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The Westminster Government is to merge the Department for International Development with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Marian Pallister, Justice and Peace Scotland’s vice chair, offers a very personal reflection on the implications.

I’m afraid I agree with those who have called the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with DfID an ‘act of vandalism’, rather than welcoming it as the ‘long overdue reform’ that Boris Johnson says will ensure ‘maximum value’ for taxpayers. 

Mr Johnson’s comment that aid recipients have looked on DfID as a ‘giant cashpoint in the sky that arrives without any reference to UK interests’, was to say the least insulting. It encouraged headlines (already recycled many times) to be dragged out in support of the merger. The trapeze, acrobatics and juggling lessons funded by British taxpayers (claims last sighted in 2015 and 2017 in publications such as The Daily Express, The Sun, and The Daily Mail) have been dredged up as evidence of wasted cash. 

The idea of aid for trade has long been controversial. The fundamental concept? We give water; they buy our cars. In its current incarnation, DfID hasn’t worked like that, but rather for the common good – for development. Mr Johnson will keep DfID’s £15bn budget intact, with the UK committed to continuing to spend 0.7% of national income on aid projects. But - he wants the aid to be given only with our national interests at heart.

The remit for DfID is wide, but sustained poverty reduction has been a major factor in all that it does. I fear that will be threatened by the merger – because what does the UK get back from that?

Wearing another hat, that of the chair of ZamScotEd, a very small charity based in Argyll that supports the education of some of Zambia’s poorest children, can I tell you why even juggling lessons are worth funding without asking anything in return?

Our charity is a member of Scotland's International Development Alliance. Like us, members are non-government organisations working in many developing countries in many different ways. To illustrate the ‘crime’ of ‘funding juggling lessons’, let me tell you about one organisation that gets street kids playing football and doing acrobatics in Tanzania.  Those children are attracted from surviving on food picked from the rubbish dumps of Dar es Salaam into sporting teams and given skills they enjoy. From there, the majority go on to school, to jobs, and to contributing to their society. 

Many of the children attending the secondary school ZamScotEd initiated on the outskirts of Lusaka are former street kids, (and yes, learning to perform traditional music and acrobatics, though not with DfID money).

By engaging the poorest of children, funding the means to give them skills, then channelling them into an education that can transform their lives, we help to achieve the UN’s first sustainable development goal – the elimination of poverty. Catholic Social Teaching says: ‘The common good is the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfilment.’
(Vatican II)

What do we get back? Fulfilled people less likely to migrate. Countries with educated populations able to govern well for the benefit of the peace of the whole world. 

But those educated people will also be able to negotiate trade deals that are fair and just – now there’s a concept for Mr Johnson to juggle with. 

(Picture courtesy Yes! Tanzania)

Jenny Fraser, from Evanston, Illinois, now lives in Inverness. Here she reflects on the surprising - and impressive - reaction in the Scottish city to the Black Lives Matter campaign.

On Wednesday May 27th 2020 I woke at my usual time of 7:30 am and after getting my cup of coffee sat at my laptop to find out the latest news of a world under coronavirus lockdown.  I noticed my sister who lives in West St. Paul Minnesota was active on messenger and sent her a message saying, ‘You’re up late.’  The response I received was unexpected.

‘D (my 26 year old nephew) and I are watching the fires raging through the city. The fire and police department are struggling to contain them, and we are just waiting for the mayor’s press conference.’ I quickly put on CNN, thinking ‘it’s almost 2am in Minnesota - what is going on?’  I was to learn a lot.

I learned about George Floyd and in that moment for me the world as I knew it changed direction.  America had had enough, and protests across the country and the world stood in solidarity with George Floyd and the need for change.  

Inverness joined in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest by creating a space across one of the city’s main bridges for people to put up their protest posters last Saturday. I must admit I thought this seemed like a rather lame protest compared to the daily mass gatherings happening throughout the world.  But what I was to discover was that this was a protest that actually grew in a way I never imagined.

