Heather Stewart is right (The spirit of the G8 ‘make poverty history’ summit of 2005 seems long gone, 6 July). Twenty years later, we are in a completely different world, facing overlapping crises and a retreat from global responsibility.
In just the first half of 2025 alone, USAID has been dismantled, and the UK, France, Germany and Canada have all scaled back their development budgets. Many lower-income countries are still reeling from crises that they did not cause, spending more on debt repayments than on healthcare or education.
Although the UK aid budget is not likely to increase any time soon, the government still has a chance to honour its manifesto pledge “to rebuild Britain’s reputation on international development”. It must set a bold agenda by championing debt relief and reforms to the global economic system, including making the international tax system fairer, in order to scale up countries’ public financing. The recent Financing for Development summit in Spain was a missed opportunity. With a concerted effort to build public support, the UK government must show that international solidarity is not a thing of the past.
Romilly Greenhill
CEO, Bond, the UK network for NGOs
• Regarding Simon Tisdall’s article (The UN is our best defence against a third world war. As Trump wields the axe, who will fight to save it? 6 July), the UN is probably weaker than it has ever been, but it is needed as never before, as is internationalism more generally, expressed in dialogue, cooperation and the solidarity of financial aid. That our prime minister has “slashed its aid budget by £6bn, to pay for nuclear bombs”, and plans to build six new arms factories, boasting that the defence industry will become “an engine for economic growth”, shows how unlikely it is that the UK will contribute to the growth of internationalism and strengthening of the UN.
War’s ever-greater barbarity and destruction at the human level is at the same time a massive assault on nature, causing pollution and carbon emissions on a grand scale. Who will fight to strengthen and reform the UN, build global cooperation and create a future for the world’s children? We must, all of us, in an international movement of the willing and the caring, before it really is too late.
Diana Francis
Bath
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