The government’s decision to cut overseas aid is disastrous for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. This decision has been painted as one of the ‘tough choices’ governments have to make, but in fact it fails to grapple with reality on multiple levels. Some of these are moral realities; treating foreign aid as expendable fails to acknowledge the duty we owe to each other as human beings, and the unjust economic structures that benefit the global north whilst holding others in poverty. But it also overlooks the inherent interdependence of global stability, and global prosperity with security.
Profound scarcity leaves people more vulnerable to exploitation and fuels conflicts. For example, in Afghanistan, years of drought and reduced harvest render people more vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups, as noted a few years ago by the UN Secretary General. As I have written before, war, the devastation of local economies, the rise of oppressive politics, and climate catastrophe must be considered together. Environmental, social, political and economic factors cannot be isolated from each other. Consequently, cutting foreign aid will make us all less safe. It is also likely to contribute to many more people being forcibly displaced.
More people will be at risk of losing their homes, their livelihoods, their safety. This occurs alongside vaunting emphasis on fortifying borders against those seeking a place to rebuild their lives, both from UK governments, and many others globally. Forced displacement is bound up with unjust social and economic order, as Pope Francis reminds us in Fratelli Tutti. By cutting overseas aid, we deepen the injustice, and risk forcing more people from their homes. It is doubly unconscionable then to deny them sanctuary.
Let us remember what it is to be forcibly displaced. Because, if we turn our back on the world’s poorest people, more people will be scared for the lives of their children. They will lose parents, friends, siblings, and be faced with the impossible choice to leave their homes, to find somewhere else they might have a chance to rebuild their lives. Some will have no choice but to leave, and hope to survive, and even hope, one day, to flourish again. We should not develop policies that put them in this situation in the first place. And we should not then punish them for seeking to live.
Read the Jesuit Missions response
