By Hannah Corbett 
For the majority of party members, lobbyists and media
attending the three main political party conferences in the UK, domestic issues
take precedence. Given the current
climate of austerity and falling living standards that’s not surprising. But does it also reflect a broader lack and
quality of debate on international issues in the UK? Is this having a negative impact on public
support for UK international development policy? And what role do research
organisations like IDS have to play in addressing this problem?
On the fringe
Discussions about international issues are mostly confined
to the well-trodden fringe circuit at all three of the UK’s main political
parties’ conferences. You’ll generally find them at the end of a long corridor
in a too hot/too cold pre-fab conference room, with the odd cheese straw or
vegetable samosa thrown in to enliven proceedings. What I imagine a UN side event to be like (although
I’ve never been).
At Labour Party Conference this year, taking place in
Brighton right on IDS’ door step, there were some genuinely interesting
conversations about international development happening on the fringes. Margaret
Hodge (MP and Chair of the Public Accounts Committee in the UK Parliament)
and Ivan Lewis (Shadow Secretary of
State for International Development) spoke engagingly about the central role of
tax in tackling inequality at home and abroad at the Christian Aid and Action Aid event. And ODI’s Executive
Director Kevin
Watkins talked about what a new set of global development goals might look
like in the context of the UK at the Labour
Campaign for International Development’s (LCID) reception, which was timely
given the recent
announcement from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that whatever
replaces the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 will be applicable in
all countries, not just developing ones.
What more aid?
But why do these conversations remain for the most part on
the fringes? And that’s not just at
party conferences, but in parliament and the media as well. The issue that generally hits the headlines
or takes the main stage in the UK when it comes to international development is
aid.
Aid undoubtedly continues to have an important role to play
in UK international development policy.
But talking about the UK’s role in the world solely in terms of whether
we do or don’t spend 0.7% of GNI on Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) misses
the bigger picture. And when polls and
surveys, including IDS’ own UK Public
Opinion Monitor, report that public support for aid and international
development is dwindling, it’s hardly surprising given that debates on these
issues have become stuck in an ‘aid’ rut.
Changing the
conversation
- We need to talk about the world as it is not as it was – this means less about aid and more about the role of emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China, about high growth rates in Africa, about the positive impact of growing domestic tax revenues in developing countries.
- We need to link stories about poverty at a national and a global level and highlight the ways in which people’s lives are connected.
This is where the international development research
community and organisations like IDS can help.
From the role
of rising powers, to improving
taxation systems in developing countries, to shining a light on the impact
of the food, fuel and financial crises on communities across the world, to
the increase in use
of food banks in high-income countries – this is knowledge that we have at
our fingertips.
But we need to be willing to engage in these debates and by working
more closely with the media and politicians actively seek to reframe the
narrative. At a time when UKIP are
growing in popularity and with concerns about increasing isolationism being
voiced, it’s critical that we start telling a different story about development
that isn’t just about aid and that resonates more clearly with those outside of
the party conference bubble.
