The British government’s flagship programme to support global security, peace building and conflict transition has been criticised for serious shortcomings in the way it operates, including the risk that it could be working with “human rights abusers”.

The conflict, security and stability fund – which has a current budget of £1.2bn, and operates in about 70 countries – was set up under the auspices of several key government departments, including the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, to work in countries with strong British interests where there is a risk of conflict or instability.

Bridging both development assistance and security policy, the fund is intended to combine defence, diplomacy and development assistance. It is active in dozens of countries including Afghanistan, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

However, in a critical report, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which scrutinises UK aid spending and reports to the Commons’ international development committee, has warned that shortcomings in the way the fund and programme are administered, including the programmes it supports, “are undermining the fund’s contribution to building peace, stability and security”.

The report comes hard on the heels of previous criticism of the fund, which has been accused of “securitising aid and neglecting human rights”, prompting the Labour party to say it would replace it with a more transparent “peace fund”.

While praising parts of the fund’s work, the commission found its auditing of key metrics “below standards expected for aid programmes, with basic information on achievements frequently missing or incomplete … [making it] impossible to be sure projects were achieving their intended results or delivering value for money”.

We expect the government to take urgent steps to tackle the weaknesses identified Richard Gledhill, Independent Commission for Aid Impact

Most damning is the suggestion that the fund has been insufficiently rigorous in applying required safeguards to prevent collaboration with foreign entities that have suspect human rights records.

“Working with such counterparts,” said the report, “risks legitimising them and their actions, or even becoming complicit in violations. The CSSF considers these risks at some length in programme documentation, but has a high-risk appetite. In our case studies we only came across one decision not to work with an institution because of its human rights record.”

The British government is required to undertake a human rights assessment, known as an overseas security and justice assessment (OSJA), once a programme’s design is ready but before it is implemented. This is “to ensure risks are properly assessed and ministers sign off more high risk projects”.

“Several OSJAs were produced after programming had commenced and some OSJAs were incomplete or of low quality (typically with a stronger analysis of the UK’s reputational risks than of the risk of CSSF support aggravating human rights violations), or had not been conducted at all,” said the report. “The human rights assessments within our sample always gave the green light for the proposed activity, without requiring any design modifications. This may be the consequence of a small sample but it raises a concern as to whether these assessments are an effective control mechanism.”

The fund has long had the whiff of controversy in parts of the aid world. DfID is the third largest contributor to the fund, though its priorities are also dictated by the government’s national security council, the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the National Crime Agency.

Indeed, earlier this month it was disclosed that the fund would be used to build a new £700,000 jail wing in Nigeria at a prison with a controversial history, so that it can deport foreign criminals and free up places in British jails.

The report also described “examples of weak programme delivery, hasty project timelines, and insufficiently rigorous monitoring systems”, which meant “it was not possible to know if CSSF programmes were causing harm, and that mitigation measures when working with agencies with poor human rights records were sometimes superficial”.

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Richard Gledhill, the ICAI commissioner who led the review, said: “Increasingly, the world’s poorest people are living in conflict zones, so it is right that the UK government is attempting to address conflict and instability.

“The CSSF has proved it can be flexible and responsive to the UK’s national security priorities. But while we saw some good work, too many programmes showed signs of basic design errors, with poor delivery and a lack of quality control.

“For a fund of its size this is worrying, and raises important concerns about its potential impact and value for money. We expect the government to take urgent steps to tackle the weaknesses identified, to ensure it delivers for people affected by conflict, and for UK taxpayers.”

A government spokesperson said: “

The report highlights a number of successes from CSSF’s programmes, including supporting the peace process in Colombia and encouraging women in Pakistan to register to vote. The report also praises the CSSF’s conflict analysis and technical expertise.



“Following the national security capability review, the CSSF will move to a new joint funds unit, which will allow for greater strategic and ministerial oversight. As the CSSF grows, we will continue to act on lessons learnt, including considering the findings of this report.”