Explainer

Comment

Development

Politics

War & peace

28 February 2025

5 min read

Viruses don’t respect borders and nine other reasons why aid is vital for security

Cuts are a dangerous false economy.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Cargo sits in nets inside a plane, a sign reads 'UK Aid'

Neil Bryden RAF/MOD, Wikimedia Commons.

The Minister for International Development Anneliese Dodds took the difficult step to resign following the Prime Minister’s announcement this week that he is slashing the aid budget to pay for more weapons. Minister Dodds wrote in her resignation letter that:

“Ultimately, these cuts will remove food and healthcare from vulnerable people."

The hefty reduction in our international aid budget does indeed put lives at risk around the world. However, the move also serves to undermine our own national security. A strong UK presence on the world stage comes not primarily through military strength but through diplomacy and targeted development funding.

General Lord Dannatt, former Chief of the General Staff, commented:

“In the wider world, it’s disappointing that we’re probably going to plunder the international development budget, because the UK’s influence in the world often comes through a combination of our hard power and our soft power, our diplomacy and our development funds.”

International aid is proven to be one of the most effective ways to build prosperity and peace. It is a strategic investment in national and international security, arguably more useful and cost-effective than military defence spending.

Cutting aid budgets may release funds in the short term, but in reality, it weakens Britain’s influence, undermines global stability, and increases security risks. It is not only false economy, but a potentially dangerous and counterproductive shift in policy.

Here are ten reasons why international aid is such a crucial investment in security:

1. Addressing root causes reduces terrorism.

Foreign aid helps foster peace, reduce poverty, and support development in the most vulnerable regions. When countries are stable, they are less likely to fall into chaos or become breeding grounds for terrorism and extremism. UK-funded education initiatives in Pakistan and Somalia, such as the Girls’ Education Challenge, have provided over 1.5 million marginalized girls with schooling, reducing the vulnerability of young people to extremist recruitment. By decreasing the appeal of radicalization, this investment has contributed to lowering the long-term threat of terrorism against British citizens at home and abroad.

2. Investing in global health reduces pandemic risks.

Viruses don’t respect borders. Our funding for Ebola response in West Africa has helped prevent global outbreaks, reducing the risk of deadly diseases spreading to the UK. Similarly, by investing in vaccinations against new strains of Covid around the world, Britain has strengthened its own pandemic preparedness and safeguarded public health at home.

3. Stronger relationships between nations reduce conflict

Post civil war UK support for Sierra Leone helped train police and government officials, strengthening long-term diplomatic ties and preventing a return to instability that might have spilled across the continent. This has also helped position the UK as a trusted diplomatic partner in West Africa, leading to trade agreements and political alliances that benefit Britain’s global interests.

4. Supporting stability reduces forced migration.

It is now acknowledged that it is building anchors, not walls, that is the best strategy to curb migration. The UK Aid Direct programme has provided economic and social support in countries like Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, reducing forced displacement and lowering pressure on UK border security. By stabilizing regions affected by conflict, Britain has been able to reduce illegal migration and the associated costs of border enforcement, asylum processing, and emergency housing.

5. Promoting sustainability reduces resource scarcity due to climate change.

The UK International Climate Finance (ICF) initiative supports sustainable agriculture and clean energy projects in Africa and Asia, mitigating competition over dwindling resources and preventing climate-driven conflicts that have contributed to making the world a more turbulent place. This has not only improved global stability but has also created opportunities for UK businesses in the green energy and sustainable development sectors.

6. Building resilience reduces international crime and instability.

UK funding has been instrumental in stabilizing Somalia, for example, improving their governance, training law enforcement, and reducing crime and piracy that threaten not only international shipping but tourism too. As a result, British shipping companies and tourists traveling in the region have faced fewer security risks, boosting confidence in UK-led trade and travel.

7. Preventing famine and malnutrition reduces political instability.

The UK-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) has helped prevent food crises in East Africa, reducing the likelihood of mass migration and conflict over resources. Without that investment, Britain would have likely spent far more on emergency humanitarian relief and crisis management, demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of preventative aid.

8. Building stronger economies abroad creates opportunities.

UK trade-focused aid, such as through the Prosperity Fund, has helped African nations develop stable economies, creating trade opportunities for Britain while reducing dependence on fragile states. Stronger economies in partner countries mean increased demand for British exports, benefiting UK businesses and job creation.

9. Humanitarian aid strengthens a nation’s global influence.

The UK has been a major donor in response to the Rohingya refugee crisis, contributing £350 million to support displaced people in Bangladesh and Myanmar—enhancing Britain’s standing as a global humanitarian leader and leading to soft power advantage on the global stage. This goodwill has translated into stronger diplomatic relations with key allies in South Asia, supporting UK interests in trade, security, and regional stability.

10. Disaster response builds goodwill and strategic partnerships.

Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the UK provided £20 million in emergency aid, strengthening ties with Caribbean nations and showcasing Britain’s global leadership in crisis response. These efforts have reinforced Britain’s role as a reliable partner in times of crisis, leading to closer economic and diplomatic relationships with countries across the Caribbean.

If the West vacates aid funding it creates a very significant vacuum into which other countries will step. For example, Russia has already sent Wagner mercenaries to patrol the Central African Republic and Mali. This is not only bad for the citizens of those areas, but also from a UK national security perspective. It would be extremely concerning if the Russian state were able to build a sweeping base of influence and soft power in the global South.

