Corporate report

Government response to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact recommendations on: UK aid in Afghanistan, country portfolio review, November 2022

Published 10 January 2023

The Government welcomes the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s (ICAI) review of UK aid to Afghanistan from 2014 to 2021. We are grateful to ICAI for its recognition of the extraordinary efforts of the many UK civil servants who worked in Afghanistan, and for its tribute to those UK service personnel who lost their lives.

The UK was part of a NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. Our priorities were aligned with those of the US and other NATO member states. The UK’s involvement in Afghanistan in the period under review was closely co-ordinated across Government through the National Security Council (NSC), where the relevant Ministers agreed our strategic approach and priorities.

The ICAI report acknowledges that UK aid to Afghanistan was delivered in an extremely complex and challenging operating environment, and that successful state building takes time. We welcome ICAI’s recognition of the Government’s contribution in Afghanistan, including that:

• the UK played an influential leadership role to shape international humanitarian and development assistance and
• the UK’s work was coherent and UK aid had a positive impact on health services and education, expanding Afghanistan’s infrastructure, and empowering women and girls

During the review period between 2014 and 2020, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO), and its predecessors, ODA programmes and diplomacy contributed to the following results:

• improved health outcomes with basic health services reaching 85% of the population, resulting in a halving of maternal and infant mortality from a low base in 2002
• primary and secondary school enrollment increased to 9.6 million in 2018, from 1.1 million in 2001
• humanitarian assistance reached over 6 million people from 2014 to 2018, and a further 4.4 million people were reached between 2019 and 2020
• UK technical and diplomatic support helped the government of Afghanistan introduce reforms in budget allocation and management, improving the development budget execution rate from 67% in 2014 to 82% in 2020
• total domestic government revenue (excluding grants) as a percentage of GDP doubled from 6% in 2005 to 12% in 2017
• shaping Afghanistan’s international aid architecture – including advice and design of the Geneva Mutual Accountability Framework for partnership on aid

In this period, the UK spent approximately £1.7 billion ODA, or £246 million per year. Between 2001 and 2020, the UK spent almost £3.5 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in Afghanistan, annually spending around 3% of UK bilateral ODA.

The Government is grateful to ICAI for its note on UK aid to Afghanistan since 2021. The UK remains committed to supporting the people of Afghanistan. UK aid is continuing to provide vital life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable, including women and girls and marginalised groups, enabling access to food, medical supplies, and to basic services such as healthcare and education.

Our responses to ICAI’s specific recommendations are as follows:

Recommendation 1

‘In complex stabilisation missions, large-scale financial support for the state should only be provided in the context of a viable and inclusive political settlement, when there are reasonable prospects of a sustained transition out of conflict’.

Response: partially accept

The Government recognises that elections in Afghanistan were often disputed. Nevertheless, there was an elected government in place throughout the review period, which was significantly more inclusive than the pre-2001 and post-2021 Taliban regimes. The UK and other international partners provided support, including through ODA, which assisted this government in setting up key institutions, following the near collapse of the state under the Taliban in the 1990s.

The UK Government and its international partners were also clear that Afghanistan needed a more inclusive political settlement and government to help bring a lasting end to the conflict which has now affected Afghanistan for over four decades. We worked towards this aim with the Afghan Government and other stakeholders, supporting organisations including the High Peace Council, State Ministry of Peace, and the High Council for National Reconciliation.

Inclusive political settlements and state building processes can take decades to establish in both contexts of intra- and inter-state conflicts. The Government recognises that external interventions should be adapted to local needs and context and that “large-scale financial support” in conflict-affected contexts can come with considerable risk. A viable political settlement may not always be in place but large-scale support for the state should be dependent on a clear assessment of how support for the state will affect conflict dynamics and preferably, but not exclusively, that a reasonable prospect exists of a sustainable transition out of conflict. While that will usually mean that there is a political settlement process underway, the Government notes that there may be occasions when the UK provides support to a conflict-affected state without a political settlement in order to meet UK objectives.

Recommendation 2

‘UK aid should not be used to fund police or other security agencies to engage in paramilitary operations, as this entails unacceptable risks of doing harm. Any support for civilian security agencies should focus on providing security and justice to the public.’

Response: accept

UK ODA funding in Afghanistan did not pay for paramilitary operations. The UK Government paid the salaries of Afghan police officers, as part of a long-term state building objective to provide security and justice for the Afghan people. In accordance with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rules applying to the use of ODA, the UK Government can provide support to routine civil policing functions with the overall goal of promoting the economic development and welfare of developing countries.

The Government recognised that there were risks that the Afghan National Police (ANP), whose salaries we were funding, could be implicated in human rights violations. However, on balance, we assessed that stopping our funding would have significantly reduced funding for police and led to further insecurity, which would have been worse for the Afghan people.

We put in place mitigations to address human rights risks from our support to the ANP. These included a comprehensive package of institutional reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (which was responsible for the police), including to address corruption and mismanagement. We also used diplomatic channels to raise our concerns at a political level with the Afghan Government, and the multilateral donor committee to hold UNDP, the trust fund administrator, to account. For example, as a leading donor to the multilateral trust fund, we worked with UNDP to refresh its Human Rights Due Diligence Policy in 2020.

The UK will continue to use ODA in line with the OECD rules and will not use ODA to fund paramilitary operations. There are robust processes in place to ensure that current and future ODA delivered through the CSSF meets these rules, through established governance structures that ensure interventions are compliant with relevant legislation. This, however, does not prevent the UK from providing ODA support to police authorities, including the payment of salaries, where this meets UK objectives, and is in line with the ODA rules.

Recommendation 3

‘In highly fragile contexts, the UK should use scenario planning more systematically, to inform spending levels and programming choices.’

Response: accept

The Government welcomes ICAI’s recognition that there was substantial scenario planning, both led in the UK by the Cabinet Office, and in Afghanistan by our Kabul Embassy, which informed DFID’s programme and operational level spending in Afghanistan. Scenario planning was conducted to inform spending and the UK’s wider strategy development. While financial decisions were linked to scenario planning, we acknowledge that more could have been done at portfolio level. We recognise that scenario planning is one of many tools that needs to be considered as we take a suitably adaptive approach to our engagement in any fragile and conflict state.

Over the period of the review, Afghanistan was assessed as high risk, including for the national security of the UK. The National Security Council (NSC) reviewed our long-term interests and agreed that an unstable, weak and poor Afghanistan created threats to the UK such as terrorism, narcotics and illegal migration. ODA programme resources supported NSC objectives through helping create the foundations of a more stable and prosperous Afghan state.

The Government will continue to use scenario planning, where relevant, as an important tool in planning for development spend and ensuring that spend is effective. This will help ensure we can react efficiently and effectively when a situation quickly deteriorates.