Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what humanitarian assistance the Government is providing to Anglophone regions in Cameroon, including to those internally displaced by continuing armed conflict, in 2022.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The crisis in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon has had tragic impacts on the lives of civilians. The UK has called for continued humanitarian access, and on 14 April, alongside the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Cameroon and other UN Member States, we joined the launch of the 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP). The HRP outlines how humanitarian actors will support 2.6 million people living in crisis areas with multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance. Over the last five years, we have allocated over £21 million aid to Cameroon, which has included food supplies, sanitation, healthcare and social protection. This is supporting the World Food Programme and International Committee for the Red Cross to assist those affected in the North-West and South-West regions.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the impact on the humanitarian situation in South West Cameroon of the suspension in late March of the activities of the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), further to the ongoing detention of four MSF staff members by the Cameroonian Government.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The humanitarian situation in the North West and South West (Anglophone) regions of Cameroon continues to have a tragic impact on civilians. Violence between separatist groups and Government forces has displaced 1.1 million people; over 2 million people require humanitarian support and 850,000 children are without safe access to school. MSF is an important health actor in the North West and South West regions and its temporary withdrawal has left gaps in health service provision which will disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. The UN is trying to manage these gaps; for example in April it allocated $1.7 million Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) funds to address a cholera outbreak in the South West, which typically the MSF would have been well placed to cover.
We have allocated over £21 million of humanitarian support for needs in Cameroon over the last five years, and regularly call for continued humanitarian access. We continue to engage with UN and other humanitarian actors active across Cameroon to ensure that urgent needs are met, including most recently with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 29 April, on the impact of the suspension of humanitarian activities.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what projects in Ukraine have been funded with Overseas Development Assistance in each of the last eight years.
Answered by James Cleverly - Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
Due to the security situation in Ukraine, we have temporarily removed potentially sensitive information from our Official Development Assistance (ODA) project monitoring systems to ensure the safety of partners. The most common sectors for ODA projects in Ukraine have been; Civilian peace-building, conflict prevention and resolution; Human Rights; Ending violence against women and girls; and Anti-Corruption organisations and institutions.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, which projects in Indonesia are being funded with Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) from the UK Government either (a) directly or (b) by the UK Prosperity Fund or (c) by CDC or (d) by multilateral organisations to which the UK contributes ODA.
Answered by Amanda Milling
The Statistics on International Development (SID) National Statistics report, published on the gov.uk website, provide an overview of all official UK spend on Official Development Assistance (ODA). ODA is an international measure and is collected and reported on a calendar year basis.
In answer to the specific breakdowns requested:
A. UK bilateral ODA to Indonesia in 2020 (latest year available) was £33.3mn (as reported in SID Table A4b) https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistics-on-international-development-final-uk-aid-spend-2020
For more information on active Indonesia ODA programmes please see the DevTracker page on Indonesia (https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/countries/ID).
B. Details of Prosperity Fund ODA programmes that benefit Indonesia can also be found in "Data underlying the SID" using the "Extending Agency field".
C. As part of CDC / BII's new five year strategy which was launched at the start of 2022, they are seeking to expand their investment portfolio in South East Asia, including in Indonesia. CDC has a portfolio of three indirect investments in Indonesia made via two investment funds: Neoma South East Asia Fund II, and Sarataoga Asia II LP.
The estimated amount of UK ODA funding to the core budgets of multilateral organisations, which was then spent in Indonesia, is published in SID Table A10. This presents the UK Imputed Multilateral Shares for 2015 to 2019 (latest available year). Information on multilateral programmes that benefit Indonesia can also be found on the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) multilateral activity dataset (https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?ThemeTreeId=3) .
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the political situation in Tunisia.
Answered by James Cleverly - Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
The UK has closely monitored the political situation in Tunisia since the changes brought in by President Kais Saied on 25 July 2021, and we will continue to do so. We engage regularly with government leaders in the country, most recently on 1 March when the British Ambassador called on Prime Minister Najla Bouden. Tunisia faces many economic and political challenges that can only be effectively addressed through democratic engagement, transparency, the protection of human rights, and free speech. The UK has expressed its views regarding the political situation, bilaterally and through statements on behalf of G7 Ambassadors. The most recent joint statement was on 8 February, conveying concerns about the decision to dissolve Tunisia's Supreme Judicial Council: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/supreme-judicial-court-in-tunisia-ambassadors-joint-statement-8-february-2022.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what specific steps her Department has taken to advance the two global targets for girls’ education since those targets were endorsed at the G7 in June 2021.
Answered by Vicky Ford
We have built on the momentum of the G7 and UK-hosted Global Education Summit to push forward progress on girls' education. At COP26, we shone a spotlight on the links between education and climate and called for countries to prioritise early learning in their efforts to mitigate climate change. In Afghanistan, the UK has called for girls' right to secondary education to be restored, and UK humanitarian funds are helping provide safe spaces for learning for 38,000 displaced children, including 28,000 girls.
As of mid-December, more than 647 million school children were still affected by partial or full school closures. Ministers are pressing national governments to reopen schools as a matter of priority, while our bilateral education programmes and flagship Girls' Education Challenge continue to support children to catch-up on the learning they have lost. On 26 January, the UK helped launch a new report by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel focused on recovering children's education.
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what plans she has to take steps with the government of Rwanda to encourage each Commonwealth country to sign the Kenyatta Declaration on education, announced at the 2021 Global Education Summit hosted by the UK and Kenya.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The UK looks forward to the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) being held in Kigali, on a new date agreed by the Commonwealth Family. The UK is in regular touch with the Government of Rwanda (CHOGM host) and the Commonwealth Secretariat on preparations for CHOGM; we look forward to Leaders' endorsement of an ambitious package of commitments in due course.
The UK and Kenya co-hosted the Global Education Summit, in London in July 2021, which raised over $4 billion in pledges to help transform education for some of the world's most vulnerable children. In addition, 19 countries signed the Kenyatta declaration, thereby committing to protect, extend and improve their domestic financing to education. The UK will continue to encourage all Global Partnership for Education (GPE) partner countries, including in the Commonwealth, to prioritise domestic education spend.