Bond

Since last year’s announcement of the cuts to UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) we have received and analysed drips of information, from the Spring Statement 2025, the Comprehensive Spending Review, the FCDO Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26 to ODA allocations for 2026/27 onwards.

Five years since the change in government in Afghanistan, millions of Afghans remain trapped in a cycle of crisis, displacement and vulnerability. While humanitarian assistance has prevented far worse outcomes, emergency aid alone cannot provide a sustainable future. UK-based NGOs, working alongside Afghan organisations and communities, are supporting locally led responses that address immediate needs while strengthening resilience and recovery over the longer term.

As conflicts become increasingly urbanised, the use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA) has become a common feature of war. This is causing devastating human suffering and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure. In 2025, explosive weapons killed more than 22,600 civilians across 65 countries and territories. When explosive weapons with wide-area effects are used, civilians account for most casualties. This is because they were designed for open battlefields, not cities.

Access to safe water is essential for public health, dignity and stability. Yet in fragile and conflict-affected countries such as Yemen, water systems are vulnerable not only to local conflict but also to global geopolitical instability.

Picture this: you are seven years old, sitting on a classroom floor with 120 other children. Your teacher is teaching subtraction. There are no desks. No textbooks. No colourful posters. No smartboard. You have a few bottle tops to use as counters. Then the sky turns dark. Wind rushes through the open windows and through cracks in the brick wall. Thunder booms. Rain hammers on the tin roof so loudly that nobody can hear. Some children are frightened. The headteacher shouts: “School is closed.

In April 2026, Bond reported that UK aid had fallen by more than £1 billion in a single year, to 0.43% of gross national income, and the steepest cuts are still ahead. By 2027/28 the budget will reach 0.3%. This is around £6 billion a year less than it would have been at 0.5%, and the lowest level as a share of national income since 1999. For organisations that built their plans around institutional money, the ground is moving. The instinct in a shrinking market is to apply for everything.

There is a quiet violence that rarely makes headlines. It does not arrive with weapons or sirens. It arrives as a registration form that a blind person cannot complete. A health facility where staff speak but never sign. A protection system designed to help survivors that a survivor with a disability simply cannot access.

At the Global Partnerships Conference in May, young people from across the world presented the Ten-Point Plan for Change, ten demands built from consultations with young people, setting out what genuine partnership must look like. This is not about a tick-box exercise. It is about impact. Lived experience helps people understand problems more deeply and provides the knowledge needed to develop effective solutions.

In 2024 Labour promised a world free from poverty on a liveable planet. But our new prime minister inherits a UK government navigating a world of profound instability – conflict, climate breakdown, rising inequality, shrinking civic space and a global rollback of rights. People across the UK are feeling the consequences through higher prices, insecure employment, pressure on public services and a growing sense that politics is disconnected from real people’s lives. And they are not alone.

Anyone working in philanthropy today will tell you this is an unprecedented moment. The world feels like it’s on fire, from escalating conflicts to the erosion of international law. Devastating public aid cuts by western governments, including the US and UK, have upended the global nonprofit sector, driving demand for private funding and testing donors’ ability to best direct their dollars.