Why is British Aid funding sex manuals for 10-year-olds abroad?

We know marriage is best for children and for adults. So why is the British Government using our aid budget to push “comprehensive sexuality education”, or CSE, on other nations’ children? And why is it paying to fight those who defend marriage and family?

The Foreign Office is spending £47.8 million, from 2024 to 2029, on “Strengthening Grassroots Organisations and Countering Efforts to Roll Back Rights”. Its business case says the movement aims to counter "the efforts of malign actors", including "religious and faith organisations" and "nation states". Their offence? They “often idealise patriarchal and heteronormative family models” at the expense of the rights of LGBT+ people. The business case even treats norms, such as “sex is within marriage”, as barriers.

Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International, has spent years exposing CSE. Watch our discussion.

“I’m not talking about sex education”, she says. “I am talking about a deliberate form of misinformation, indoctrination and sexualization of children.” She says the manuals her team analyses “sometimes have the logos of UK entities”.

Here’s one. A manual from the United Nations Population Fund in Zimbabwe, with “UKaid from the British people” on its cover, sets out a 31-week programme for children aged 10 to 14. Week three’s statements for them to vote on include “Abortion should be legalized to make it safe.” In week four, they are told: “We deserve to have a satisfying, safe and pleasurable sexual life”. In week seven, it calls it “stereotypical” that girls “are taught that they should keep their virginity”. In week eight, they are introduced to definitions of a whole range of sexual behaviours, and asked which are “acceptable”. In week ten, they learn that ”some people feel that they are in the wrong body. They are transgender”, that some “change their sex by taking hormones and having surgery”, and that there are only “three differences between men and women”.

Marriage is reduced to one option beside sex and celibacy, and man and woman to three bodily differences. And British aid is still paying for CSE. The same £47.8 million helps fund the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which aims to put “180.2 million young people” through this kind of CSE.

But there’s hope. Sharon describes an African charter on family values and sovereignty that’s “picking up a lot of steam across Africa” and “would define marriage as between a man and a woman”. At the United Nations, she says, “sometimes all it takes is one nation to stand up and others will rally behind it”. Britain should be that nation, rather than paying to fight those who stand up for marriage.

Please write to your MP before the Budget on Wednesday 28 October. Enter your postcode at www.writetothem.com and demand that the Foreign Secretary:

Strikes comprehensive sexuality education from every British aid strategy and programme. Closes the £47.8 million Foreign Office programme that pays to fight those who defend marriage and family. Publishes every aid programme that has paid for sexuality education. Please use your own words as copied letters get ignored.

At C4M, we know children do best with their own married mother and father, at home and abroad. Do watch Sharon’s interview and pass it on.