Question reference: S6W-00685
- Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 14 June 2021
-
Current status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 24 June 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on how it prioritises the allocation of support from its (a) International Development and (b) Humanitarian Emergency Fund, and what these priorities are.
Answer
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted globally, including on our international development partner countries, and our programmes based there.
This necessitated a re-fresh of the Scottish Government's approach to International Development, to ensure that we focus our work on areas where we can make the biggest contribution and difference in our partner countries against the backdrop of the new reality of COVID-19. To that end the Scottish Government Programme for Government announced on 01 September 2020 our intention to review our approach to International Development. I announced the results of this Review to the Scottish Parliament via S5W-35666 on 3 March 2021. Through that review I met with representatives of our partner country Governments, and civil society, to discuss their priorities for building back fairer and stronger from COVID-19. Further information on the Review can be found here: ( International development: Coronavirus (COVID-19): review of international development programme - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ).
Separately, in December 2020 the Scottish Government provided £2 million of funding to UNICEF for their response to the Pandemic in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia, which included funding to help prepare the health systems in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda for the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine ( Aid for COVID-19 response in Africa - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ).
We have also tried to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on our project partners by pivoting funds to make available total funding of £991,594 from the International Development Fund and Humanitarian Emergency Fund where we were able to do so. The Humanitarian Emergency Fund in particular provided a total of £240,000 to the: Disasters Emergency Committee; Mission Aviation Fellowship; Mercy Corps and SCIAF towards their COVID-19 response efforts for vulnerable communities. Further information on this pivoted spend can be found here . Scotland has also sent life-saving oxygen and ventilation equipment to India ( 100 oxygen concentrators and 40 continuous positive airway pressure ((CPAP) ventilators ) as part of a UK-wide effort to support them in the fight against COVID-19.
Finally, we have also committed to not only maintain, but in fact increasing our International Development budget by 50%, to £15 million, which is intended to assist with COVID-19 preparedness in our partner countries. This is in contrast to the UK Government's ODA funding being cut from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5% of GNI which will have such disastrous effects on the world's most marginalised and vulnerable communities at a time of great need.
All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers