
UK aid reviews and future aid spending
International Development Minister Anneliese Dodds says the government’s aim is a “world free from poverty on a liveable planet”. It will seek to address the stalling of progress on the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), empower women and girls, improve access to finance for low-income countries, help countries respond to climate change, and reduce irregular migration by addressing the causes of displacement.
The government is currently considering the outcomes of three development reviews, commissioned in September 2024. It says it will “consider how best to communicate” their findings.
Future aid spending
In December 2024 the government said it would publish its aid spending plans for 2024/25 and 2025/26 “in due course”.
In 2025, UK aid spending will remain at 0.5% of gross national income (GNI). The value of aid spent by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) will increase to £9.24 billion in 2025/26, which is £450 million more than in 2024/25.
This will be partly funded by reducing spending on hosting refugees for the first 12 months they are in the UK, which is primarily spent by the Home Office and represented 28% of UK aid spending in 2023. In January the FCDO said increases in GNI and Home Office underspend may free “about £200 million to £300 million”.
The government has faced criticism for applying the Conservative government’s tests on when to restore spending to 0.7% of GNI. These tests are not projected to be met during the current Parliament.
Partnership, localisation and finance beyond aid
In 2023 and 2024 Conservative and Labour governments set out intentions to work more in “partnership” with countries that receive UK aid, to deliver more aid through local organisations, and to help countries raise their own finance.
The UK has said it supports reforms to debt management and the direction of the Bridgetown initiative, led by Barbados, to reform the international architecture on climate, finance, lending and debt.
In June the UN Financing for Development Conference will be held in Spain, with the aim of “reforming financing at all levels” to support an “urgently needed investment push”. The government says it will be an “opportunity” to accelerate progress on the SDGs.
Meeting the sustainable development goals
Substantial progress on development goals has been made since the UN’s first “development decade” in the 1960s. For example, the share of the world population living in extreme poverty (being unable to meet basic needs) fell from 48% in 1960 to 10% in 2018.
However, in 2024 the UN warned that progress on the SDGs, launched in 2015 and intended to be achieved by 2030, has stalled on a third of its measures.
The UN cites the continuing impact of the covid-19 pandemic, growth in armed conflict, climate change and unequal access to global finance for lower income countries as reasons for this.
The global prevalence of undernourishment (not having enough to eat) is estimated to have been the same in 2022 as in 2010, at around 9% of the population. It rose in sub-Saharan Africa from 18% to 23% over the same period.
The World Bank also reports poverty reduction “has slowed to near standstill”. Around 75% of the 712 million people in extreme poverty (living on less than US$2.15 a day) live in fragile and conflict-affected countries.
Humanitarian need in 2024
The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 305 million people will need humanitarian support in 2025, fewer than the 339 million of 2023 but more than the 125 million to 136 million from 2016 to 2019.
The UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, says he will have three priorities in 2025:
- Raising funds – the UN appeal is also for funds sufficient to support only 190 million people.
- Addressing the root causes of need, notably conflict.
- Protecting aid workers and civilians. 344 aid workers were killed in 2024, the highest number since the non-governmental organisation Aid Worker Security began recording data in 1997.
A “traffic jam” of funding replenishments
The think tank Center for Global Development (CGD) reports that “almost all the major concessional funds are seeking to raise a record US$100 billion” in 2024/25. These concessional funds, which offer finance at below-market rates, include:
- The International Development Association (part of the World Bank) for 2025 to 2028
- The World Health Organization (WHO) for 2025 to 2028
- Gavi, the vaccine alliance for 2026 to 2030
- Nutrition for Growth (NG4) summit for 2025 to 2029
The CGD says this has created a “replenishment traffic jam”. The same funds tend to rely on a relatively small number of donors, so the CGD warns that the parallel fundraising efforts will “increase competition for finite resources”.
While global aid in 2023 reached a new high, aid budgets in France, Germany, and the Netherlands are among those planned to decline.
The Trump administration may also try to reduce the US’s aid contributions, as it did in President Trump’s first term, though congressional opposition meant the US aid budget rose from 2018 to 2021 (PDF). In January the Trump administration announced a pause and review on most US foreign assistance to ensure it is “efficient and consistent with […] the America First agenda”.
US funding for multilateral agencies
The US is the largest single donor to the UN and its agencies. In 2023, it provided US$12.9 billion to 47 UN agencies, or around 28% of all UN funding.
In January 2025 the Trump administration announced US withdrawal from the WHO, from 2026. It cited unfairness in the size of US contributions, and the Paris Agreement on climate change, arguing it steers American finance towards countries that “do not merit” financial assistance.
US legislation, passed in 2024, bans new funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) until at least March 2025. UNRWA works across the Occupied Palestinian Territories and countries neighbouring Israel to provide services to around 5.9 million Palestinians. The first Trump administration ended its funding in 2018, saying the agency was “irredeemably flawed”.
The Commons Library research briefing on UNRWA provides more on the agency in 2024/25.
The first Trump Administration did increase aid between 2017 and 2020, relative to aid between 2013 and 2016, for the UN Children’s fund Unicef and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, among other reductions and increases.
Further reading
- Focus 2030, International development timelines
- Commons Library, UK aid: spending reductions since 2020 and outlook from 2024/25
- Center for Global Development, Trends in US multilateral funding and what Trump’s second term could mean, 16 January 2025
- Nilima Gulrajani and Jessica Pudussery (Overseas Development Institute), Have we reached peak aid?, The Guardian, 23 January 2025
About the author: Philip Loft is a researcher at the Commons Library specialising in the international development and the Middle East.
Photo by: European Parliament. Licensed under CC BY 2.0