With an increasingly fragile world, the tool that is most useful for national security at this time is international aid. The rise in conflict, migration, terrorism and other pre-war conditions is directly due to the impact of poverty – which now affects 44 per cent of the global population, wealth concentration – which increases the chance of financial crises, weakened trade routes – due to Brexit, war in Ukraine and the Middle East, and new tariff policies in the US, and climate change – which exacerbates all those tensions. If the UK want an effective defence strategy in these turbulent times, we must reconsider doubling down on our international aid commitments, not abandoning them.

Join with us - Behind the Seen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Alongside other benefits (book discounts etc.), you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing what I’m reading and my reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief

Find out more and sign up

Article

Comment

Migration

Politics

Romance

3 July 2025

5 min read

Families like mine are impossible now, thanks to the idol that is the net migration target

Politician priests are making pointless sacrifices on the altar of numbers

Joel Pierce

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

A Border Force officer wears body armour with Immigration Enforcement written on the back

UK Border Force.

Let me tell you a love story. Eighteen years ago, in a time before politicians had taken to immolating their values on the altar of the semiannual net migration totals, I fell for the pretty Scottish bridesmaid at my sister’s wedding. The romance presented some challenges for an American like me, but none that were insurmountable. She found a year-long internship near me in Seattle and, just before she returned home, I popped the question.

The process of applying for a UK visa was just another bit of the tedious logistics of an overseas move, the kind of thing a romantic comedy skips over with a ‘One Year Later’ movie subtitle so that it can end with a joyous wedding ceilidh in a picturesque Scottish locale. Our first few years together in Edinburgh were lean ones. Having takeaway coffee more than once a week felt like a scandalously indulgent luxury. Even so, I was able to progress seamlessly from my marriage visa to indefinite leave to remain, to citizenship.

None of this would be possible if we were young twentysomethings in love today. We would fail every test of what the Home Office now considers to be acceptable romance.

During our first year of marriage, the stipend my wife received while training for ministry would have been well short of the £18,600 income threshold introduced in 2012 for a sponsoring spouse, let alone the £29,000 required now. While we did have some savings, they were nowhere near the £88,500 now needed to waive the income requirement, and, in any case, would have been substantially drained by the £5,000 in fees and health surcharges that a two-and-half-year spouse visa now costs. It is little wonder Brits who have found love abroad, even ones in a substantially better financial and professional position than we were then, are now finding it impossible to move back to the UK.

What is the cause of these new barriers? A hint can be found in the title of a recent Guardian article about recommendations for a slight relaxation of the income threshold to between £23,000 to £25,000. ‘Lowering UK’s income requirement for family visas ‘would increase net migration’, the piece was headlined. When even the most left wing major daily in Britain can’t report on the possibility of things being marginally easier for Brits who have the temerity to love a non-citizen, without framing it in terms of net migration, it’s a sign that we have all fallen captive to this singular statistic.

Net migration is a number created by humans and yet it has come to play the role of an angry god which demands sacrifices every time it is reported. The right of working class people to marry a non-citizen spouse, the economic viability of our universities, and the proper staffing of the NHS are all victims its politician-priests have offered up in hopes that they would satiate its hunger. Net zero maybe next.

There is no particular reason to think totting up the total number of people who arrived in the UK with the intention of staying here for a year and then subtracting the total number who left with the intention of staying abroad for a similar duration is a particularly meaningful exercise. It conflates people like me, who came here with every intention to settle and start a family, with students coming for a one-year master’s, doctors filling vital roles in NHS with children try to stay with with a migrant parent and Afghan refugees seeking long-term sanctuary with oil workers serving time in Aberdeen before moving on to Calgary or Brunei.

The dominance of this statistic in our discourse has warped our moral discernments.

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to think carefully about how much of each form of migration to allow, but when they are all grouped together under this single measure a peculiar logic sets in. Want to do the right thing by welcoming refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong? Well, then, we’ll have to offset that with restricting visas for overseas students and throwing our higher education sector into chaos. Need more highly skilled programmers working in banks in London? Well, maybe we can balance that by demanding care workers abandon their kids if they want to look after someone in Nottingham. There is no reason to weigh the needs of these different sectors against each other, and yet the logic of this statistic demands that we do.

The Bible has a word for human-made things which take on their own singular, violent logic. It calls them idols. While that word may conjure images of golden calves, the accusation which biblical writers consistently make against idolaters, that their idols blind them to what is really important and numbs their critical thinking, applies equally well when the idol is a statistic. The dominance of this statistic in our discourse has warped our moral discernments. It has made us unable to say what should be said without glancing nervously at its imposing shadow. It causes us to say things that should never be said and not notice how absurd they are.

Instead, we should be able to celebrate that hundreds of thousands of people want to come to study at our universities (the vast majority of whom return home after finishing their studies) and, hopefully, someday also be able to celebrate when hundreds of thousands of refugees are able to return to a peaceful and liberated Ukraine without having to calculate that the former will raise and the latter lower our totals. We should be able to welcome easing of income restrictions on spouse visas without noting that it will lead to a marginal increase in net migration. We should be able to see that sending an eight- and eleven-year-old back to Brazil without their parents is not, in the words of a Home Office official, “a degree of disruption in family life” which is “proportionate to the legitimate aim of maintaining effective immigration control”, but rather a gross violation of human decency.

Migrants are not just numbers on a balance sheet. The diversity of our lives, what we give to the UK, what we receive in return, cannot be summed up in a single annual figure. And yet every six months, as the figure comes out, politicians express disappointment and announce measures to put that little bit of extra pressure on us, so that maybe a few more of us who can leave will. In the process they are sacrificing to this idol not just the peace of mind and the economic well-being of many migrants, but also much of the vitality of the nation as a whole. The Bible has a solution for idols. They are only fit to be melted down, destroyed, and forgotten. It is time to consider giving this one a similar treatment.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief