Aid agencies campaign for increase in overseas aid
Howard Lake | 29 March 2004 | News
Major UK aid agencies are calling on the chancellor Gordon Brown to spend 0.7% of income on aid – a promise, made in 1970, which Britain has failed to keep.
Thea agencies, including ActionAid, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children, UNICEF UK, War on Want and the development network BOND warn that, with current levels of funding, all eight of the Millennium Development Goals aimed at halving world poverty by 2015 risk being missed.
Mike Aaronson, Director General of Save the Children and Chair of the British Overseas Aid Group (BOAG) said: “Across the world 600 million children live in poverty, yet the UK spends just 0.3 pence in every pound it earns on overseas aid. This is simply not good enough. We need urgent action from the UK to allocate 0.7 per cent of its wealth to overseas aid by 2008.”
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The campaign to increase overseas aid expenditure is backed by 290 charities with more than three million supporters. The charities will be asking supporters to send campaign postcards to Mr Brown asking him to announce a timetable to reach the 0.7% level by 2008.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.