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Ethiopia

Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will make a statement on the status of the food shortage in Ethiopia; and what provisions are being made to prevent it recurring in the longer term. [133563]

Hilary Benn: The August 2003 update of the Ethiopian Government/UN Emergency Assistance Requirements and Implementation Options stated that for the period August-December unmet requirements were 37,458 metric tonnes of pulses and vegetable oil, while cereal food needs were covered.

Our Country Assistance Plan for Ethiopia, which was published in March, outlines the various methods that we are using to take forward our longer-term food strategy. We are working with the Ethiopian Government and Ireland Aid to pilot new approaches to improving roads and transport in rural areas. We are also working at federal and regional level in Ethiopia to learn policy-relevant lessons about key food security issues; for example we have also supported a study of destitution and the policy options available to address this.

The Ethiopian Government has itself established a task force to address the issue of food insecurity.

Foreign Aid

Mr. Connarty: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development which poor countries are considered to be committed to reform and therefore received or are due to receive increased allocations of direct budget support. [132098]

Hilary Benn: The UK will provide Direct Budget Support to a country where that country's government demonstrates a credible commitment to poverty reduction and where the developmental benefits of providing direct budget support outweigh the fiduciary risks, as outlined in the DFID guidelines "Managing Fiduciary Risk When Providing Direct Budget Support".

Countries where, subject to these criteria being met, allocations of direct budget support have increased or are expected to increase are India, Afghanistan (where we make contributions to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund), Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. Funding agreements in some countries are still being negotiated.

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Fossil Fuels

Mr. Drew: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will make a statement on his Department's policy towards the provision of loans and loan guarantees by multi-national banks to fossil fuel projects overseas; and what plans he has to amend his policy. [133632]

Hilary Benn: The UK is a shareholder in a number of multilateral Development Banks which provide loans and loan guarantees for fossil fuel projects. The Government's policy is to ensure that these institutions comply with their own policies and procedures in all projects for which they provide finance. In considering whether to provide loans or loan guarantees this should include an assessment of the possible social and environmental impacts. In addition, our policy is to fully understand the developmental implications of fossil fuel projects. We are particularly concerned that the management of revenues from such projects occurs transparently and with a positive developmental impact. We hope that initiatives such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative will help to achieve this.

Overseas Development Aid

Chris McCafferty: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development when he expects the United Kingdom Government will reach the target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national product spent on overseas development aid; and if he will make a statement on the percentage allocated to reproductive health programmes. [132310]

Hilary Benn: The Government remain firmly committed to the 0.7 per cent. target. Although there is no timetable for reaching the target, the trend in the ratio of official development assistance (oda) to Gross National Income (GNI) has been upward since 1997, when it was 0.26 per cent. By 2005–06 the ratio will be 0.4 per cent. the highest since 1981.

DFID spent over £270 million on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS programmes in the financial year 2002–03. We regard reproductive health as an essential and inseparable element of good health. We believe that the best way to deliver this is for people to be given the right, freedom and support necessary to enable them to take full individual and personal control of their own fertility and reproductive health. Reproductive health continues to be a priority for DFID and we remain firmly committed to the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) target of achieving access to reproductive health for all by 2015.

The allocation of funds under the UK international development programme is decided on the basis of country programmes, agreed following discussions with partner governments, and also depends on the existence of effective partners in the country, either government, international or civil society organisations, to ensure that the funding is well spent and achieves its objectives.

DFID support for reproductive health is wide ranging. It covers HIV/AIDS programmes, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections and maternal and adolescent health. Reproductive health

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also encompasses the services for family planning, contraception and childbearing that make an important contribution to increasing women's choice and opportunity and to preventing unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. Family planning services also provide an important opportunity to improve sexual health and in particular to increase women's access to methods that help prevent HIV infection. DFID's total expenditure cannot therefore be apportioned between HIV/AIDS and Family Planning, as many reproductive health programmes and projects contribute to both objectives (for example through the provision of information on family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention or the provision of condoms).

Refugee Camps

Angus Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development pursuant to his answer of 14 October, reference 131643, how many refugee camps are (a) directly run and (b) indirectly aided by UNHCR; and if he will make a statement. [132907]

Hilary Benn: UNHCR estimates there are nearly 116,000 Liberian refugees in the south of Guinea, including some 67,000 assisted in four camps managed by them. The rest are spontaneously settled in urban centres. UNHCR is registering newly arrived refugees in border areas and arranging for them to be transferred to the camps. They are coordinating with other agencies to provide food, water and sanitation to newly arriving refugees.

My reply of 14 October to the hon. Member should have made it clear that, while our support to refugees is through UNHCR and other agencies, and in that sense is not direct, £600,000 of our support to UNHCR this year was specifically allocated for Liberian and Ivorian refugees in Guinea. I apologise for my misunderstanding.

Reproductive Health

Chris McCafferty: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will make a statement on the availability of reproductive health supplies globally; and what steps the Government is taking to increase availability. [132311]

Hilary Benn: Estimates suggest that 350 million couples worldwide lack access to modern family planning methods, and as many as 150 million women want to prevent or delay pregnancy but are not using any method of family planning.

The aim of family planning programmes is to enable couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to do so.

The Department for International Development (DFID) is one of the leading bilateral providers of condoms and other forms of contraceptives to developing countries. We are also supporting a number of male and female condom social marketing programmes. We are helping the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to provide the widest achievable range of safe and effective family planning and contraceptive methods, including condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS. In January 2001, we provided

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UNFPA with a grant of £25 million to help meet immediate needs for reproductive health commodities, including condoms, in a range of countries facing immediate shortages. We have increased our core annual funding to UNFPA from £15 million to £18 million.

The Government have committed £16 million (over five years) to the Medical Research Council's Microbicide development programme. New technologies such as the female condom and microbicides will be an important step forward. They will give women the power to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

The Government champions reproductive health issues at a country level, including through support for UNFPA. DFID works through Sector Wide Approaches (SWAPS) and Direct Budget Support as ways of supporting countries' Poverty Reduction Strategies. Within these processes it is important to ensure that sufficient attention is given to reproductive health issues, for example the assured supply and availability of reproductive health commodities. In many circumstances DFID is also continuing to ring-fence its support for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS work, including for example social marketing programmes. DFID spent £31 million in 2002–03 on activities within SWAPS that had support for reproductive health services as one of their objectives.

Angus Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development pursuant to his answer of 14 October 2003, Official Report, column 74W, on reproductive health, what the structure of the Open Health Institute in Russia is; and if he will make a statement. [133200]

Mr. Gareth Thomas: The Open Health Institute is a Russian non-governmental organisation which works to resolve the most pressing health problems facing the Russian population. It was established in January 2003 as an independent NGO and previously was part of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) in Russia. It continues to have a close affiliation with the Open Society Institute, from which it currently receives core funding. DFID is providing £4.2 million to OSI/OHI for three years from September 2001 for a project which aims to reduce the transmission of HIV among injecting drug users and commercial sex workers in a network of over 40 harm reduction sites in Russia. The project was most recently reviewed in September 2003 and its outcomes are expected to be largely achieved by the project's end in August 2004.

DFID's collaboration with the Open Health Institute is a valuable part of the Department's HIV prevention programme in Russia. The purpose of the programme is to influence the Russian Government and society to make a timely and effective response to HIV/AIDS by targeting vulnerable groups. There are over 250,000 officially-registered HIV cases in Russia, but the real number may be significantly higher. This is one of the fastest-growing HIV epidemics in the world.

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