Sudan

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Friday 13th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, because she always brings such authority to a debate.

I too thank the Minister for initiating this important debate and congratulate him on his comprehensive and powerful speech. It is very welcome that we are having this debate today; a debate in government time is long overdue. As the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, this sometimes feels like the forgotten war, yet it is so far from forgotten for the millions of displaced, sick and starving of Sudan. It is stark to see quite how little coverage of the war there is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, compared to the coverage of what is happening in the Middle East or Ukraine.

I worked on a project in Sudan from 2022 to 2023— I refer noble Lords to my register of interests. Indeed, my last visit to Khartoum was in April 2023 with my noble friend Lord Purvis, just one week before this awful civil war started. By the time we left Khartoum, the roads were all closed, the pro-democracy campaigners were facing the Sudanese Armed Forces on the streets, and the air was thick with tear gas. Then, just one week later, on 15 April, the full-blown civil war started.

It is the most cynical of wars. It is not a war about ideals or ideology but about personal wealth, power, influence and access to natural resources—and all at the terrible expense of ordinary people, especially women and children, who now face starvation on a catastrophic scale. It is estimated that 37% of the population faces severe food insecurity. It is a war that, in many ways, has become a proxy war for current geopolitical tensions. During my visits to Khartoum, the Wagner Group was clearly visible in the streets of the capital, and at that time it was supporting the RSF. However, there is evidence that Russia is now cynically switching sides in its bid to maintain access to the Red Sea.

Both sides in this war—the RSF and the SAF—are accused of international war crimes. There are truly appalling reports of soldiers using rape as a weapon. Even before the fighting broke out, the UN estimated that 3 million women and girls in Sudan were at risk of gender-based violence. It is rightly described as

“one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history”

by UN officials.

Yet after President Bashir was removed in 2019, there were genuine hopes that the transition to a civilian-led Government based on human rights and the rule of law might be possible. Certainly, in September 2022, during my first visit to Sudan, I was struck by the optimism and hope when talking to my Sudanese colleagues. At home in my flat, I have a copy of Hussein Merghani’s wonderful watercolour from 2019, which shows hundreds of people, including women and children from Atbara, travelling by train to join the sit-in at the military headquarters in Khartoum in April 2019. The painting is optimistic and shows the strength of public support at that time, across the country, after the revolution in 2019, for a different future for Sudan. It was an all too fleeting time of optimism.

One of the people I got to know while working in Khartoum was Samia El Hashmi. Samia is an eminent Sudanese lawyer and women’s rights activist who was working with the Sudanese Bar Association. After the revolution, Samia helped to draft a new constitution for Sudan which enshrined human rights and the rule of law. In many ways, Samia for me embodies the many wonderful and highly educated people I met in Sudan—people who just want to live a normal life in the country that they love but who had to flee for their lives when the fighting started in April last year.

The history of relations between Sudan and Britain is long and complex, but this shared history creates a special bond between our nations. We should not forget that the University of Durham’s Sudan archive preserves much of the history of Sudan. With this shared history comes responsibility. After the December revolution, the UK rightly played an important role with the quartet in supporting the democratic transition and promoting civilian government, political security and stability, economic reform and human rights. This is a process which should be continued and revived whenever—as we all hope—this conflict can be brought to an end.

I do not have an instant solution for how we can bring about peace to Sudan. I am sure many noble Lords speaking in the debate today are much better qualified and placed than me to make suggestions in that regard. But as my friend Samia has said to me, Britain can and must continue to play a trusted role, and do all in our power to work with others to bring about an end to this most bloody of conflicts.

In his concluding remarks, I would be grateful if the Minister could say a little more about the Government’s position on increasing the arms embargo to cover the whole of the country. I welcome what he said in his opening statement: that the Government will do all they can to ensure that those guilty of the most appalling war crimes—particularly against women and children—will face justice through the International Criminal Court.

Wars can too easily become about just statistics, but for me, this is personal. It is about the Sudanese people I had the opportunity to get to know and work with during my visits to Sudan. They desperately want the international community to give them some hope that the conflict can be stopped and that they can return to their country and start to rebuild once again from the rubble.