Ms Celia Cranfield:

On the question of conflict resolution and linking a bit to what was said earlier about stability, one of the things we have homed in on as something to pay close attention to during the next multi-annual financial framework, MFF, and in what the next global external action instruments look like is the thematic programmes. There has been a thematic programme on peace and stability and it is important that each of the thematic programmes - the human rights one is also important, as is the civil society one - gets sufficient funding and that there are not steps backwards in those either.

I will go back through the opening statements. It was said that today more than 300 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and protections, a record number of more than 120 million people are displaced and one in every five children in the world, approximately 400 million, is living or fleeing conflict zones, with women and girls bearing the brunt of violence. It was said also that least developed countries and countries in situations of fragility and conflict are home to 25% of the world’s population, but account for 72% of the world’s extremely poor people. On some level, this is all stuff we know but it is useful to have that sort of information here. I refer to that vital piece of USAID and the cut, and I get that is not just USAID. We are talking about 83% of the total ODA budget.

Mr. Crowley said 400 staff are gone and three country programmes are gone and there have been 17% redundancies. This is happening on a wide scale across the board. I would have said before in regard to aid that, to a degree, there is an insufficient amount to deal with the need already out there. On some level, this is plugging the hole but at this stage, we are getting into circumstances of not being able to plug the hole at all and it is laid out brutally.

What are we facing into at this point? The big worry we have is around the multi-annual financial framework. We can see even farmers are worried about where the money will go in the future. Obviously, for the people we are talking about here, they will not have a great level of lobbying power within the European Council, European Commission or anywhere else. I cannot see anything other than a maintained disaster becoming a disaster that will not be maintained in any way. How bad will this be?