I thank members across the chamber who have signed my motion and have stayed behind for the debate. I also welcome the staff of Mercy Corps and from the University of Edinburgh student charity group who have joined us in the gallery.
Scotland is leading the world in international development through the work of Mercy Corps, whose European headquarters is based in Edinburgh. The purpose of this debate, as well as to celebrate 35 years of one of the leading organisations in the field, is to focus attention on Scotland’s impact on and commitment to international development.
Before I focus on the activities of Mercy Corps, I would like to pay tribute to some of the other leading actors in the field in Scotland. The Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, which is the official aid and development charity of the Catholic church in Scotland, works in 16 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Mary’s Meals feeds almost 1 million schoolchildren every day. Christian Aid Scotland works globally to eradicate poverty and is one of Scotland’s largest voluntary organisations, with 600 volunteer groups that are based in churches. Oxfam Scotland campaigns for an end to poverty and to raise awareness of climate justice.
As members can see, the sector is rich and varied. At the helm is the Network of International Development Organisations in Scotland—NIDOS—which does fantastic work in promoting collaboration across the sector.
Mercy Corps Scotland has a total income of over £45 million. Its Edinburgh office supports country programmes in 34 countries around the world. There are 40 people in its Edinburgh office, who are employed as programme officers, international finance officers, compliance managers and fundraisers, covering the broad spectrum of fundraising.
The work of Mercy Corps covers the range of activity from immediate disaster relief, such as the provision of urgent water, food and shelter in the Gaza crisis last year—it is worth noting that, after the United Nations, Mercy Corps has the largest humanitarian presence on the ground in Gaza—to immediate recovery, such as its prevention of child soldiers programme in Colombia and its water and sanitation programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which will bring water to 1.5 million people over the next five years.
Ultimately, its activity also includes work on resilience, such as its programme in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is creating two eco-zones to strengthen capacity to withstand climate change. So far, 12 pilot projects have been implemented in innovative sustainable land management to address desertification, overgrazing, deforestation and water-management problems.
By combining those three areas of focus—immediate humanitarian response, rapid economic recovery and long-term resilience and self-reliance—Mercy Corps takes a distinct approach to international development work and creates a vehicle for lasting, sustainable improvement in people’s lives. It innovates and uses technology wherever possible, such as in its programmes in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Indonesia to improve food security. It is developing a suite of mobile-based products for smallholder farmers to provide them with market information and financial management practices to increase farm productivity.
Mercy Corps often begins working in a country during a humanitarian crisis, in which its immediate action saves lives and reduces suffering. Then, just as quickly, it extends its efforts to economic empowerment initiatives. In this way, it helps communities rapidly recover from the crisis and create mechanisms to increase their resilience to shocks and setbacks that are likely to recur.
Mercy Corps takes a distinct approach to international development work and, simply put, where others see intractable problems, it looks for opportunities for progress. It knows that local people are the best agents of the fastest, most durable economic recovery. That is why 93 per cent of its staff are local to the countries in which they work.
Closer to home, Mercy Corps has worked closely with a range of organisations through the Edinburgh disasters response committee. For the past six weeks, Mercy Corps and EDRC have been running a Christmas appeal. In previous years, with the generous support of the people of Edinburgh, they raised an incredible £430,000 for Haiti and a further £200,000 for Pakistan.
Last year was an unprecedented year for the humanitarian field. The world now has the highest number of people displaced since 1945. The United Nations declared four of the world’s humanitarian crises level 3, which is the organisation’s highest designation. They are in Iraq, South Sudan, Syria and the Central African Republic. Those are all countries in which Mercy Corps is working on the ground.
This year is going to be a watershed year. March will see the fourth anniversary of the commencement of the conflict in Syria, and Mercy Corps currently has the largest Department for International Development-funded response programme in that country. The rise in chronic crises is an area that Mercy Corps is working on, as it continues its work on economic development in fragile and conflict-prone states. That is something that we must all pay attention to. As the Ebola crisis in west Africa has shown, complex emergencies are impacting on longer-term development.
Also this year, the current millennium development goals will come to an end and new ones will be set. It is time to consider what Scotland’s role should be and what we can do as a society to help.
The Scottish Government’s international development fund—in relation to which I pay tribute to international development ministers past and present—has done great work in pursuit of the millennium development goals. How will it change to reflect the evolving development priorities?
We must pay more attention to complex emergencies that impact on development, and to the role of young people in that, recognising that disenfranchised and unemployed young people are critical to economic development and conflict resolution.
I am proud that the Scottish Government, with cross-party support, has provided assistance in major humanitarian emergencies over the past decade, fulfilling Scotland’s role as a good global citizen. Those have included the 2010 monsoon floods in Pakistan, the conflict in Syria, typhoon Haiyan, last summer’s crisis in Gaza and most recently the struggle against Ebola in west Africa. I believe that we need to develop a strategy to better respond to humanitarian crises in a more deliberate and proactive way. Mercy Corps and others have already been discussing how the Scottish Government responds to humanitarian crises, and we should consider how we formalise the process for triggering humanitarian aid, and whether we set up a separate humanitarian fund.
Scotland’s impact on the world is not limited to its international development and aid policies. How Scottish companies operate internationally, the consumer choices that people in Scotland make and a range of Government policies, including energy, climate and procurement policies, all have a major global impact.
We also need to mainstream gender equality and women’s empowerment in all of our international development programmes and ensure that they are at the heart of development work in the areas of education, health and employment.
In conclusion, let us congratulate Mercy Corps, whose projects over the past 35 years have improved beyond measure the lives of 229 million people in 115 countries across our planet. Let us pay tribute to all of the staff and volunteers who have made that work possible and let us wish them well in the work that they will do in the years ahead.
17:15