LONDON: The UK government on Thursday prolonged a freeze on its international aid budget introduced during the pandemic in a move condemned by charities.
Boris Johnson’s administration in 2020 cut the annual budget for overseas development aid from 0.7 to 0.5 percent of gross national income (GNI), breaking an election promise.
Finance minister Jeremy Hunt said while unveiling his austerity budget Thursday that it “will not be possible to return to the 0.7 percent target until the fiscal situation allows.”
He said the government remained “fully committed to the target” but he was assuming spending would “remain around 0.5 percent for the forecast period” over the next five years.
Christian Aid slammed the decision, with chief of UK advocacy Sophie Powell saying Hunt had “chosen to balance the books on the back of people in poverty.”
The move comes as the government uses part of the overseas aid budget to support refugees at home.
The CEO of World Vision UK charity, Mark Sheard, tweeted Thursday that the government is “making real terms aid cuts” and “pulling back its support when more is desperately needed.”
Opposition Labour MP Kate Osamor tweeted “this cut will kill” and “vital programs that save lives and lift people out of poverty will be closed.”
Parliament’s International Development Committee on Wednesday announced an inquiry into whether using the Official Development Assistance budget on refugees within the UK was “an efficient, effective and ethical use of public money.”
Conservative MP David Davis told Sky News Tuesday that a “good chunk of (the aid budget) is being used to deal with the problems the Home Office has with migrants.”
He suggested the figure being spent overseas was only about 0.3 percent.
“Not many things in the budget are going to kill people but this is an element where I think we have to bite our lip and do something about it,” he said.
Johnson blamed the original 2020 cut on ballooning debt caused by the Covid pandemic.
Announced as a temporary measure, it broke a legally enshrined commitment on aid to poorer countries.
In October last year, then-finance minister Rishi Sunak, who is now prime minister, promised the 0.7 percent rate would be restored in 2024 or 2025 given the right fiscal circumstances.
UK extension of overseas aid cut angers charities
https://arab.news/mnvnu
UK extension of overseas aid cut angers charities
- UK finance minister has “chosen to balance the books on the back of people in poverty,” Christian Aid chief says
India hosts global leaders, tech moguls at AI Impact Summit
- 20 heads of state scheduled to attend event which runs until Feb. 20
- Summit expected to speed up adoption of AI in India’s governance, expert says
NEW DELHI: A global artificial intelligence summit opened in New Delhi on Monday, with representatives of more than 60 countries scheduled to discuss the use and regulation of AI with the industry’s leaders and investors.
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is hosted by the Indian government’s IndiaAI Mission — an initiative worth in excess of $1 billion and launched by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in 2024 to develop the AI ecosystem in the country.
After five days of sessions and an accompanying exhibition of 300 companies at Bharat Mandapam — the venue of the 2023 G20 summit — participating leaders are expected to sign a declaration which, according to the organizer, will outline a “shared road map for global AI governance and collaboration.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will attend the summit on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, said on X it was a “matter of great pride for us that people from around the world are coming to India” for the event, which is evidence that the country is “rapidly advancing in the fields of science and technology and is making a significant contribution to global development.”
Among the 20 heads of state that the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has announced as scheduled to attend are Macron, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, and Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince.
Also expected are tech moguls such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google’s chief Sundar Pichai.
The summit will give India, the world’s most populous country, a platform to try to steer cooperation and AI regulation between the West and the Global South, and to present to the global audience its own technological development.
“India is leveraging its position as a bridge between emerging and developed economies to bring together not just country leaders and technologists, but also delegates, policy analysts, media, and others … to explore the facets of AI, multilateral collaborations, and the direction that large-scale development of AI should take,” said Anwesha Sen, assistant program manager for technology and policy at Takshashila Institution.
“India is trying to do three things through the AI Impact Summit. One, India is advocating for sovereign AI and the development of inclusive, population-scale solutions. Two, establishing international collaborations that prioritize AI diffusion in sectors like healthcare and agriculture. And three, showcasing how Indian startups and organizations are using frameworks such as that of digital public infrastructure as a model to bridge the two.”
It is the fourth such gathering dedicated to the development of AI. The first one was held in the UK in 2023, a year after the debut of ChatGPT; the 2024 meeting in South Korea; and last year’s event took place in France.
The summit is likely to help the Indian government in speeding up the adoption of AI, according to Nikhil Pahwa, digital rights activist and founder of MediaNama, a mobile and digital news portal, who likened it to the Digital India initiative launched in 2015 to provide digital government services.
“A summit like this, with this much bandwidth allocated to it by the government, even if the agenda is flat, ends up making AI a priority focus for ministries and state governments,” Pahwa told Arab News.
“It encourages diffusion of AI execution-specific thinking and ends up increasing adoption of AI in governance and by both central and state-level ministries. That reduces time for adoption of AI.
“We saw this play out with the government’s Digital India focus: it increased digitization and the adoption of digital technology. The agenda and India’s role in AI globally is less important than speeding up adoption.”
