When the Prime Minister announced a big increase in defence spending to confront the growing threats in our more dangerous world, he vowed the UK would “deploy all our resources to achieve security”. He was right to do so – but the government must ensure we also prevent conflicts. Such conflicts, if left unaddressed, will rebound on the British people – making us less safe and costing us more money in the long run. As a former British Army general now running an organisation focused on preserving peace abroad, I know more money for more guns and tanks only takes us so far. Defence and development are two sides of the same coin.
To succeed, the UK must move beyond simply reacting to crises after they erupt and do the hard, often unseen work of preventing conflict from breaking out in the first place. That requires patiently building stable institutions, mediating in disputes, and responding rapidly when conflicts occur. Last year global violence was estimated to cost $19.97 trillion – equivalent to the GDP of China. We now have a quarter of the world’s population living in areas impacted by conflict – two billion people. We must find ways to use our expertise to tackle this urgent problem.
The UK is a world leader in tackling conflict – we have expertise and convening power that can be instrumental. We should invest in existing peacebuilding capabilities. Capabilities that are often low-cost interventions, helping people in conflict-afflicted countries.
Take the work of my own organisation, the HALO Trust. We are clearing mines and munitions from warzones as the first step to preventing further conflict. That is stopping the likelihood of more refugees having to reach the UK in small boats in the first place.
In Afghanistan, there are now four million people living on land cleared by the HALO Trust who could otherwise have fled to Europe – a project that costs far less than the daily £4m bill for asylum hotels in the UK. But still one in five Afghans live in areas affected by landmines and unexploded ordnance.
Or Cambodia, where a fresh border conflict has broken out over landmines. These are the kinds of places where the UK has been investing time and resources for over 30 years – stepping back now will only open the door to China to fill the void.
The UK Government is having to take tough decisions about how it spends its aid budget and where. The same is true in Germany and France with aid budgets depleting.
Peacebuilding expenditure has nearly halved from £360m to £194m, over three years, because of reductions to the aid budget. The capacity to meet the challenges created by conflict is stretched – and we must refocus our efforts.
As new research by the Chatham House policy institute warns, reducing spending on conflict prevention and peacebuilding will rebound on the UK by weakening international security and fuelling migration.
The UK has previously had a peacebuilding pot of money called the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) and the Integrated Security Fund (ISF). But the former no longer exists, and the latter is now focused more closely on tackling domestic security issues inside the UK.
I believe the government should invest in a dedicated fund to tackle conflict at source – combining resources from the FCDO, MoD, Cabinet Office, and the private sector to tackle the root causes of conflict – avoiding the need to constantly respond to the next humanitarian emergency. Let’s stop these from happening in the first place.
As Sir Keir Starmer also warned in his speech to the United Nations last year, “to grapple only with the effects of war, poverty, climate change, pandemics or irregular migration when they arrive on our doorstep is to set ourselves up to fail”.
