How much aid does the UK spend in Pakistan, and why?

Jonathan Hingston; Philip Brien; Philip Loft

In recent years, Pakistan has been one of the top recipients of UK aid. However, since 2022 the UK Government has said it is shifting away from what it has described as a “traditional aid relationship” with Pakistan, and the value of UK aid has been falling.

Currently, the UK provides no aid directly to the Pakistan Government. Instead, aid is delivered through a range of organisations such as British Investment International (BII), the UK’s development finance institution, as well as multilateral organisations.

UK aid priorities in Pakistan include addressing irregular migration, promoting the rights of women and girls, defending freedom of religion or belief, and combating terrorism.

As the UK Government changes how it delivers aid, and which countries it will be supporting (set out in the separate Library briefing on Reducing UK aid to 0.3% of gross national income by 2027), this briefing sets out levels of support to Pakistan from the UK, how it is spent, and assessments on its effectiveness.

How much UK aid is spent in Pakistan?

UK aid is spent directly through bilateral channels (for specific programmes) and via multilateral channels (like the UN or World Bank). The value of UK aid to Pakistan has fallen in recent years.

As official development assistance (ODA), all UK aid must promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries.

Bilateral aid peaked at £463 million in 2016

Since 2022, no UK ODA is dispersed through the Pakistan Government. Instead, it is spent directly in Pakistan by the UK Government or delivery partners such as civil society groups and international organisations.

The amount of UK aid to Pakistan (opens Excel file) has been declining in real-terms and in relation to other recipients for several years.

In every year between 2015 and 2019, Pakistan was the largest single recipient of country-specific bilateral aid from the UK. It was the second-largest recipient of such aid over the period from 2009 to 2025 as a whole, behind only Ethiopia.

In 2020 Pakistan received £200 million in UK aid, the seventh-highest amount among all countries UK provided aid to. In 2022, aid was reduced significantly to £57.8 million. But aid then increased again to £113 million in 2025, the most recent year for final aid data; this was the ninth-highest amount among all UK aid recipients.

Chart showing UK bilateral aid to Pakistan peaked in 2016 and has fallen since

Source: FCDO, Statistics on International Development: final UK ODA spend 2025, 17 September 2026, and previous editions

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) annual report sets out plans for £51.4 million in bilateral aid to Pakistan every year from 2026/27 to 2028/29, totalling £154 million. Aid may also be spent through multilateral channels (see below).

Multilateral aid

Part of the UK’s aid spending is provided to multilateral organisations to support projects in countries including Pakistan. In many cases, the multilateral organisations have discretion over how they spend the UK’s aid contributions; this means that the UK may not directly determine the specific countries or programmes that multilateral bodies focus on.

The government calculates what is referred to as an “imputed share” of its multilateral contribution which eventually supports development programming in Pakistan.

As the chart below shows, UK-supported multilateral aid spending in Pakistan has varied considerably in recent years. It had been decreasing since 2020, before suddenly and briefly increasing in 2023. This is may be because of accounting changes rather than real changes in aid spending: multi-year payments to several multilateral organisations were moved to take place in 2023, in order to manage calendar-year ODA spending commitments (See Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Statistics on International Development: final UK ODA spend 2023, 26 September 2024, page 11).

Multilateral support was highest in 2023

Source: FCDO, Statistics on International Development: final UK ODA spend 2025, 17 September 2026, additional table A10

British International Investment

British International Investment (BII) is the UK’s development finance institution. BII uses UK aid funding (through capital injections) and the BII’s existing assets to invest in businesses and programmes in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Its investments are intended to generate a return which is reinvested in other businesses and programmes.

For more on the BII, how it works, and its objectives, see the Commons Library briefing: BII: Aid and investment.

In 2025, BII’s portfolio in Pakistan was US$358 million across 38 companies (4% by value of its total global investments). Among the BII’s global priorities under its 2026 to 2031 strategy is increasing funding to support women and girls and for climate finance.

What themes are UK aid spent on in Pakistan?

In the past two years, the UK’s bilateral aid contribution to Pakistan has been dominated by activities responding to natural disasters, as well as those supporting governance and civil society. Some is also spent on programmes with a link to UK security.

Other UK priorities include defending freedom of religion or belief and the rights of women and girls in Pakistan.

Education, government and humanitarian aid tend to be the largest sectors

Source: FCDO, Statistics on International Development: final UK ODA spend 2025, 17 September 2026, and previous editions

What are the UK’s aid priorities in Pakistan?

Both the current Labour government and the previous Conservative government framed the UK’s aid relationship with Pakistan as one of “partnership”. They considered this a transition away from “traditional forms of development” to one that placed more emphasis on “mutually beneficial” endeavours and support that was more complimentary to the Pakistan government’s own development objectives.

2022 shift from a “traditional aid” relationship

In its response to a report by the Commons International Development Committee on UK aid to Pakistan in 2022, the then Conservative government described the reduction in UK aid to Pakistan from 2016 as being “in line with the country’s development” and its “transition towards financing its own development”.

