Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent steps he has taken to support small, medium and large UK-based international development charities working to tackle the covid19 pandemic in the global south.

Civil society organisations based in the UK and in developing countries are playing a very valuable role in the global response to COVID-19. There are a number of channels through which we are providing funding directly to civil society organisations (CSOs) to support vulnerable people around the world during this crisis.

We have allocated £18 million to charities through the Rapid Response Facility and over £24 million through our partnership with Unilever. In May, a new UK Aid Direct funding round was launched to support small and medium CSOs who can help us meet the challenges posed by COVID-19. In addition, we announced that we will match up to £10 million of donations from the British public to the Disasters Emergency Committee's (DEC) new Coronavirus Appeal which will fund the work of 14 UK aid agencies to tackle the pandemic among displaced people in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, DRC, Syria, Afghanistan, as well as the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. We have also made a contribution of £3.3 million to the Start Network providing rapid, short-term funding for humanitarian responses through its network of over 50 members. It has already funded 35 projects in 22 countries through its COVID-19 window.