Gender equality in the creation of the UK’s new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

July 2020

The intended merger of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), to create the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has raised important questions about how this new department will prioritise, and work on, gender equality. Lessons learnt from similar mergers in other countries highlight the potential risks to this area of work.

This background briefing provides some recommendations on what a successful merger might look like from a gender equality perspective. It provides data on spending and staffing on gender equality within DFID and the FCO and reviews the quality of UK aid spend on gender equality to identify opportunities for development in the new department. Finally, some lessons learnt from similar mergers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand are explored.