This is a guest piece By Virendra Sharma, Member of Parliament for the UK


Twenty-five-year-old Josephat is a “Moran” — a young male warrior — from Samburu, northern Kenya. In Samburu culture, the Moran’s main priority is to provide security. After watching his own sister nearly bleed to death due to female genital mutilation (FGM), Josephat has taken it upon himself to campaign to end the cultural practise of FGM. “I saw how FGM could ruin someone’s life and I thought it was important for me to take the initiative and work to abandon the practice.”

Josephat wouldn’t have been able to do this without the support of the Pastoralist Child Foundation — a project supported by UK aid. The UK is supporting an African-led movement to end FGM in 17 countries, and it’s working. More than 13,000 communities - over 10 million people - have pledged to ban FGM altogether.

The United Kingdom spends just 7p of every £10 GBP of its national income on international aid and development, but the impact it has is phenomenal.

As a member of the International Development Committee in Parliament, I see the impact of UK aid every day. Over 11 million children have been given an education because of UK aid. It has ensured that 5.1 million births took place safely with the help of nurses, midwives or doctors. It's helped 62 million people access clean water, better sanitation or improved hygiene facilities and reached 13 million people with lifesaving food assistance in humanitarian crises. The numbers don’t lie.

Over the last few weeks, the Mail on Sunday has published a series of unfounded accusations regarding UK aid and corruption, and is calling for the UK to scrap the law that protects international aid. Now it would be irresponsible of me to not address the issue of corruption in aid and development; any aid programme must take a vigilant stance against corruption, as the UK government continues to do. But the idea that by abandoning aid we can help end corruption is nonsensical. Corruption tends to hit poor people the hardest so to cut support entirely would be punishing them twice over.

Image: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development

As a global citizen, I believe that we all have a responsibility to tackle the world’s most challenging issues, together. The number of children that die before the age of five has been halved in the last twenty-five years; the number of girls receiving a primary education has increased; we’ve nearly eliminated polio and we’ve cut the number of malaria deaths by 60% since 2000. All possible because of support from countries like the UK. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought the job was finished. And we’d be letting down the people who need our help the most.

There are still over 800 million people living in extreme poverty. This is the type of poverty that makes parents choose between feeding the family or buying medicine for their sick child. Extreme poverty is abhorrent and has no place in today's modern world. Despite our best efforts, diseases that could be prevented by vaccines still kill many children before they even reach the age of five. Around the world, girls and women still suffer through discriminatory laws, and climate change is the biggest threat that humankind has ever faced. I’m not saying UK aid is going to solve all of these problems, but it will certainly help.

I’m a proud supporter of UK aid and will continue to be throughout my time in parliament. Yes, we always have to make sure that it’s spent wisely and as a member of the International Development Committee, I’ll continue to scrutinise the work of DfID to ensure we stamp out all forms of corruption. But to deny the impact of UK aid is ignorant, and it’s an insult to people like Josephat who battle every day to make the world a better place.


Virendra Sharma has been the Labour MP for Ealing and Southall since 2007. He is member of the International Development Select Committee, and is the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Tuberculosis and the APPG for Hepatitis. 


The views expressed here are not necessarily those of each of the partners of Global Citizen. 

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The Mail on Sunday is wrong about UK aid. I see progress everyday