The government said its aim was to move from a “traditional aid relationship” with Pakistan to “a mature development partnership, working together on shared development priorities”, such as a self-financed exit from poverty.

In 2023, the government published its UK–Pakistan development partnership summary in which it stated:

The UK’s vision is for a more inclusive, prosperous, and stable Pakistan which is less reliant on external finance, more resilient to shocks, and contributing to regional security, while becoming a diminishing source of threats (criminal and security) to the UK and more aligned with the UK’s global geopolitical interests.

The partnership stated UK aid priorities in Pakistan have been:

health
education
gender equality
improving governance and human rights
economic stability and trade,
building climate resilience

Labour government priorities, from 2024

The focus on partnership with Pakistan has continued under the Labour government.

In 2025, the then minister for the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hamish Falconer, said the partnership was “mutually beneficial” and “underpins UK national interests”. It includes working with Pakistan to address irregular migration, terrorism and organised crime.

In a visit to Pakistan in December 2025, the then International Development Minister, Baroness Chapman, said that UK expertise would also help address climate change and flooding risks:

Pakistan is also a country suffering the devastating consequences of climate change, with extreme flooding putting lives at risk, stifling economic growth, and damaging key infrastructure. British expertise will help Pakistan strengthen its adaptation to climate change, its resilience to extreme weather events, and the speed of its response and recovery when crises occur.

The UK Government has not published an update to the 2023 profile on its development work in Pakistan (see above). However, as the aid budget is reduced to 0.3% of gross national income from 2025, it has said its “modern approach” (PDF) to development partnerships will be characterised by four shifts:

from donor to investor
from service delivery to system support
from grants to expertise
from international interventions to local leadership

Section 2.3 of the Commons Library briefing, UK aid: Reducing spending to 0.3% of GNI by 2027/28, has more on these shifts.

Women and girls

The UK Government has also said that its aid would be “carefully targeted towards delivering development impact for Pakistan’s most vulnerable groups”, such as women and girls. From 2022, it has had a Pakistan Network Gender Strategy, with an aim to increase its focus on women and girls, and said it regularly raises human rights concerns with Pakistan’s Government.

In 2026, the government has cited programmes such as the Aawaz II programme, to “promote the rights of women and girls, support victims, and challenge harmful practices”.

Other programmes include support for improved public financial management to “enhance basic service delivery for the poorest and most vulnerable populations” and Accelerated Family Planning in Pakistan, focused particularly on rural women.

Climate adaption and migration

In 2025 the largest projects in Pakistan related to climate adaptation and mitigation. Two climate resilience projects, for instance, received £21.3 million between them.

Current projects include Climate Action for a Resilient Asia, which is encouraging governments and the private sector to integrate climate resilience into their policy and planning, and the Climate Investment Fund for Pakistan, which aims to help mobilise private finance for climate adaption and mitigation.

Addressing insecurity

The UK Government allocates some aid to its Integrated Security Fund (ISF), reflecting its stated commitments to internal and external security in Pakistan country.

The ISF is a cross-government fund, whose aims include addressing “priority threats to UK national security, both at home and overseas”. It typically funds programmes with aspects such as civil society stability, counter terrorism, cybersecurity, and organised crime.

In 2024/25, ISF programmes in Pakistan and Afghanistan totalled £4.1 million. These two countries will no longer be reported as a separate budget. Past programmes have included work to prevent a deterioration of relations between the Taliban and Pakistan.

How effective is UK aid to Pakistan?

In 2022, the Commons International Development Committee raised concerns that UK aid was not sufficiently targeted at supporting minorities in Pakistan.

What did the International Development Committee say in 2022?

The 2022 report by the International Development Committee (PDF) called on the then Conservative government to better direct its spending to supporting marginalised groups. The committee was particularly critical of the cuts to funding for programming, particularly in education, that they assessed would have a disproportionate impact on women and girls.

It said cutting this funding “not only holds back the potential of these groups but also slows down Pakistan’s broader development”.

The committee also criticised the government for a lack of integration across its programme portfolio and with the efforts of other donors. “Failing to have a joined-up strategy towards nutrition” (PDF), the committee argued, “undermines the UK Government’s work in other areas, such as in education and economic empowerment for women and girls”.

The report noted further concerns, including that a shrinking space for civil society organisations in Pakistan and challenges in their operation (PDF) could jeopardise progress on UK aid programmes by forcing the UK to work with different partners.

On freedom of religion and belief, the committee found that “blasphemy laws in Pakistan are frequently misused to settle personal disputes and to target religious minorities (PDF)”. It called on the UK Government to advocate for better evidence gathering by Pakistan’s authorities and “offer greater protection” for those accused of breaking the law.

How did the government respond?

In its response, the government reemphasised the inclusion of women and girls in its programmes (see above), said it “privately” raised concerns with blasphemy laws, and was working “closely” with Pakistan’s government and other donors to align UK spending and “identif[y] our comparative advantage”.

It said in the future, it would be pursuing “fewer, smaller, less complex, more flexible, and agile development objectives” and focus on “influence” rather than “direct delivery”.