Sudan and South Sudan

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, it is not business as usual but, as the noble Lord knows, the UK Government engage with all Governments in the hope of bringing about the changes that the noble Lord would wish to see. In embassy involvement, the only countries from which officials have been withdrawn are Syria and Iran, which was necessary for the protection of staff. In all other areas, including North Korea, there is engagement, but it is not business as usual. With regard to the crimes to which the noble Lord referred, it is clear that there have been indiscriminate attacks on civilians and war crimes. Indeed, President al-Bashir is indicted by the International Criminal Court. It is worth bearing in mind, too, that the case of Charles Taylor shows that international criminal justice is not time-limited.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that DfID has suspended long-term development aid to South Sudan in response to the Government’s decision to turn off the oil pipeline. However, does the noble Baroness recognise the tragic effects of such action for the people of a country that has such desperate needs at this time? Will the Government reconsider that decision in the light of the fact that two major donors, the United States and Norway, have not taken such action and will maintain all development assistance, while at the same time focusing on dialogue between South Sudan and Sudan?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness rightly points to the implications of South Sudan cutting off its oil supplies, which constitute 98% of its revenue. It is extremely important to bring home to the Government of South Sudan the implications of that and that the international community will not simply bail them out. DfID is very much focused on humanitarian relief, which is extremely important, but the important issue here is to get the Governments in question to negotiate and take forward some of their responsibilities to their citizens.

South Sudan

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for initiating this debate and for her absolutely tireless commitment and concern for the people of Sudan, South Sudan and many other places in our world, as others have said.

South Sudan is a country where every possible indicator, whether of health, education, social protection or income, illustrates the shocking extent of the disadvantage and vulnerability which the people of that country face. Noble Lords have identified the security challenges and the need for much more co-ordinated action. I suggest that there has to be effective government action to strengthen the security presence in potential flashpoints, peace processes have to get off the ground earlier, those responsible have to be brought to justice and there have to be programmes designed to address communities’ grievances. Also, the UN and its members, including the UK, as chair of the Security Council, need to act with much greater urgency in deploying the full strength of the UNMISS troops to South Sudan.

As post-independence Sudan experiences increasing conflict, we see major displacement, especially of women and children—children who are susceptible to abduction and abuse as they are separated from their families. With so many female-headed households in South Sudan, the insecurity disproportionately affects women and children and the activities of the militia groups that are everywhere keep them on the move and in danger of violence, including terrible sexual violence.

The conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile is having a terrible effect on the humanitarian situation. Tens of thousands of people have fled across the border to camps which NGOs have said are at absolute breaking point and where basic needs cannot be met, as MSF has said today. Conflict, population, displacement, poor rains in 2011, border closures, resulting commodity price increases and cattle raiding have all combined to leave the people of South Sudan in absolutely desperate need. We know that a major contributory factor is the negative effect of the shutdown of South Sudan oil production, which is threatening the country’s ability to address food insecurity and the humanitarian emergency. My understanding is that there is not yet any clarity on what the imminent austerity measures will be. However, we already know that the Government, as a result of losing this revenue, have announced that no new personnel will be appointed. That means no new teachers or health workers—exactly the professionals which that country so desperately needs.

Many of us in this Room will have followed the essential South Sudan Development Plan. However, that is now not feasible or deliverable, and the implications for development are very serious indeed. If an oil deal is not agreed, what steps will the UK and other donors take to prepare for the huge impact of the loss of 98 per cent of the Government’s revenue? Will the UK publicly and clearly call for transparency of oil revenues? That is a fundamental governance issue. Will the UK call for any deal that is made to be monitored and properly verified?

Mention has been made of the European Union. I can confirm that last week, President Salva Kiir was in Brussels and presented the request for membership of the Cotonou treaty—that will be agreed—to the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton. I think we can fairly say that the political benefits and the benefits for security and trade and development opportunities will be substantial. Access to committed funds from the ninth EDF and the 10th EDF is also beneficial. That is good news. South Sudan will join the ACP countries. I am sure that each one of them will very much welcome Africa’s newest country.

