East Africa: Famine

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I am very happy to do that. I also pay tribute to the work of the Disasters Emergency Committee in this instance. The immediate response to the crisis and the generosity of the British people in raising £20 million, which was then aid matched by DfID, is typical of the character of the British people, to which the most reverend Primate referred earlier, and their humanitarian concern for their neighbours. That commitment is there and is being built upon by the £100 million that has been announced for South Sudan and Somalia. We are keeping those numbers constantly under review because the situation is at crisis point.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend look closely at the work that Nestlé and other multinational companies have been doing in countries such as South Africa? Will he inform the House of what we believe to be the underlying causes of the famine and whether we can use technical assistance from companies in this country to improve irrigation in east Africa to enable it to secure its crops against future droughts and floods?

[Lord Bates]

Certainly, part of the cause is the drought that is affecting many countries because of the record level of the El Niño effect in the region. However, overwhelmingly this is a man-made crisis; this is because of conflict. If it was not for the conflict we would be able to reach people in the same way we are able to reach people in Ethiopia and Kenya. It is the fighting and insecurity in South Sudan, Yemen, north-east Nigeria and Somalia that are causing the difficulty, and people are dying as a result. The fighting has to stop.