Scotland
Adoption
Scotland officially adopted its Feminist Foreign Policy on November 13, 2023. International Development Minister Christinia McKelvie announced the feminist foreign policy at a women's leadership forum in Iceland, saying, "We want a feminist policy that questions colonialism, that's actively anti-racist, that targets patriarchy and in some ways the capitalist, imperialist, male-dominated power structures." Indicating a desire to prioritize peace, and the rights of women and marginalized groups, Scotland is working within a limited frame of action given its status as a devolved state within the United Kingdom.
The position paper published by the Scottish Government affirms its commitment to gender equality, and the adoption of a feminist approach that "recognises the relationship between addressing inequality and tackling insecurity in pursuit of a fairer world for all."This position paper sets out (1) Why the Scottish Government is taking a feminist approach and what that means (2) Action taken to date to understand and prioritise where Scotland can make the greatest impact; (3) Cross-government actions and four thematic areas of focus: International development and humanitarian; Climate justice; Trade; and Peace and security, and (4) Next steps, including how we propose to monitor impact while remaining collaborative, accountable and transparent.
The Scottish government defines its "feminist approach" as being informed by the following core principles:
Transformative: Addressing shared systemic barriers that drive inequality and insecurity, collaborating and speaking out in pursuit of innovative, progressive solutions.
Intersectional: Viewing inequality through an intersectional lens and understanding the compounding impact of marginalisation and oppression.
Equitable: Committing to an equalising power agenda that seeks to be actively anti-racist and anti-colonial and ensuring that the reduction of inequalities is central to how they work.
Participatory: Engaging in participatory consultations at home and abroad and adopting accessible, collaborative approaches with civil society and women, girls and marginalised groups around the world.
Consistent: Ensuring coherence between international, domestic, and local policies, integrating feminist principles across all aspects of our international policymaking.
Accountable: Promoting transparency and accountability in Scotland and abroad in measuring both policy process and impact.
Alluding to policy coherence, Scotland suggests that its feminist approach to international relations complements its domestic objective of addressing inequality within Scotland. To ensure that feminist international policymaking is mainstreamed across the Scottish government, it intends to align with its commitment to mainstream equality and human rights, and affirms that this includes:
Ensuring that learning and development for our staff in Scotland and in our overseas network is guided by an understanding of feminist principles for international policy.
Aligning with the developing Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Strategy, with a focus on building organisation capability, capacity and culture.
Developing and piloting a human rights impact assessment framework for both legislative and policy work.
Embedding equality and human rights within the economic policymaking process and build capacity and capability across economic policy officials.
Considering the best means and models to set up more Centres of Expertise as part of our work to develop a mainstreaming equality and human rights strategy.
Recognising, within other initiatives, such as the Scottish Human Rights Defender Fellowship, the relevance of feminist principles and of the contribution made by women in advocating for human rights, equality and environmental justice, including in the Global South.
Continuing to engage its International Board and the recently established Senior Leadership Group on Equality and Human Rights, which will scrutinise and bring challenge to the Scottish Government’s strategic approach to embed equality and human rights, ensuring they are at the heart of policy development, following the three key themes of Leadership, Accountability and Creating Conditions.
Continuing to take a progressive approach to international development as we seek to implement our International Development Principles and further align with its new feminist principles.
Continuing to engage its Global South Advisory Panel on its international development policy and programming.
Using its principles to guide the Scottish Government’s international engagement, including the work of our overseas offices and our approach to working with Scots around the world.
Under its first focus area, "International development and humanitarian," the policy aims at contributing to international development in alignment with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It names its contributions to climate justice and humanitarian emergencies through separate funds. It aims to embed a human rights-based approach, remain actively anti-racist, prioritize the advancement of gender equality and the rights of women and girls, and remain inclusive, transparent, and accountable.