UN: Sustainable Development and Family Planning

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness has contributed enormously in this area and I thank her very much for the tribute paid to the department for its expansion of work on this issue. The Government are well aware of the background to the initial MDG negotiations. Discussions are very much in the early stages for a post-MDG framework post-2015. The UK will work to ensure that all the relevant development issues are included in the most appropriate way possible.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, it is welcome news that the European Union plans to propose a new section to the Rio+20 outcome document to include population and health, and reproductive health and contraception. Will the Minister assure the House that efforts will be made by DfID to ensure that the delegation to the Rio+20 conference includes a representative who will be able to champion and lead on these issues, and will also be able to ensure that the linkages between population, reproductive health and family planning with sustainable development are understood?

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I will take that specific suggestion back. I point out to the noble Baroness that the Deputy Prime Minister is leading this delegation to Rio and I am very pleased that that is the case. She will know how he has emphasised the importance of placing women and girls centre stage with regard to development, which is what is required here.

Sahel

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The international community is acutely aware of all the problems right across the region. One of the lessons from west Africa has been, as the crises that have happened there and across the region generally have shown, that you have to pick up the early warning signs of increasing food prices as well as food shortages. The displacement of people from Libya, as I just mentioned, and problems spilling over from Nigeria contribute to this problem. I am pleased to say that the EU is very much taking a lead in this area. The meeting yesterday shows that there is a lot to be done but there are encouraging signs that actions are being taken.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, the Minister has acknowledged that the struggling countries of the Sahel are now facing the fallout from the crisis in Libya. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have returned from Libya; communities have lost the income from remittances on which they depended; and huge caches of very sophisticated weapons, which were previously in the Libyan arsenal, are now flowing into the Sahel in the hands of ex-combatants. Would the Minister clearly outline the involvement of the UK, together with the EU and, very importantly, with the UN and regional bodies, in the efforts that need to be made to deal with this growing humanitarian and security problem?

[Baroness Northover]

This is currently very high on the UK’s agenda and those of the EU and the UN. There will shortly be a debate on this in the UN, as the noble Baroness probably knows. I spoke to relevant officials this morning and I can assure the noble Baroness that they are acutely aware of the problem of the weapons there. As she says, people have come back who are no longer sending remittances home and themselves need to be supported.

Health: Tropical Diseases

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. I pay tribute to her and to her husband Martin Hayman for all that they have done in this field. When this announcement was made, my honourable friend Stephen O’Brien said:

“British support will take the neglected out of neglected tropical diseases”.

That is clearly critical. The noble Baroness is absolutely right: these are devastating diseases. The United Kingdom can help gear up what is happening elsewhere. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been remarkable in what it has managed to achieve, as has the Carter Center. The possible elimination of guinea worm by 2015 would be the second human disease that we have managed to eliminate.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords—

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

Let us hear from the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

Does the Minister agree that the distribution of drugs and the setting up of treatment programmes present a huge challenge in many of the countries where these neglected tropical diseases are endemic, where health systems are already struggling to provide even the most basic services? Would she also agree that a further challenge comes from meeting requirements to regulate a range of what will be new medical products and to evaluate their safety, their efficacy and their quality in very particular conditions, for instance in Africa? Will the Minister assure the House that funding will be provided to support efforts to strengthen health systems and to build capacity to regulate the new drugs?

[Baroness Northover]

I can give the noble Baroness that assurance. She will know that there is a conference on Monday that will be attended by Bill Gates and many organisations, including the WHO. This will doubtless be part of what they will be considering.

Niger

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Save the Children and Oxfam report on the crisis in east Africa and the call for early responses to warning signs, what they will do to ensure a similar crisis is averted in Niger.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, the Government are very concerned about the emerging crisis in Niger and have been monitoring the situation closely. The Secretary of State for International Development has announced emergency support to mitigate the impact of the crisis. This will reach 68,000 children in Niger, Chad and Mali and provide livestock support to 30,000 families.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her response. The warning signs of looming disaster were there in the Horn of Africa two years ago, but no action was taken and tens of thousands of Somalis starved to death and millions of people in east Africa were affected. Against that background, will the Government give active endorsement to the UN-supported charter to end extreme poverty, which identifies five specific actions that must be taken when we know that a crisis is predicted and preventable? We can and must stop the drought in west Africa and the Sahel turning into a famine. We must say never again and mean it.

