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Illustration: Ella Baron

By August 2015, the Saudi Arabian government had beheaded more people since the beginning of the year than terrorist group ISIS. The former is a British ally, the latter an enemy. Around 2,000 people have been killed by the Saudi government since 1985, their dismembered corpses often left in public squares as a warning.

According to Amnesty International, the death penalty “is so far removed from any kind of legal parameters that it is almost hard to believe.” The use of torture to extract confessions from suspected ‘criminals’ is commonplace in Saudi Arabia. David Cameron rejects any of this as a problem. Instead he and the Tory government he leads maintain a friendly relationship with the oppressive Saudi regime. Relations are so close that when Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah passed away, Whitehall flew their flags at half-mast.

In his leader’s speech to Labour Party Conference, Jeremy Corbyn’s first message to Cameron went straight to the heart of this issue. Echoing Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Michael Gove, Corbyn told the Prime Minister in no uncertain terms that it was time to intervene in Saudi Arabia, to stop the beheading and the crucifixion of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who was imprisoned in 2011 at the age of 17 for joining anti-government, pro-democracy protests.

So it came as a pleasant surprise that on October 13th, Downing Street announced plans to cancel a £5.9 million contract to provide a training programme for prisons in Saudi Arabia. This programme would have propped up the penal system of a brutal regime that stones, flogs, beheads, dismembers and even crucifies people as punishment for ‘crimes’ such as sorcery and atheism.

That the Conservative government agreed to this contract in the first place is yet more evidence that this government includes ministers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Tory ministers are quite literally willing to sell off human rights to the highest bidder. This sort of stance is unacceptable from any government, let alone an advanced, democratic one.

The contract was set to be let out on a “commercial basis,” meaning that the intention was for the Ministry of Justice to make a profit, rather than to just cover its costs. In effect,  the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) wanted to make money out of selling UK state resources, paid for by the time and expertise of MoJ Civil Servants, funded by the UK taxpayer, to the Saudis.

Apart from being Corbyn’s first political victory, this U-turn is also a victory for unlikely liberal hero Michael Gove, whose previous attempts to cancel the project had been resisted by both Cameron and Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond.

Corbyn responded to the cancellation saying: “David Cameron has been shamed into a U-turn on this terrible contract, but why on earth was it set up in the first place? We should be sending a strong message to repressive regimes that the UK is a beacon for human rights and that this contract bid is unacceptable in the 21st century, and would damage Britain’s standing in the world.”

This deal, if it had gone ahead, would have implied British complicity in the execution of juveniles Ali al-Nimr and Dawoud al-Marhoon for the ‘crime’ of protesting in favour of democracy. It would have implied support for the same system that has sentenced 74-year-old British grandfather Karl Andree to 350 lashes for transporting home-made wine in his car.

Britain’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, however, remains extremely strong. Despite countless accusations of human rights abuses, Britain has continued to replicate the Al-Yamamah arms deal, originally signed by the Thatcher government in 1985, which sees the government supply arms to the Saudis in return for oil.

Between May 2010 and May 2015, the Coalition government licensed almost £4bn in arms to the regime, according to figures obtained by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade. Around 240 Ministry of Defence civil servants and military personnel work in the UK and Saudi Arabia to support the contracts, which will next year include delivery of 22 Hawk jets in a deal worth £1.6bn. And research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that the UK is now the kingdom’s largest arms supplier, responsible for 36 per cent of all Saudi arms imports.

Cancelling the bid has hopefully sent the message that the UK does not support grossviolations of human rights. It must be noted, however, that Downing Street’s given reason for doing so was in support of the “wider interests of the government” – a disappointingly vague response, and one that exposes the deep hypocrisies of our self-appointed role as global moral arbiter.

In recent months, there has been so much rhetoric about terrorism; so many appeals for action. Yet Britain’s foreign policy towards the Saudis demonstrates how empty such words are.

It would appear that the UK government isn’t all that interested in witnessing democracy flourish in the areas of the Global South where it is so desperately needed; it doesn’t fit with our foreign policy. Sometimes, human rights seem only important to the British state when it is convenient; it is as if it flouts our belief systems in favour of the highest bidder.

Although a definite step in the right direction, the prison U-turn highlights the desperate need for a review of the intensely corrupt nature of Britain’s dealings with Saudi Arabia and other countries across the globe. Britain has a responsibility, as one of the leaders of the West, to take a moral stance on these issues.

It would appear that we denounce our enemies for barbarity, but not our partners.

It is difficult, watching the news, to believe that the world is getting better. Since 2001, the world has seen global financial ruin, accelerating climate change, famine, war and conflict; there are 18 wars going on in the world right now. Despite this, economic and social advances have been made in many of the world’s poorest regions, which has been attributed by many politicians to the apparent success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a UN initiative focused on eight key policies – eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combatting HIV/ AIDs, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.

Many of the Millennium Development Goals have been at least partially achieved. Foreign aid from richer countries has risen considerably from the meagre 0.2 per cent UN average in 2002. Extreme poverty has halved between 1990 and 2010. Between 2000 and 2011, child mortality fell from 9.4 million to 6.8 million, and the number of people receiving treatment for HIV/AIDs rose from 10,000 to 8 million globally. We should be proud that an organisation as broad and complex as the UN managed to pull together and achieve so much.