I visited the bridge three times over the coming week, learning something new on each visit. The protest made me think of my role and my attitudes towards racism. The bridge protest was creating a local platform for discussion between people: family, friends and strangers were discussing a range of topics relating to Black Lives Matter and racism. At a time when Inverness was doing its best to social distance, people were having discussions with each other about current events and how we play a role in them.  For me, the bridge became not just a protest, but a piece of working social art. I found myself seeking more information after leaving the bridge and a need to educate myself further by what I just witnessed on the bridge protest.

I have spent the last week reading and discussing issues such as racial profiling, redlining, police brutality and the BLM movement.  I have started recalling my own racial experiences growing up in the suburbs of Chicago and the impact these experiences have played in my adult life. Evanston, the suburb where I grew up, has a rich diversity of races and I was privileged to be encouraged to form friendships with a wide range of people from different cultural, religious and racial backgrounds. I now realise those formative years have set me up to engage and welcome open and honest discussions around race.

I was delighted to hear that the poster, banners and artwork from the bridge were being relocated to the grounds of the Eden Court theatre in Inverness to protect it from the elements.  It allows the discussion to continue that Black Lives Matter and that Inverness and the Highlands stand in solidarity.

In recent weeks, the already difficult situation in Nicaragua has continued to worsen. Here, a Scottish development worker reflects on how COVID 19 and the political situation are affecting Nicaraguans.

On April 6, an article in the medical journal The Lancet stated that the response of the Nicaraguan government to the COVID-19 pandemic “…has been perhaps the most erratic of any country in the world to date. Directly contradicting mitigation strategies recommended by WHO, President Daniel Ortega has refused to encourage any physical distancing measures.”

In fact, it's much worse than that. In an interview given in mid-May, Bishop Silvio José Baez, the Bishop of Managua, exiled in 2019 for his own safety at Pope Francis's request, said: "The government of Nicaragua, instead of addressing the pandemic with measures that could block its spread, basically promoted massive events so that more people would get sick."

Ortega's herd immunity policy, prioritising the economy and putting the most vulnerable groups at risk, is seen by many as a new and sinister phase of the repression that began in 2018 - a deliberate strategy to punish the population for daring to stand up for it rights and confront his power.

Transmission of the coronavirus has spiralled. The already debilitated health system is on the verge of collapse. Pickup trucks have been used to cart away bodies for "express burials", often before family members knew relatives had died. Death certificates have been falsified to hide the mounting death toll from the virus, estimated by independent health experts in the first week of June at around 1000, almost 20 times higher than official government statistics.

p>Despite the release of some 2800 common criminals for Mothers’ Day in May, all 90 political prisoners remain in jail.  Distraught families and friends have reported that that up to a third have had Covid 19 symptoms and, with little or no contact with them, they fear for their integrity and safety.

A few weeks ago, Ángel, a doctor friend of mine in a Nicaraguan hospital, messaged to say: "... trying to do everything in my power not to get sick. On Friday I was on night duty and looking after lots of patients who possibly have COVID19... I was given a protective gown that looks nothing like the ones the Chinese use and a mask that doesn't meet the required standards..."

A week later, another message from Ángel: “I had a chest x-ray and have a slight pneumonic infiltrate on the right side. I have a cough, a slight headache and no sense of taste or smell and been told to rest for 7 days…”  

At the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, the government prohibited health professionals from using masks, to ‘avoid panic in the population’. Since then, doctors have been sacked for criticizing the lack of PPE and for receiving private donations, in a country where there are an estimated 160 ventilators for a population of over 6 million. 

Ángel will soon be back on the wards without knowing if he had the virus.  The upward curve is frightening. There is no testing.

Meanwhile, churches and civil society organisations, under threat of further state violence, have taken the lead, promoting physical distancing and community-based responses to shield the most vulnerable while Nicaragua heads towards one of the highest per capita Covid19 death tolls in the world. Ortega’s latest crime against humanity.

Please write to your MSP in Holyrood and MP in Westminster to express your concern about the crisis in Nicaragua or contact Scottish Solidarity with Nicaragua.