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is right that we must say never again and mean it, but I dispute that the Department for International Development was not leading on the response in the Horn of Africa. Credit has been given to the UK Government for that. The report from Oxfam and Save the Children to which her Question refers is extremely welcome. It indeed emphasises that the intention is to manage the risk, not the crisis. That is absolutely the right way to go about it: to intervene early and build resilience. That is why the Department for International Development did that in the Horn of Africa and is doing that across the Sahel.

International Development Policy

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I also add my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for initiating this debate, and indeed for his lifelong, strong commitment to international development. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon. He clearly brings great wisdom and experience to the work of this House, and as his maiden speech has shown today, we can look forward to many more interventions of that calibre from the noble Lord.

This is a timely opportunity to consider how best to implement international development objectives in what is, as many noble Lords have intimated, a rapidly changing and deteriorating international environment. Today, we are discussing these issues against the backdrop of faltering progress towards meeting the MDGs and in the knowledge that most of the world’s poorest countries will not meet the 2015 targets, as well as knowledge of the emerging and growing threats linked to climate change, food security, and a very disappointing record on aid.

One particular statistic has called into question whether the MDGs are actually able to reach the most marginalised, disadvantaged and hard-to-reach poor. We now know that 75 per cent of the world’s 1.3 billion poor people actually live in middle-income countries, and that in fact 20 years ago, 93 per cent of poor people lived in lower-income countries. We have seen a huge shift in that period. Does this evidence not then dictate that we need to focus more on poor people, not just on poor countries? We can tick the boxes when we use MDGs as our benchmarks, but social exclusion, environmental sustainability, and governance are just not factored in to the MDGs. The MDGs are formulated in terms of average progress, and fail to assess whether progress has been broad-based or indeed equitable. MDGs’ assessment processes tend to obscure what is happening within countries.

All the evidence shows that the most disadvantaged people—who have been referred to by many noble Lords today—are being left further and further behind. Social disparities are seriously holding back progress. With that MDG focus on aggregate progress, we will not deal with those intersecting inequalities which are so resistant to change, and when such uneven progress is being disguised by the process used by the MDGs. Meanwhile, as Ban Ki-Moon said recently,

“inequality eats away at social cohesion”.

All of this sits very well with both aspects of the debate: international development and the Dalits. The work of the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex and the Overseas Development Institute is very clear and very good indeed, and I recommend it.

In Latin America, for example, extreme poverty is much higher among indigenous and Afro-descendent populations compared with the white Latino population. The region’s poor earn only 3 per cent of the total regional income, and make up 25 per cent of the population. Remarkable progress has been made, however, by Governments in Brazil, Chile, and Malaysia.

Noble Lords have drawn attention to the plight of the Dalits, who are denied fundamental rights and opportunities. This evidence clearly makes the case for challenging discrimination which leads to entrenched poverty and indeed to terrible suffering. In Nigeria, only 4 per cent of mothers in the predominantly Muslim north-west are delivered in a health facility, compared with 73.9 per cent in the predominantly Christian south-east. In Kenya, minority ethnic groups have lower immunisation levels and higher under-fives mortality rates. A poor indigenous woman in Guatemala has one year of education compared with the national average of almost six years.

In every country and in every region, people are being denied their right to play their part in social and economic developments. This is on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and often location—if people live far away from the capital, it is much easier for their needs to be ignored. This is systematic social, economic, and political discrimination, and leaves people literally and metaphorically at the end of the road. This calls for an expansion in developing countries of, for instance, social protection, access to decent work, minimum wages, and many other opportunities which people need if they are to see real progress.

In 2000, the millennium summit identified the need for social justice. Does the Minister agree that dealing with inequalities is the key to realising that aspiration, of which we have somehow lost sight?

Global aid budgets are critical to the achievement of the MDGs. We are obviously very clear that the achievements of this Government in getting agreement across the whole party on overseas development are extremely important, but we want some clarity on the reduction in overseas development aid. A reduction of something like £1.17 billion seems to be on the cards. That is enough to vaccinate millions of children against deadly diseases and, for example, to cover the training of midwives, who would be able to save many lives. Will the Minister give some detail on which budget lines will be affected by this reduction in funding? Bilateral programmes depend on long-term sustainable financing. Incidentally, this is a core effectiveness principle which the Government have signed up to in Busan. Will the Minister give an assurance that bilateral funding for country programmes will not be reduced?