Under its second focus area, Scotland affirms its commitment to addressing climate change, and recognizes the "gendered dimension to the great injustice at the heart of climate change." It aims at addressing and reducing gendered impacts of climate change based on existing gender inequalities exacerbated by climate change. Its climate justice fund programming is to be delivered through a participatory approach, and it recognizes the importance of capacity sharing.
The policy also focuses on Trade, and promotes a principle-based approach, including highlighting its work on the differential impacts of trade on marginalized groups, including women, and the barriers they face in accessing the full benefits of international trade. It also aims to press the UK Government to include gender chapters in all its Free Trade Agreements and Memoranda of Understanding with its trade partners, and to include gender-specific impact analyses, labour provisions on the promotion and protection of the rights of women and girls, and the monitoring and institutional support around these provisions.
Finally, its focus on peace and security specifically drives home the need to support female activists so that they can be heard in policymaking and peacebuilding processes through its Women's Environment and Development Organisation, specifically through the Climate Justice Fund and the Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship. It aims to support human rights defenders and civil society activists so that they can work to promote human rights, accountability, and good governance. It also affirms the importance of the work of human rights defenders in international policymaking and engagement, and runs a fellowship program for them. Scotland also aims to press the UK government to refuse or suspend licenses when there is a risk of arms being used to violate human rights, and is firmly opposed to the threat and use of nuclear weapons. It is curently pursuing the safe and complete withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from Scotland. The policy also intends to support migrants, refugees, and people seeking asylum through local community-led organisations and partners.
As next steps, the policy indicates that its National Performance Framework shall inform its framework for delivery, and that it will continue to collaborate with civil society and its Global South Advisory Panel to "harness Global South expertise." It also intends to publish a detailed monitoring, evaluation, and learning process to track its policy impacts.
Development History
Declaration of Intent
Scotland is, at the time of writing (July 2023), working toward adopting its feminist foreign policy. Preparing well ahead, it has released a document to set the scene ahead of its planned stakeholder engagement to define and shape its feminist approach to foreign policy: A first to follow this route.
In this document, the Scottish Government sets the tone by looking at existing definitions, outlining its rationale, aims, and next steps. In its introductory segment, the government establishes that it reiterated its commitment under the 2021-2022 Programme for Government to ensure alignment and coherence between its foreign policies and domestic policies, and focus on fairness and inclusion. They also affirm the commitment to ensuring coherence with the Global Affairs Framework. Interestingly, Scotland also states that "while foreign policy currently remains the responsibility of the UK Government, there is a clear role for Scotland in being a good global citizen and making a constructive contribution to addressing global challenges." It centers its record of engaging internationally within its current constitutional arrangements in international development and climate justice. It sees that it is imperative for Scotland to be more active globally, aims to reduce gender and other inequalities at home and abroad, and believes that the Scottish Government – and other regional and devolved governments globally – can make a significant contribution to advancing the core principles of feminist foreign ppolicy. The note acknowledges that its "feminist approach to foreign policy will be different in its reach compared to countries with the full powers of an independent state."
The document also presents an overview of existing feminist foreign policies, and definitions advanced by civil society, such as those by the ICRW and CFFP, and aims at developing its own working definition of a feminist approach to foreign policy.
Under a separate section in its rationale and aims, Scotland suggests that its approach is rooted in: the key values of fairness, equality, and inclusion; a commitment to international human rights standards; securing a fair and just global transition to a net zero and climate-resilient future; and an internationalist outlook based on cooperation and the rule of law. The Scottish Government also establishes what it has accomplished so far in pursuit of its strong commitment to advancing feminist foreign policies internationally. It names its partnership with UN Women to launch the the Glasgow Women’s Leadership Statement on Gender Equality and Climate Change at COP26; its effort of trebling the Climate Justice Fund to £36 million over this parliamentary term, of which £2 million is dedicated to addressing loss and damage, recognising those least responsible for the global climate emergency are being affected first and most severely by it; its contributions to the WPS Agenda through the Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship; and its provision of funding to Comic Relief to support programmes that empower women and girls through sport to challenge and address social issues such as violence against women experienced by vulnerable communities in Zambia, Rwanda and Malawi.
