A globally responsible Scotland

While extreme wealth inequality continues to surge, millions of people in our world are living with unstable governance and scarcity of life’s essentials like clean water, food and healthcare.

People face a fatal combination of drawn-out conflict and relentless devastation from the rapidly changing climate. Then global shocks like the cost-of-living crisis add fuel to the fire.

What’s more, people oppressed by entrenched inequalities, like race and gender discrimination, are worst affected. All of this combines to create a situation of extreme vulnerability for people already living in poverty when crises hit.

Financial support to low-income countries is an important tool to help build a fairer world.

The people of Scotland have a well-deserved reputation for giving generously to overseas crises, including through appeals made by the Disasters Emergency Committee, which Oxfam is a member of.

The Scottish Government gives relatively small, but life-saving and life-changing, financial support to low-income countries in times of disaster as well as to help tackle more entrenched global poverty, inequality and climate injustice.

Alongside seven other leading humanitarian organisations, we sit on the Humanitarian Emergency Fund panel, which advises the Scottish Government on how and when some of this money should be spent, specifically when it comes to emergencies caused by disasters, disease or conflict.

In a global system that sees people perpetually trapped in poverty, it takes incredible resilience, knowledge and expertise to know how to cope. No one has more experience than those living it as their daily reality.

That’s why throughout our work, we aim to place local communities and organisations in the driving seat: giving them the resources and support they need.

It’s about supporting people to claim their right to be protected and listened to. It’s about people preparing to cope when crises strike. And it’s about always tackling the root causes that fuel conflict and crisis.

Working closely with our colleagues, partners and communities around the world, Oxfam Scotland is proud to have secured Scottish Government funding to help change and save lives, from providing emergency support to help ‘forgotten’ refugees in Ethiopia and South Sudan access basic essentials such as clean water, to counselling and cash support for those facing floods in Kenya. We are providing longer-term support, such as scholarships to help women and girls across Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia to access education.

While money is crucial, we know that global development, is about more than just giving financial support to low-income countries.

It’s about what we buy, how we trade, how our how businesses operate, our global climate footprint, how we support refugees living in Scotland, and about the impact of our wider domestic policy and spending decisions. We need to make sure all of our actions support equitable and sustainable global development.

That’s why we’re backing calls for the Scottish Government to better measure Scotland’s wider global impact, both positive and negative, and then work to improve it.

But as well as what we do, what we say matters too. We’re working to ensure policymakers in Scotland speak out on issues that really matter, whether that’s in support of equitable access to global vaccines or an end to devastating conflicts, like the war in Gaza.

We also recognise education as a powerful tool that can help drive transformative change. We must support young people to be active global citizens who understand the wider world, and their place in it. Teachers have a key role, and we support the Stride global citizenship magazine and Signposts, a platform of teaching resources for active Global Citizenship.

We work in partnership with, or a member of, a rich network of partners in Scotland that are working to ensure that Scotland acts a responsible global citizen:

• Scotland’s International Development Alliance (SIDA) We are an active member of the Alliance, which is the membership body in Scotland for everyone committed to creating a fairer world, free from poverty, injustice and environmental threats. Together, we advocate for improvements in the Scottish Government’s international development programmes, including to ‘shift the power’ to deliver global justice.
• The International Development Education Association of Scotland (IDEAS), a network of organisations which seeks to place the principles of development education at the heart of education policy and practice in Scotland.
• The Scotland-Malawi Partnership, the national civil society network coordinating, supporting and representing the people-to-people links between the two nations.
• The Scottish Fair Trade Forum, the body that campaign for Fair Trade in Scotland as part of a global movement to transform trade in order to achieve justice, equity and sustainability for people and the planet.
• The Scottish Refugee Council, Scotland’s national refugee charity supports thousands of men, women and children as they rebuild their lives in Scotland.