Criticisms of the MDGs are broad and cutting. They perpetuated top-down development, leading to a ‘one size fits all’ approach, whereby limited local research was conducted before imposing development strategies. Western states had undue influence – for example, a goal regarding reproductive health was vetoed by the Vatican and other conservative UN states. The goals were often simplified excessively in order to seem more attainable, meaning that the interrelationships between the eight MDGs and further development goals were eclipsed. In particular, there was no mention in the MDGs of human rights, good governance or climate change.

With the MDGs, the poorest countries, who had the most work to do to meet the targets, were then perceived as failing when they did not manage to do so. As Malawi’s former President, Joyce Banda, asked, “We are all racing towards achieving education for all by 2015. But did we have classrooms in Malawi? Did we have desks? Did we have teachers? The MDG demands that we get as many children as possible into school – but what about quality?”

Some, but not all, of these criticisms have been taken on board in the new goals for sustainable development, which came into effect at the end of September. In the 17 new goals – which include promoting health and wellbeing, providing access to water and sanitation for all, building infrastructure, developing sustainable land use, and reducing inequality within and among countries – a much more holistic approach to development and aid is taken. It is good to see that the relationships between issues, such as childhood mortality and safe settlements, or improving education and gender equality,will be acknowledged to a far greater extent in development work based on the new goals.

Part of the reason for this newer approach is that the UN member states involved finally started to listen to their counterparts in the Global South. A coalition of African leaders formed a Common African Position, and negotiated, often successfully, for many of their own aims at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) conferences. It was African leaders, for example, who lobbied for mentions of security issues in the development context. The voices of those in the Global South need to be heard, and to be listened to by western governments.

The problem is that the UN has little interest in moving power from the West to the Global South. This has led to frustration and a sense of disenfranchisement both on the parts of those in the Global South and residents of the richer countries, who see only bureaucracy and corruption in the UN. While the UN may have a part to play in development, if the SDGs are to be achieved, a combination of systemic change and effective, grassroots intervention is necessary.

So what can we personally do to advance these admirable but problematic goals? One option is to donate to the most effective charities working in the developing world right now. GiveWell is a foundation which identifies the most cost-effective charities that we can donate to, with Against Malaria Foundation and Deworm the World coming top of their list.

Instead of writing off development work as inevitably bureaucratic or inefficient, or simply waiting for global political change to happen, we as individuals can make a significant impact on healthcare, schooling, and sanitation by donating to the right charities. A combination of involving world leaders more fairly in decisions and promoting effective, inclusive interventions could still improve the lives of millions.

“You know, it’s crazy how many times Harry Potter saved the world by the age of 17,” I said to a friend.

“Yeah, it would just about get him accepted to an American uni,” she replied.

‘About as hard as saving the world’ is not a bad description of the American university admissions process. Volunteer work, extracurricular leadership roles, New Yorker-esque writing ability, and some ‘hook’ that differentiates you from the tens of thousands of others applying are not just welcome additions to a strong application, but expectations. It’s a process that’s deeply flawed – results seem almost random and it’s overwhelmingly stressful, without corresponding increases in efficacy.

Of course, there are some good reasons for it to be the way it is: the number of students applying to United States colleges far exceeds the number applying to British institutions. Yet this in itself has a number of drawbacks. It precludes the possibility, for example, that the top US colleges could implement an interviewing process in the same way that Oxford and Cambridge have done.

In Britain, there exists a national, standardised way to evaluate students in their last years of school: GCSEs, AS-levels and A-levels. The equivalent for Americans would be their SAT or ACT score, both of which are notoriously flawed metrics, or Advanced Placement (AP) – a program designed to mimic university level classes – which is not universally taken in the same way.

While American and British philosophies on higher education are similar in intent, they are vastly different in method. Whereas British universities teach specialised subjects in great depth and place preeminence on academics, American ones allow for, to varying degrees, a liberal arts education and place their premium on class composition. Accordingly, Oxbridge has to look for cleverness; the Ivy League has more leeway with whom it lets in.

Ideally, this wiggle room would mean that American colleges ended up with more balanced racial and socioeconomic demographics than Oxbridge. Yet this fails to be the case; both the Ivy League and Oxbridge have a serious over-representation of upper-class students.

Despite structural differences between the US and the UK, there are still simple changes to the US admissions process that should be made, such as limiting the number of universities a student can apply to, like UCAS does. This would benefit both student and institution by reducing the number of applications the student has to write and the number the university has to read.

Requiring a minimum transcript average and SAT or ACT score would have a similar effect in ensuring that applicants are academically up to par. Introducing a UCAS-style personal statement would also be an improvement – allowing students to explain their qualifications directly and in a way that does not require literary flourish evens the playing field. The focus is on the applicant’s strengths, not their ability to tug at the Admissions Officer’s heartstrings.

Right now, friends of mine back home are suffering a hellish first term. But their stress isn’t from trying to write a 3,000-word essay the night before it’s due, it’s from just trying to apply to university. The US could do much better. Taking inspiration from the British university admissions system would be a good start.