Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans the Government has to increase the amount of humanitarian aid for Yemen in 2019.
Answered by Rory Stewart
On 24 February, the Prime Minister announced that the UK will provide an additional £200 million in response to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen for the next financial year (2019/2020). This was the third largest amount pledged at the UN 2019 Yemen Pledging conference and brings the total UK commitment to Yemen to £770 million since the conflict began in 2015.
We are encouraging other large donors to disburse promptly and are confident that if this happens the UN and NGOs will be able to deliver a strong humanitarian response. The Geneva Pledging Conference in February of this year saw $2.6 billion pledged, approximately 20% of which has been disbursed to date.
The UK has brought forward funding to cover urgent UN funding gaps and will have disbursed over half of our £200 million funding by the beginning of June. We will release our remaining funds promptly and in line with our partners’ funding requirements.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 16 April 2019 to Question HL15044 on Developing Countries: Climate Change, how much of the £5.8 billion allocated to international climate finance between 2016-17 and 2020-21 will be spent on tackling loss and damage in climate-vulnerable countries.
Answered by Rory Stewart
Action to avert, minimize and address loss and damage associated with climate change is intricately bound up with action on mitigation, adaptation, disaster risk reduction and disaster preparedness and response. We therefore do not see that attempting to define a separate category of finance for loss and damage as useful or practical. Of the £5.8bn on climate finance we have committed to spend from 2016-2021 the UK aims to spend 50% on adaptation and 50% on mitigation.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if her Department will support the urgent humanitarian evacuation out of Libya of refugees and migrants held in detention centres in that country.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
We are deeply concerned by reports of violence in Libyan detention centres, and are calling on all parties to allow civilians, including refugees and migrants, to be evacuated to safety. We continue to closely monitor the humanitarian situation in Libya, including conditions in detention centres.
The UK Government is clear that all parties to the conflict must do all that they can to prevent any further loss of life, including by respecting their obligations under International Humanitarian Law and engaging with the UN and humanitarian community to get aid to those in need and for the wounded and those at risk to be safely evacuated.