Will the Minister perhaps also indicate whether the World Bank allocation will be reduced? In the context of the Durban conference, will he clarify whether it is the intention to take money for climate change adaptation and mitigation? Will the Government give an assurance that this will be additional money and that it is not the intention to take the necessary resources from the DfID budget? Of course, the Labour Government made a very strong commitment to 90 per cent of funding for climate change being additional funding, with 10 per cent being not additional but focused on poverty reduction. Are the Government also prepared to agree to that arrangement?

My final point is on the prospect of a commitment to the financial transaction tax—referred to by my noble friend Lord Judd—which I think it has been proven does not have to be global. The FTT is seen increasingly as not only desirable but feasible. It has been endorsed by Bill Gates, by a clutch of Nobel peace laureates, by UNICEF and the UNDP, and by many other economists and others, as well as, as the Minister knows, the Liberal Democrat manifesto before the last election. Robert Peston has recently said that an FTT,

“would improve the functioning of capitalism”.

Does the Minister agree with this view? I look forward to her response.

International Development

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is right that some of these textbooks include things that we would certainly not wish to see within them. There is no doubt about that. With his work in the area, he knows how difficult it is to bring together groups that come from opposing positions. Sometimes it is extremely important to try to take forward the bigger picture and ensure that the Israeli side has security and that the Palestinian side has some kind of hope. That has to be the focus of DfID in supporting those who are in poverty in whatever situation they may be living.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

Does the Minister share my concern that the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD has reported that international donors have met only one of the 13 targets that they set themselves on aid effectiveness and that, in addition, aid is now fragmented, unpredictable and poorly co-ordinated and lacks transparency? Will she give an assurance that the Government will raise these issues as a major concern at the Busan high-level forum on aid effectiveness later this month?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is right that as more organisations and countries have become involved in aid, which itself is welcome, there is a lot of fragmentation. Previous meetings such as those in Paris and Accra have tried to take this forward, and Busan is trying to do that too. She is absolutely right that this is something that DfID will be emphasising, to try to ensure that aid is effective and targeted, and that countries and organisations should work closely together. In this regard, it is extremely important to bring in some of the BRIC countries, which up to now have not played such a large part in this area and may play a major role in the future.

Malawi

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Lord is right. I know that he shares a great interest in that region with the Government. We wish to see greater economic development there, which is why we are encouraging private sector investment but also working with Governments to ensure that they are able to move much more strongly in revisiting their systems and ensuring that good governance overreaches all areas of their government as well as where the budget aid is going.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that in the DfID press release announcing the suspension of general budget support to Malawi there was an unexpected announcement? It says:

“This comes as the Government reduces general budget support across the world by 43 per cent”.

Will the Minister give us more detail on this announcement in the press release and say which countries are affected, by how much and over what timescale?

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Baroness will know that I am not able to answer on each individual country at this moment in time, but I will get someone to write to her. The reductions are a result of our bilateral and multilateral reviews, where we saw that we needed to ensure that whatever moneys we were giving through aid via DfID were being well spent. The noble Baroness shakes her head, but she will know that during her time she faced the same sort of difficulties in ensuring that such programmes were both fully funded and fully scrutinised by the programmes we had in place. Governments needed to build up on good governance, which some were failing to do.

International Development

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

I will repeat that it is about choice; it is about being able to educate girls and women about what is available to them in their countries. We as a Government cannot dictate how people access family planning: they must be able to make the choices for themselves. But it is also about being able to tell them that through better healthcare and planning they will have less need to have more babies as, often as not, more babies are born is because of the belief that many of them will die.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the newly independent state of South Sudan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, and that in a population of 8 million there are only about 10 midwives—and this when 3,000 midwives are needed to ensure safe motherhood? How will DfID ensure that the Government of South Sudan’s five-year health sector development plan prioritises the urgent need for obstetric care?

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. The onus will be on all donor countries to support South Sudan, particularly through its transient stages of being the newest country on the planet. Again, it is about partnership work and ensuring NGOs and donor countries work closely. It is also about ensuring that our programmes are targeted towards and reach those who we feel most need the help.