£110m Of UK Aid To Support Arab Spring Nations

The money is a significant increase on the £5m of funds announced for the Arab Partnership Initiative in February by the foreign secretary. It will come out of the existing Department for International Development budget.PM David Cameron said progress in the region was good for Britain too.The money will be spent over the next four years to improve political participation, the rule of law, anti-corruption measures, youth employability and the development of the private sector.It constitutes the UK's contribution to calls for the G8 group of leading industrialised nations to do all they can to encourage the so-called Arab Spring. Speaking at the G8 summit in France, the prime minister said:
What I'd say to everybody about the issue of overseas aid and the money that will be pledged at this summit is that there is a real case for saying, 'If we can secure greater democracy and freedom in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, that is good for us back at home. That will mean less extremism, it will mean more peace and prosperity, and it will mean there won't be the pressures of immigration that we might otherwise face to our own country.The wave of uprisings in the Arab world began in Tunisia in January and lead to the fall of the government there, and subsequently in Egypt. There have also been pro-democracy demonstrations in countries including Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, and the supression of a similar movement in Libya has led to the intervention of Nato to protect civilians.