Only connect… Boris Johnson's former adviser Dominic Cummings, giving evidence to MPs, likened the UK Prime Minister to a "shopping trolley", referring to the contradictory policy decisions emanating from Number 10 daily. Whilst Cummings' clear-sightedness and unbiased judgment are questionable, it's true that recent government policy and statements on international security issues, overseas aid, girls' education, and family planning have been careering in all directions. Back in January, Mr Johnson said it was his "fervent belief" that the best way to lift communities in developing countries out of poverty was keeping girls in school. Yet his government's £4.5 billion cut to the UK's aid budget will result in the grassroots organisations working to keep girls in education, opening up opportunities for them other than teenage motherhood, losing funding. According to Marie Stopes International, over 4 million girls are forced out of school every year across sub-Saharan Africa due to teenage pregnancy.
Understandably, the UK's 85% cut to its funding of UNFPA, the UN's family planning agency, and 60% of its support to the UN's children's fund (Unicef), provoked unprecedented criticism from a UN spokesperson, "These cuts will be devastating for women and girls and their families across the world." Particularly for women and girls in the poorest regions of Africa, which received over 50% of UK Aid previously. Areas that were the Rome summit's focus on the rise of ISIS/Daesh across the Sahel that Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab attended last week. Raab appeared unaware that the region's insecurity and vulnerability to ISIS are amplified by the twin pressures of a rapidly growing population and accelerating climate change. Across its million square miles stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, the Sahel's population is projected to treble from 100 million people currently to 300 million by 2050. The projected temperature rise is even more alarming, 3-5 degrees C by 2050, up to 8 degrees C by 2100. Fortunately, others in Westminster understand the need for coherent, connected policymaking. For example, the Environment Audit Committee's just-released report on biodiversity recognises the critical value of funding family planning and supporting girls' empowerment for protecting biodiversity and mitigating geopolitical insecurity. The Committee endorsed PM's analysis as to that link, referencing our evidence several times. Lack of opportunity and grinding poverty are the best recruiters for ISIS – its aspirational ‘Caliphate’ in the Sahel may seem a distant mirage, but its negative influence on people regionally (especially girls and women), in reversing progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, and undermining global security, is extensive. More positively, millions of birds journey via the Palearctic-Africa migratory system to the UK and Europe each year – their arrival and survival dependent on sustaining feeding and breeding sites here and in Africa. Our mutual connections and enlightened, shared interests are clear. - Robin Maynard, Director, Population Matters
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