The Church of Scotland’s World Mission Council will urge the Kirk to keep pressure on the government to maintain a prominent role in the fight against global poverty when it reports to the General Assembly in May.
The report from the World Mission Council, the Kirk’s main body for mission work, will demand a “rapid expansion of the cancellation of the unpayable debts of poor countries” and call for more steps to be taken to reach the goal of committing 0.7 per cent of the UK’s GDP to overseas aid.The council also paid tribute to the massive contribution played by the Make Poverty History last year in raising awareness of the problem of global poverty, which saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets across the UK in demonstration against the plight of millions of victims suffering in unnecessary poverty.
Church of Scotland members were among the more than 250,000 people who took part in the Edinburgh demonstration alone, the largest ever street demonstration to take place in Scotland.
Although the council acknowledges that the steps taken to alleviate poverty in the last year have exceeded expectations, it is quick to urge that more needs to be done.
The report seconds the position of the chairman of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, Kumi Naidoo, who said: “The people have roared, but the G8 has whispered.”
The council’s report will also highlight to the General Assembly that the promised increase in the aid budget by the G8 countries of US$50billion per annum remains inadequate.
To put this figure in context, the UK and the US raised US$400 billion to fight a war in Iraq,” the report states.The World Mission Council report asserts that, “Trade justice, more than any other single factor... would give poor countries the opportunity to emerge from the oppression of poverty."
The report also criticises what it calls the “discrepancy between words and action when it comes to trade policy,” as the US and European Union continue to subsidise large sections of their own economies meaning that many producers in poor countries are squeezed out of their own markets in the price war by goods from the developed world.
One of the other developments to be outlined in the report is the cuts that the council has been forced to make in the numbers of personnel employed overseas, with funding to partner churches in some cases also suffering reductions in the last year.
This downward turn has been coupled with the more positive increase in local-to-local links and the rise in the number of twinning and support arrangements between churches and presbyteries in Scotland and local churches in other parts of the world. The council is looking to the General Assembly to build on this success in the coming years.
The report from the World Mission Council concludes with a call to the General Assembly to keep up action at home and abroad: “This is the time for the Church to stand and be counted, making it clear that our faith will not allow us to accept a situation where every single day, 30,000 children are dying as a result of extreme poverty."
