UK doubles aid to Afghanistan

The UK is to double its humanitarian and development aid to Afghanistan, which will provide urgent life-saving assistance to millions of people suffering from the conflict, drought and Covid-19.

This takes the total UK aid to Afghanistan this year to £286 million, one of the UK’s largest bilateral programmes. It means the UK’s total aid contribution to the country since 2001 is now around £3.5 billion.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, “This doubling of UK aid demonstrates our commitment to the people of Afghanistan to support a stable, peaceful future for the country.

“We call on others to follow our lead to ensure the most vulnerable Afghans receive the humanitarian assistance that they need,” he added.

The new funding will build on previous support to Afghanistan which has already helped almost 10 million more children go to school compared with 2001, helped to reduce maternal mortality by more than 42 per cent, and helped to clear more than eight million landmines and other unexploded munitions.

Separately, as a result of the current crisis, we are supporting British nationals, dual nationals, and those Afghans who worked for the UK government to leave Afghanistan.

The UK government has sent Rapid Deployment Teams to Kabul to support UK staff on the ground to process and arrange these departures.

The increase follows the announcement of a new UK resettlement scheme to welcome a total of up to 20,000 Afghan women, children, and others most in need, to resettle in the UK in the long-term.

The new route is separate from, and in addition to, the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), which offers any current or former locally-employed staff who are assessed to be under serious threat to life priority relocation to the UK.

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