My noble Friend the Minister of State for International Development and Africa, the right hon. Baroness Chapman of Darlington, has today made the following statement:
The FCDO’s annual report and accounts 2025-26 reports that in 2025, on a provisional basis, the United Kingdom did not meet its target to spend the equivalent of 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance.
The International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 envisages situations in which a departure from meeting the target of spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA may be necessary, including due to economic circumstances, fiscal circumstances and circumstances arising outside the UK. The fiscal circumstances did not allow for ODA spending to be returned to 0.7% of GNI in 2025.
This Government are committed to restoring ODA spending at the level of 0.7% of GNI as soon as fiscal circumstances allow. The principles for a return will be met when, on a sustainable basis, the Government are not borrowing for day-to-day spending and underlying debt is falling. We will monitor future forecasts closely against these tests. The latest forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility indicates that the tests will not be met in this Parliament. The Government are working hard to create the conditions to enable the ODA fiscal tests to be met by prioritising growth—stronger growth will help in time to get underlying debt down.
As required by section 2 of the 2015 Act, an Unnumbered Act Paper has been laid before Parliament and is in the same terms as this statement.
Today I am updating the House on the UK’s ongoing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and setting out how the Government will continue to support the Afghan people in the years ahead.
Nearly five years after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, the humanitarian situation remains severe and at risk of further deterioration. Nearly 22 million people will require humanitarian assistance this year, including 17.4 million facing acute food insecurity. Afghanistan faces one of the highest global burdens of child and maternal malnutrition, with nearly 5 million women, girls and boys expected to require treatment in 2026. Recurrent climate shocks, including drought and flooding, continue to drive food insecurity and vulnerability, and ongoing structural challenges continue to impact access to essential health services. These pressures are compounded by regional instability, economic fragility and disrupted supply chains.
The Taliban’s severe restrictions on women and girls, including on access to education, employment and participation in public life, continue to undermine fundamental freedoms and contribute to broader human rights concerns in Afghanistan. Women and girls should have equal access to opportunities and be able to participate fully in society. The ongoing denial of these rights presents a significant barrier to Afghanistan’s long-term development, stability and prosperity.
As we enter a new spending review period, this is an opportunity to reaffirm and renew our long-standing commitment to supporting the people of Afghanistan. As set out today by the Minister of State for International Development and Africa in her written ministerial statement to Parliament, and in the FCDO’s annual report and accounts published today, the UK will provide £105 million per year over the next three years—2026 to 29—to support the Afghan people. Afghanistan will remain one of the UK’s largest official development assistance portfolios during this period, reflecting both the scale of need and our continued commitment.
On 6 December 2018, the UK signed the Council of Europe convention on the manipulation of sports competitions (the Macolin convention).
The Government laid this convention in Parliament on 4 June 2026 in the Miscellaneous Series under Command Paper number CP 1595, accompanied by an explanatory memorandum.
In accordance with section 21 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRaG), I wish to inform the House that the 21 sitting day period that relates to this convention pursuant to section 20(1) CRaG is to be extended. The 21 sitting day period is to be extended by 15 sitting days.
This extension follows a request from the House of Lords International Agreements Committee for further time to consider the convention.
[HCWS284]
Official Development Assistance: Programme Country and Regional Allocations
The Minister of State for International Development and Africa, my noble Friend the right hon. Baroness Chapman of Darlington, has today made the following statement:
The FCDO official development assistance programme allocations that I set out on 19 March 2026 (HCWS1425) reflect how we are modernising and improving our approach to international development, following a year spent reviewing our priorities and redefining how we work.
In that statement, we did not publish individual country allocations. This was to allow our teams across the network to communicate with their host Governments before we published country allocations. Today I am updating the House with the FCDO’s ODA programme country and regional allocations from 2026-27 to 2028-29.
As I set out in March, the world has changed dramatically in the last three decades. Crises and instability across the world undermine our security and prosperity at home, as we have seen play out in the strait of Hormuz. Poverty, insecurity and climate risks are increasingly concentrated in fragile and conflict-affected states. New actors are shaping global development, and the countries we work with today want genuine partnership, not the paternalism of the past.
In reaction to this, we are modernising and improving our approach to have the greatest impact abroad and secure the best value for money for taxpayers at home. We are sharpening our focus on priorities that align with partner needs, UK public interest, and where we can drive real change. The changes we are making are encapsulated in four shifts, as we move from donor to investor, from service delivery to systems strengthening, grants to expertise, and international intervention to local leadership. Our policy paper, published today on gov.uk. sets out our approach in greater detail.
This funding will continue to focus on addressing the most severe impacts of Afghanistan’s protracted crisis. We will prioritise lifesaving services, including health and nutrition; support essential education; protect the most vulnerable at great risk of harm, abuse and discrimination; and strengthen livelihoods and climate resilience. We will also increase engagement with non-Taliban-affiliated Afghan partners to support locally led solutions, including assistance for Afghans returning to Afghanistan from neighbouring countries. Women and girls will remain central to this approach, as highlighted in the UK international strategic framework on women and girls 2026. Across UK-supported programmes, we will prioritise their rights and needs, and remain steadfast in our commitment that at least half of those reached by UK aid are women and girls.
We continue to engage third-party monitoring in addition to FCDO oversight, to ensure that aid is directed to those most in need. We expect to publish full results for 2025-26 in the summer. This will build on the 2024-25 FCDO bilateral ODA results, which supported at least 2.7 million people, including more than 1.7 million women and girls.
The UK continues to demonstrate solidarity with Afghan women. For example, we hosted events with the exiled Afghan women’s refugee cricket team during their visit to the UK in the summer, including an audience with His Majesty the King and engagements with the Foreign Secretary and me. The UK will continue to provide platforms for Afghan women to advocate for their rights and ensure that their voices inform UK policy and programming. The Foreign Secretary’s “All In” campaign, launched in December, reinforces the Government’s commitment to tackling violence against women and girls globally. In addition, the UK special envoy to Afghanistan visited Kabul in May and met a wide range of Afghan women and civil society groups to hear directly about their situation and their requests of the UK Government, and UK humanitarian advisers travelled to Islam Qala to understand at first hand the situation for vulnerable Afghans returning from Iran.
We continue to use our leadership to ensure an effective humanitarian response across the international community. We are taking forward with donors and partners the joint commitments we developed in the London compact on food security and nutrition in Afghanistan in late 2025. We continue to use our bilateral investment and engagement to work with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to support vital financing of basic services, especially in health, where the international funding outlook remains challenging.
The UK will continue to stand with the people of Afghanistan, providing lifesaving assistance, supporting the rights of women and girls, and working with partners to sustain essential services and support longer-term resilience.
[HCWS293]
Our bilateral programmes are being transformed. We will prioritise bilateral ODA where humanitarian needs are most acute, including fully protecting bilateral ODA allocations to Ukraine, Palestine and Sudan. The proportion of spending in FCAS will increase by around 13 percentage points to over 70% of all country and regional spending by 2028-29.
In other contexts, we will transition away from spending high levels of grant ODA, but our ambition and effort will remain high—our bilateral programmes will support partnerships with Governments to strengthen systems, leverage finance and move away from reliance on aid. Our work will be focused on areas that transform lives and build stability, and it will be demand-led, including: meeting the most basic need with lifesaving humanitarian assistance; supporting women and girls and helping them thrive; keeping children learning, even in conflict; upholding international humanitarian law and protecting vulnerable populations; strengthening health security; creating jobs and economic opportunity; and investing in climate action that protects people and prevents future crises.
We are limiting reductions of bilateral aid to humanitarian crises across the middle east and north Africa, and south Asia and Afghanistan, including in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. We will phase out FCDO bilateral country allocations to G20 countries, except in Turkey, where we help to share the burden on account of their hosting of refugees.
We expect that well over £1 billion per year of UK multilateral ODA will go to sub-Saharan Africa, as measured by imputed multilateral share statistics. That is because of our choices to increase our contribution to the World Bank’s International Development Association—which delivers around two-thirds of its work in Africa—and maintaining strong support for the African Development Fund. Factoring in imputed multilateral ODA and bilateral programmes that operate in sub-Saharan Africa but which are managed from the UK, we expect the share of FCDO ODA to sub-Saharan Africa to stay approximately the same—at around one third—compared to recent years.1 Moreover, British International Investment—the UK’s development finance institution—invests 60% of its portfolio in Africa. The UK’s new Africa approach recognises that delivering strong partnerships requires looking beyond aid, consistent with our modern international development approach. It is a shift towards modern, equal partnerships based on shared interests and using the full range of UK tools, not just ODA.
This reflects the broader shift that we are making to our bilateral partnerships. To support progress on shared global challenges, we need long-term, resilient partnerships. Stakeholders increasingly expect a more equal partnership with the UK. We need a systematic and coherent approach to build trust and credibility and to shift toward genuine, equitable partnership. We need to build partnerships beyond short-term transactions; partnerships that foster long-term co-operation based on ideas of mutuality—mutual respect, interest, accountability and learning.
Although we will prioritise funding where humanitarian needs are most acute, in other countries our ambition and effort will remain high—shifting to a demand-led partnership model that makes the most of what the whole UK has to offer. Our country network will have the flexibility and autonomy to deliver development interventions in the sectors that our partners want and need.
Our bilateral allocations will be complemented by a full spectrum of work. We are increasing the share of FCDO ODA we spend through multilaterals, targeted strategically towards the most effective multilateral organisations, such as the World Bank’s International Development Association, where each £1 we invest unlocks £4 of additional finance. BII’s £6.6 billion portfolio will help deliver the UK’s shift from donor to investor. Our international climate finance will balance support between mitigation and adaptation and maintain a focus on nature. A range of communities of expertise will work with countries to access trusted policy advice and strengthen systems.
Setting three years of ODA programme allocations provides teams with the predictability required to manage the transition to spending 0.3% of GNI on ODA. All plans are subject to revision as, by its nature, the Department’s work is dynamic. Programme allocations are continually reviewed to respond to changing global needs.
See table “FCDO country and regional ODA programme allocations 2026-27 to 2028-29”, which is available at:
1 Based on internal FCDO analysis forecasting FCDO region specific bilateral spend and UK imputed multilateral share data, compared to 2022-25 statistics on international development.