Scotland also aims to: take a human-rights based approach to development; establish a new Equalities Programme, including a Women and Girls’ Empowerment Fund; decolonise our International Development programmes; support partner countryled development; ensure that Global South voices continue to be heard beyond the review by establishing an advisory Global South Programme Panel; and increase the International Development Fund from £10m to £15m per annum during this parliamentary term to contribute to sustainable development and the fight against poverty, injustice and inequality internationally. It has also recognised the importance of gender in the Vision for Trade and in our first Annual Report when considering the differential impacts of trade on society. Scotland also supported the Women’s Environment Development Organisation to address gender equality in climate action in the Global South and directly support gender equality at the annual Conference of Parties.
In a first in the international community, Scotland acknowledges that it can do more, and names the fact that COVID-19 laid bare the exacerbated structural inequalities within and beyond Scotland. It mindfully acknowledges the adverse impact of the pandemic and related lockdowns on women, minority ethnic groups, people with disabilities, and folks who faced gender-based violence.
With this foundation, the document identities the aims of the intended approach as follows:
To put the rights and empowerment of women and girls, and other marginalised groups at its heart.
To listen to, and learn from, others and take an intersectional approach in seeking to understand how multiple
To complement domestic policy that aims to address gender inequality in Scotland.
To explore ways to continue supporting efforts to ensure appropriate representation and diversity of input, including from the Global South and civil society, for an international system that works for all.
To apply a feminist lens to all elements of our international policy considerations.
The document also declares a commitment to stakeholder engagement by learning from those already pursuing feminist foreign policies, and the most affected by global challenges such as climate change, poverty and insecurity, for example through our new Global South Programme Panel for International Development.
It aims to host training sessions and workshops with stakeholders with the intention to:
Inform the development of a feminist approach to foreign policy for Scotland;
Build an evidence base and fill gaps in knowledge;
Seek views on a definition that would work in the Scottish context;
Identify key priority areas of Scotland’s approach;
Help inform measurable policy outcomes; and
Build relationships with key actors in the field and develop long-term networks.
The proposed policy shall seek to focus on climate and economic justice, and peace. To this end, it aims to center these questions as part of its stakeholder engagement:
1. What should the core principles of a feminist approach to Scotland’s international activity be?
2. Where should the Scottish Government focus its efforts to ensure our actions have most impact?
3. What does it mean in practice to look at international work through a feminist lens?
4. Which policies or programmes that Scotland is already delivering domestically or internationally should we build on?
5. Should Scotland take a feminist approach to international development? If so, what would this look like?
6. How can Scotland ensure that human rights are at the core of its approach and that we play our part in building international capacity to advance human rights?
7. What is the one action you want the Scottish Government to take as part of its approach?
8. How can our approach be monitored and evaluated effectively? How do we know that our policies are having the desired impact?
9. What should the future role of stakeholders be as Scotland’s feminist approach to foreign policy is being implemented?
The Scottish Story
Scotland is a powerful exception to what we've seen defined thus far as the "norm" when it comes to feminist foreign policies. Right from the fact that it is a devolved state within a union, with an active movement seeking independence, to the fact that it strives to start from a feminist approach by centering a wide-ranging stakeholder consultation, there is much to learn from the Scottish approach. Originally rolled out and proposed by Nicola Sturgeon, it appears that Humza Yousaf is committed to seeing it through - he has made open commitments to support women and trans rights. He has affirmed his commitment to Sturgeon's legacy, but no official statement has been made on the feminist foreign policy. That the government website continues to carry the feminist foreign policy approach appears evidence enough to suggest a commitment to seeing this through.
References:
https://www.gov.scot/policies/international-relations/feminist-approach/
