1 minute read
THE NHS IS DEFINITELY ON THE TABLE
Don’t hijack the aid budget
Following the election Global Justice Now has been campaigning against a new assault on UK aid. Boris Johnson’s government is threatening to accelerate the hijacking of the aid budget into a tool to benefit British interests, rather than fight global poverty. This trend has been taking place over many years but it has stepped up a gear with reports that the prime minister has been considering merging the Department for International Development with the Foreign Office as he looks to use more aid money as a sweetener for post-Brexit free trade deals (see pages 14-15).
In late January we took a stand against this trend by protesting at the UK-Africa Investment Summit, hosted by Boris Johnson in a luxury hotel in the shadow of Canary Wharf and funded by £15 million in aid. We co-ordinated an open letter with eleven organisations to condemn the use of aid money to “expand the UK’s economic and political power over the African continent”. The prime minister tried to announce a green policy to no longer spend aid money on supporting coal overseas, but this was soon exposed as something that hasn’t happened since 2012 anyway. Meanwhile, 90% of the energy deals announced at the summit were for fossil fuel projects, to a value of almost £2 billion.
Sign the petition to Boris Johnson here:
globaljustice.org.uk/aidhijack
© 2019 Peter Marshall mylondondiary.co.uk
Migration is a human right!
Global Justice Now joined allies from the London Permanent People’s Tribunal on Migration (PPT) outside the Home Office on international migrants day. The morning demonstration was attended by members of migrant and refugee community groups, human rights defenders, trade unionists and the anti-racist movement on Wednesday 18 December.
We made it clear to the newlyelected government that we will continue to stand up for the rights of migrants. Speeches during the protest deplored the fact that migrants are increasingly facing racism, exploitation, human rights violations and are dying at borders across the world. Global Justice Now is a member of the steering group of the PPT, which organised a two-day hearing into the UK’s hostile environment for migrants in 2018. A booklet with testimonies from the hearings was released late last year.
Read more about the PPT at:
