Conflict, Stability and Security Fund facts for kids

The Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) is a special fund created by the British Government on April 1, 2015. It replaced an older fund called the Conflict (Prevention) Pool. This fund has over £1 billion each year to help deal with conflicts and instability in other countries around the world. About half of this money is considered official development assistance, which means it's money given to help poorer countries.

How the Fund is Managed and What it Does

The CSSF is watched over by the National Security Council (NSC). This is a top group of government leaders in the UK who make important decisions about the country's safety. The main person in charge of the CSSF is the National Security Adviser.

The CSSF helps the UK achieve its goals for building stability overseas and protecting its national security. It brings together experts and resources from different government departments. The fund pays for many different activities to help stop conflicts that affect vulnerable people, especially in the world's poorest countries. It also works to tackle threats to British safety and interests from problems in other parts of the world. This includes actions the UK does directly or through other groups to help prevent conflict and support peace after conflicts.

The National Security Council decides what the fund's main goals are. This helps make sure that different parts of the government – like defence, diplomacy, aid, security, and intelligence – work together. The fund is designed to help the British Government deal with the main reasons why conflicts start abroad. This includes programmes that teach about human rights, make local police and justice systems stronger, and help bring people together for peace talks.

A Look at the Fund's History

When the CSSF was first created, most of its money, about £823 million out of £1,033 million, came from the Department for International Development budget. A large part of this money was then managed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and some by the Ministry of Defence. The UK planned to increase the CSSF to £1.3 billion by 2019/20. This was a big increase compared to the £180 million available in the old Conflict Pool.

In 2016, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, who was the National Security Adviser at the time, said that the fund spent the most money in three countries: Afghanistan (£90 million), Syria (£60 million), and Somalia (£32 million). He also mentioned that the fund had projects in more than 40 countries. A lot of money was spent on issues related to the Syrian Civil War. This included hiring private companies to help with "strategic communications" for the Syrian moderate armed opposition, which was like running a press office for them. The Stabilisation Unit, a special government agency, also gets money from the CSSF.

The fund's first yearly report came out in July 2017. It showed that the five biggest CSSF country programmes out of 70 were: Afghanistan (£90 million), Syria (£64 million), Somalia (£33.5 million), Jordan (£25.3 million), and Lebanon (£24 million). The money spent in Jordan and Lebanon was mostly to help with the large number of refugees from the Syrian Civil War.

For the 2020/21 financial year, the budget for the fund was £1.37 billion. The four biggest areas of spending, which made up more than half of the budget, were Peacekeeping (£388 million), Middle East and North Africa (£183 million), South Asia (£103 million), and MOD Afghan Security (£100 million).

Checking Up on the Fund

In May 2016, a group called the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy started looking into the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund.

In November 2016, Lord McConnell pointed out that there was no up-to-date public plan for the fund. The old plan from 2011 had not been updated. The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy then asked Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser, to share details about how the fund was spending its money. This happened because some people in the media were worried that more of the UK's aid money was being used for defence and foreign policy goals.

The committee released its report on February 6, 2017. The government had not shared which countries were getting money from the CSSF, and only a few projects were made public. The government said that some projects had to stay secret for safety reasons. The committee reported that the fund's goals and what it achieved were unclear, and it was hard to hold it accountable. The committee said there was a risk that the CSSF was being used as a "slush fund" for projects that might be good but didn't truly meet the UK's national security needs. There was special criticism for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office because it wasn't very good at buying things and had an old-fashioned understanding of why armed conflicts start. The committee concluded that it couldn't "provide parliamentary accountability for taxpayers’ money spent via the CSSF." It suggested that one minister in the Cabinet Office should be in charge of the fund's spending.

In 2017, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact began its own review of the CSSF.

See also

• Conscience: Taxes for Peace not War
• Global Justice Now
• Reprieve (organisation)
• Westminster Foundation for Democracy