, including those in camps.
DFID provides support to refugees in camps through several agencies, including the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). A significant component of our support to refugees is focussed on protection. For example, a third of the UK’s recent £70m allocation for the response to the current Rohingya crisis is being spent on protection. Amongst refugees, some people have specific vulnerabilities. The UK has policy frameworks to address multiple vulnerabilities in challenging contexts, including refugee camps. In the Rohingya crisis response, this includes; women’s centres, children’s safe areas, emergency nutrition and midwifery care, and support for survivors of gender based violence.
More broadly, in July this year, the UK co-hosted the Global Disability Summit where humanitarian agencies made ambitious commitments on disability in humanitarian settings. This month DFID galvanised the support of all the major international donors – covering 90 per cent of global aid to commit to worldwide standards on the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how her Department plans to assess the effect of future trade agreements on developing economies.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The Department for International Development and Department for International Trade are working closely together to put global prosperity at the heart of the UK’s future trade policy and to shape our future trading arrangements with developing countries. Our first priority is to deliver continuity in these trading arrangements as we leave the EU. We will conduct a public consultation ahead of every new trade agreement negotiation that will last for 14 weeks.