United
Kingdom

In various strategies and policies, the UK has committed to taking a strong stand for women and girls through tackling the rollback on gender equality, and to promoting equity in both its programmes and in global processes such as the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development. The UK has placed a strong emphasis on health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and on gender equality.

The previous government published various strategies setting out its international development priorities, including how it will work for women and girls in all their diversity across the world. Their 2023 International Women and Girls Strategy and International Development White Paper championed comprehensive SRHR, recognising how access can impact other areas of women and girls’ lives including education, protection and empowerment. Both strategies recognised the concerning impact of the anti-rights movement and committed the UK government to tackle this opposition to gender equality and SRHR, and to working with local and women’s rights organisations to increase their voices in the creation of innovative approaches to SRHR and to drive forward change. These strategies worked alongside the previous 2022 Strategy for International Development, and the 2021 approach paper on Ending Preventable Deaths of Mothers, Babies and Children. The Action Plan on Girls’ Education also includes a specific policy commitment to FP2030. While the new government has reiterated that women and girls’ rights and addressing the rollback on rights remains a key priority, they are carrying out a series of reviews on their approach and will set out priorities in the coming months.

UK funding to SRH/FP was significantly reduced in 2020/2021 as a result of the decrease in the size of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the cuts resulting from a reduction in GNI from 0.7% to 0.5%. While some funding for ODA was restored, including on reproductive health supplies, recent announcements indicate that there will be a further cut in the 2025-2026 financial year.

The impact of the initial cuts was significant, and the UK is still not on course to meet the commitments made at the ICPD+25, including a 287 million Euros (425 million GBP) pledge to the UNFPA Supplies Partnership from 2020-2025 (split into two agreements). The UK’s contributions to UNFPA core funding were also reduced from 22 million Euros (20 million GBP) in 2020 to 9 million Euros (8 million GBP) in 2021, representing a 60% cut. 2023 saw an increase of core funding up to 14 million Euros (12.25 million GBP), but still far from what once was provided. The UK uplifted this core support by 4.25 million GBP which is specifically earmarked to support humanitarian efforts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The UK is still the leading donor to UNFPA Supplies, and it contributed 78 million Euros (60 million GBP) in 2022 and almost 84 million Euros in 2023 (73 million GBP, out of which 60 million were for UNFPA and the remaining 13 for partners CHAI and PATH).