Chamber and committees

The aim of the Scottish Government’s annual £10 million International Development Fund (IDF) is to support and empower our partner countries: Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, and Pakistan. The COVID-19 Pandemic has greatly impacted our programme over the past year. On 01 September 2020, the Programme for Government set out our intention to review our approach to International Development to ensure that we were focusing our work on areas where we could make the biggest contribution and difference in our partner countries against the backdrop of the Pandemic, further information on the Review can be found here ( International development: Coronavirus (COVID-19): review of international development programme - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ). In December 2020 the Scottish Government provided £2 million of funding to UNICEF for their response to the Pandemic in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia ( Aid for COVID-19 response in Africa - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ).

We have also tried to mitigate the effects of the Covid Pandemic on our project partners by making available total funding of £991,594 from the IDF and Humanitarian Emergency Fund where we were able to do so. In terms of other support, Scotland is sending 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.

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 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.