Executive pledges £250,000 to aid the crisis in Darfur

THE new SNP government is expanding the reach and scope of the Executive's international aid fund by committing £250,000 to ease the plight of those suffering in Darfur in east Africa, it emerged yesterday.

Jack McConnell, the former First Minister, set up a fund of £4.5 million for international development during his time in office, most of which was allocated to charities in Malawi, which is now twinned with Scotland.

Mr McConnell believed that the best way to make an impact was to concentrate much of the Executive's very limited resources in one country.

Now, however, Alex Salmond has changed the emphasis. He has promised to double the size of the fund to £9 million in the new spending round, which will be announced in November, and he has decided to spread the Executive's resources more widely.

The decision to give £250,000 to the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund for its work in the crisis-hit region of Darfur is an example, both of the extra funds which the new Executive is committed to providing, but also the wider scope of its aid programme.

The Scottish Executive is limited to what it can do in international development and ministers have to be careful not to impinge on the remit of the much bigger Department for International Development in London, which co-ordinates Britain's aid effort.

But the Darfur initiative falls within the remit of the Scottish Executive, principally because the money is going to a Scottish charity, not to the authorities in Darfur.

A spokeswoman for the Executive also confirmed that ministers in Edinburgh had been in close touch with Whitehall while drawing up this grant and that the International Development Department was "fully behind" the initiative.

Mary Cullen, the head of communications at SCIAF, said the money would be very well spent helping "the poorest of the poor".

"It will go immediately to projects on the ground in Darfur to help keep people alive through what continues to be a complex and desperate crisis," she said. "Together with the threat of violence, there is the very real risk of large scale fatalities from diseases such as cholera and malaria.

"The displaced population in Darfur now accounts for a staggering 2.1 million people, with the number of new arrivals going up all the time. Since January alone, 110,000 new people have fled to camps for protection, food and shelter."

The war in the Darfur region of Sudan has been raging for four years and has left hundreds of thousands dead, either through the conflict itself or indirectly from starvation and drought. Announcing the cash, external affairs minister Linda Fabiani said the money would support more than 120,000 people in communities most affected by the violence and unrest in the south and west of the Sudanese province.

More than two million people are thought to have been displaced within Darfur and a further 235,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad.

Britain had allocated £104 million since April, and the Executive is already contributing by supporting an educational project in south Sudan with a £190,000 award.

Ms Fabiani said: "With the arrival of the rainy season, we are looking at immediate and practical solutions to support impoverished and displaced people.

"In an area where three quarters of the population are farmers, this money from the Scottish government will provide essential seeds, tools and training to allow people to begin planting to feed themselves and their families."

Meanwhile, Mr Salmond is to try to raise Scotland's profile on the international stage with a trip to Brussels this week when he will meet a number of senior European figures, including Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner.

LATEST ROUND OF GRANTS
THE latest round of Executive grants for international development included many for Malawi and a small number for Scottish charities working in disaster areas.

The grants included:

• £250,000 to provide facilities and resources to train Malawians in tourism development.

• £137,000 to train people in the Mulanje region in Malawi to deal with and solve their own problems in health, nutrition and HIV/AIDS control.

• £70,000 to train specialist eye doctors for Saving Sight in Malawi.

• £222,000 on a project to provide reliable power supplies for health facilities in rural Malawi.

• £218,000 to help the Malawian growers of macadamia nuts to get their produce to markets.

• £185,000 for Mercy Corps Scotland in its work at Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka, helping the community to recover after the tsunami.

• £167,000 to fund Scottish volunteers to work with local NGOs in Sri Lanka on health and water projects in areas affected by the Tsunami.

• £100,000 - two awards of £50,000, one to Oxfam and one to Mercy Corps Scotland - to help them in their work in Pakistan after the earthquake.

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