Melito of Sardis, On Pascha (2nd century):

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer just cut the UK aid budget from 0.5% of GNI to 0.3% in 2027 to fund increases in defence spending. He says he’s making tough choices, but cutting funding for the world’s poorest people is the easiest—and cruellest—choice he could make (1/4)

NEW: @ianmitchell1.bsky.social & @samhugh3s.bsky.social find a 1 year US aid freeze could trigger an economic shock of 1% of GNI in 23 economies—with 8 countries, incl. South Sudan, Somalia & Ethiopia, facing a devastating 3%+ hit. Which other countries could step up? www.cgdev.org/blog/which-c...

Letting Asylum Seekers Work Is Not a “Pull Factor” - why do politicians get away with repeating the evidence-free argument? www.cgdev.org/blog/letting...

Our new blog highlights how abnormal is the current Gov's policy of using the limited foreign aid budget to fund support for asylum seekers within the UK. Before 2014, nearly no UK asylum seeker support was funded via aid, even when it faced spikes in applicants similar to today's (eg around 2000).

"The Centre for Global Development (CGD), a think-tank, reckons that if Britain had classified asylum spending the same way in the 1990s and 2000s, and had spent as much as it does today per asylum-seeker, in some years the entire aid budget would have been swallowed up."