UK foreign aid ‘wasted’ without religious freedom

British aid is ‘wasted’ in light of the increasing plight of religious minorities in countries such as Pakistan and Egypt, according to an influential US commentator.

Paul Marshall, British-born Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute’s Centre for Religious Freedom, whose book Silenced on blasphemy laws worldwide is to be published by Oxford University Press in the autumn, told Lapido this week: ‘Pakistan's blasphemy laws not only target insult, but repress any thinking about society that deviates from the radicals' agenda.

‘In such an environment foreign aid is wasted. Religious freedom is not an add-on, it is key to development.’

Now lobbyists and church leaders are increasing their pressure on the UK government over its human rights strategy.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Lord Howell of Guildford, admitted in a reply to a question in the House of Lords from Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter last week, that there was ‘no central record of expenditure on such activity’.

'It is not possible to give a precise figure of how much the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spent on monitoring religious freedom overseas in 2010-11’, he added.

He said that the FCO would have a centrally-held £5million Human Rights and Democracy Fund dedicated specifically to supporting human rights projects in 2011-12.

‘We will fund projects that focus on a number of priority areas, including freedom of religion or belief. These allocations have not yet been finalised.’

He said that a ‘high number of bids’ for funding from the £5million pot for all human rights were currently being assessed.

That figures looks small when set against the UK government’s total spending pledge on overseas development aid which is set to increase to £12billion by 2013. That figure in turn amounts to a forecast of 0.7 per cent of GNI (Gross National Income), and is in line with the UK’s commitment to the UN-backed Millennium Development Goals.

A government source told Lapido that the right to religious freedom was only one priority among many other human rights issues so could not be treated as a separate entity.

Earlier this year, Roman Catholic Cardinal Keith O'Brien accused the UK government of operating an ‘anti-Christian foreign policy’ after they agreed to increase aid to Pakistan to more than £445million, without any commitment to religious freedom for Christians.

The assassination in March of Shahbaz Bhatti, Minister for Minority Affairs and the only Christian in the Pakistani Cabinet, has focussed the persecution of Christians in some Muslim-majority countries. Bhatti’s death comes after Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five, was sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy in the Punjab province of Pakistan – which she denies. A mob had previously raided her home and beaten her.

Bibi was uniquely mentioned by name in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas sermon last year.

The UK’s position on the protection of religious freedom is out of step with the US, where an International Religious Freedom Act was passed 13 years ago.

The act monitors the status of freedom of thought, conscience and religion as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is steered by a consortium of people of different faiths to give independent policy recommendations to the US President.