“This decision by the British government to reduce official development assistance from 0.5% to 0.3% means that, in some of the most vulnerable places on earth, more people will die and many more will lose their livelihoods. Coming so soon after the USAID freeze, this is another lifeline being pulled away from those in desperate need, at a time when the world feels increasingly precarious”. With these words, CAFOD, the agency for aids to the third world of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, criticised the choice made yesterday by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer about cutting its support to the poorest countries, which was immediately welcomed by the US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth. Many are the British charities working in the Third World, from Oxfam to ActionAid to Bond, criticising the Prime Minister who is going to meet the US President Donald Trump tomorrow. The Christian ecumenical charity Christian Aid too stated that “these cuts, a political decision echoing Trump’s race to the bottom on aid, are nothing short of a betrayal that will erode trust and fan the flames of global insecurity. We must reject the false choice being spun between defence spending and fulfilling our responsibilities to people in crisis”.