Humanitarian Emergency Fund: annual report 2023-2024 - executive summary

Ministerial Foreword

A key part of our commitment that Scotland should be a good global citizen is to support communities caught up in some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. With the climate crisis accelerating, often in combination with intractable and largely unreported conflicts, the number of people around the world who are in acute hunger or without a safe home is at record levels.

The Scottish Government established the Humanitarian Emergency Fund (HEF) in 2017, with a commitment to sustain spend of £1 million each year, advised by eight of Scotland’s leading humanitarian charities.

Over the past seven years the HEF has helped save and rebuild lives in 24 countries. This has included financial support for high profile crises such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but also for many other crises which are all too easily ignored, such as the Horn of Africa food crisis. One of the key aims of the HEF, in addition to providing financial support to high profile Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Appeals, is to help these particularly vulnerable but largely forgotten communities and encourage us all to help where we can.

Over the past year the HEF has supported the Scottish based humanitarian charities, and through them their local partners, to respond to extreme flash floods in Libya, earthquakes in an already fragile Afghanistan, as well supporting communities in Sudan and South Sudan affected by violent conflict, drought and flooding.

Funding was also granted in February to respond to a food crisis in Malawi, and a severe cholera outbreak in Zambia, two of our key international development partner countries. Four HEF Panel member charities also shared a further £1 million from our related ‘Climate Justice Fund’ to address the ‘loss and damage’ suffered by countries and communities who have contributed least to global warming but suffer disproportionately from increasingly extreme weather.

This report details the impact of these Scottish Government funded projects and how our expert panel members and their local partners collaborate to improve the effectiveness and impact locally of their work. I hope it also demonstrates our shared commitment to be better led by the affected communities equalising the power imbalance that still exists between the Global North and South, whilst also fostering equality and human rights.

Angus Robertson

Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture