Over a billion people worldwide live on less than $1.25 a day. Our work helps people in developing countries to lift themselves out of poverty.
Fighting world poverty is about relieving hunger, getting more children into school, preventing killer diseases, improving healthcare, and giving people access to water and sanitation. Each of these is a priority in itself, but each priority is only one part of the broad landscape of international development.
As a UK government department, DFID is answerable to taxpayers for what we achieve with the support we provide. A little aid can help a lot of people - as has been shown with the 7 million inexpensive anti-malaria bed nets we have delivered in recent years. We organise our aid carefully to ensure it goes where it is most needed.
Working with governments and international organisations
Working directly with governments of developing countries to help them lift their citizens out of poverty is central to achieving our aims. Before we give aid to developing countries we ask for their pledge to reduce poverty and uphold human rights. We also require them to strengthen how they manage public finances, promote good government and fight corruption.
Aid is also provided through international organisations, such as the United Nations and the European Union, and through UK charities that help developing countries and their citizens.
We organise emergency relief for the victims of natural or man-made disasters and give long-term aid to help them rebuild their lives.
Targeting aid
We give the biggest share of aid to the poorest nations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular we are scaling up our support to ‘fragile’ states torn by violent conflict and unable to protect their citizens.
To make sure our support is effective and that we meet our targets, including the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, we have set out our priorities in the 2009 White Paper ‘Building our common future’.
Building effective governments
Helping countries to build strong and effective governments that listen to their citizens and take account of their needs is also central to our work. We help build states that are capable of good government, that give their citizens a say in how the country is run and are accountable to the poor.
Effective states are crucial to development. They protect people’s rights and provide security, economic growth and services like education and healthcare. Building a better government takes time and has to come from within each country, but international partners can help. Therefore we work not just with governments but also with citizens and organisations like charities that are separate from government.
Tackling corruption and violence
Corruption hits poor people hardest. We work to address the underlying causes of corruption and the international factors, such as illicit flows of money across borders, that allow it to flourish.
We give practical help to governments to tighten financial management and improve oversight of spending, and we support civil society and the media to demand greater accountability in the use of public resources.
We also assist in the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases both in developing countries and internationally, including through special police units in the UK.
Economic growth and improving public services
Economic growth is the single most powerful way of pulling people out of poverty. We help poor people benefit from growth by tackling trade barriers and supporting initiatives like small business loans.
We work with partner governments and organisations to improve public services – to make sure poor people get better access to health, education, water, sanitation and social protection. We have pledged to increase our support to public services to at least 50% of our direct support to countries.
The environment and UN reform
Protecting the environment is essential to the success of international development. We are helping developing countries adapt to climate change in ways that will not slow economic growth. We support investment by the World Bank and the private sector in developing low carbon energy.
Developing countries must have a stronger say in how the international system works. We are pushing for UN reforms and in particular we want to see a single system for responding to humanitarian crises and more skilled teams for emergency relief.
We want the World Bank and IMF to help developing countries cope better with economic shocks. At the same time we are pushing to reform EU aid so it can play a leading role in reducing poverty.
Communicating our work
Communications play an important role in all our work. We try to make sure people in the UK as well as overseas are aware of what we do. By demonstrating the impact of our work and raising awareness of development issues, we hope to build public support, which in turn allows us to do more to help the world’s poorest people. We have introduced a new logo, UKaid, to show how the UK government is investing in development to improve people’s lives and fight global poverty.