Sudan

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Friday 13th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a singular privilege to sit through so many passionate, far-sighted and informed speeches from across your Lordships’ House. The contributions have been informed, in the great majority of cases, by personal experience—none of which I have. I express my thanks to my noble friend the Minister for tabling the Motion and allowing us the opportunity to consider this appalling conflict. I congratulate him for all the very many reasons articulated by others in the context of this debate.

As others have said, to some extent, characterising what is going on in Sudan as a conflict in the singular is itself misleading. Since Sudan achieved independence in 1956, its population has lived through 35 coups, attempted coups or coup plots—more than any other country ever. As we have heard from many knowledgeable speakers, the civil war that currently blights the lives of the Sudanese has at once an ostensibly simple cause and, simultaneously, twisted and complex roots in Sudan’s tragic recent history. The immediate or proximate cause is the power vacuum left by the removal of Omar al-Bashir and the contending attempts of the SAF and the RSF to fill and exploit it. But behind that immediate contention lies the legacy of Bashir’s three decades in power: his use of the Janjaweed militia in the Darfur genocide, supervening ethnic and religious tensions and a willingness of external powers to treat Sudan as a proxy or test case for their own ambitions.

The current conflict is now in its second year. While events in Ukraine and Gaza have monopolised global attention, the UN has characterised Sudan as undergoing the world’s “largest hunger crisis”. Casualty estimates range from 15,000 to 150,000, and more than 10 million people have been displaced both internally and into unstable neighbouring areas, including Chad and Ethiopia. In each of these statistics, as we have heard from those with personal experience, is an individual story, and each individual tragedy deepens the intransigence of the opposing sides. Critically, the breakdown in political stability has been mirrored by a crisis in health and food security.

I sense that every Member of your Lordships’ House could spend far more than their allotted time enumerating the plight of women and children who, with grim inevitability, have borne a disproportionate burden in this conflict. But a few headline statistics do paint an indicative picture and, as others have done, I shall do that.

More than three-quarters of the health infrastructure in Sudan has been destroyed or is out of commission. This has not merely led to a resurgence in diseases such as malaria, cholera and measles but has heightened the population’s vulnerability to mpox. More than 17 million Sudanese children do not have access to clean drinking water, and now it appears that the same number do not have access to education. As the new Development Minister, my right honourable friend Anneliese Dodds, attested after her visit in the summer, Sudan is suffering from a manmade famine. In all, estimates suggest—this is horrifying—that up to 2.5 million people could die of starvation by the end of this year alone. This is the first global declaration of famine for more than seven years.

Despite global awareness of the scale of the suffering, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, pointed out, the UN appeal for Sudan is only 41% funded. The appeal for the regional refugee response is only 8.5% funded. In addition, the lack of safe and unimpeded humanitarian access is one of the biggest challenges facing humanitarian organisations in scaling up their assistance. My noble friend the Minister raised the restriction on aid convoys in his opening remarks. Drawing on a briefing we perhaps all received overnight from the World Food Programme, I ask the Minister what consideration the Government have given to its suggestion that decoupling ceasefire negotiations from negotiations about humanitarian access may help. If unimpeded access for aid continues to be contingent on progress on the peace track, it may be that we are inadvertently prolonging suffering on the ground.

In debates such as these it is common, as my noble friend the Minister did in opening, to call for a united international response in the hope that such unanimity of purpose might help to abate the tragedy. He is right in that, but much of the limited international political action that has been taken in relation to this conflict has served to fuel further violence and instability.

A report published in July by Amnesty International analysed the export path of the weapons with which this war is being waged. The UAE supplies bullets and drones to the RSF, and the UN has had reports it describes as credible suggesting that much of the RSF’s communications and political operations are run out of that country. Iran and Egypt arm the SAF. Russia has bizarrely supplied arms to both sides, and Wagner mercenaries have been seen on the ground. Turkey’s main weapons manufacturer supplies the SAF, while thousands of Turkish weapons, ostensibly for the civilian market, have found their way into Sudan. An article in the Economist, published about 10 days ago, describes the cumulative effect of these actions as to turn Sudan into “a murderous bazaar”. All this is despite a mandatory UN Security Council arms embargo on Sudan from 2004.

In our capacity as penholder on Sudan, what steps are the UK Government taking not just to enforce but to widen the existing embargo? In addition to the issues raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds, can the Minister explain what discussions have taken place, both internally and with our allies, on sanctioning the individuals and companies who knowingly flout these restrictions? Accountability is essential, but anything we can do for prevention is even better.

Against this backdrop of suffering and crisis, what response have we seen from the leaders of the two factions? It has been the grotesque spectacle of the head of the SAF and the head of the paramilitary RSF travelling the world to garner political support and legitimacy, while their supporters commit war crimes at home, including targeted mass rape and indiscriminate slaughter. In addition to supplying aid to Sudan and highlighting this slowly unfolding tragedy, our most immediate aim—aside, of course, from mitigating the maximum of human suffering—should be to prevent another genocide, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, explained well and convincingly.

The RSF is also embarking on a programme of ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities in West Darfur. More widely, war crimes are being committed with impunity by both sides, and it is only the relative equality of strength between them that has prevented genocide from taking place. Sadly, history tells us that appalling humanitarian crimes do not always act as an inhibiting example; in fact, they often serve further to embolden their perpetrators.

This Government have, in their short time in office, built on the commitments made by their predecessor, providing an additional £15 million in aid on top of the doubling of aid that we have already seen. The Foreign Secretary raised the issue of Sudan with other G7 Foreign Ministers in his first days in office. I have seen the support that, as penholder on Sudan at the UN Security Council, this country has provided for the Jeddah talks and believe that we must continue to do all we can to bring pressure to bear on both sides to end the boycott of these negotiations.

I had intended to spend my last seconds to make an argument for a special envoy, but it appears that this has already been taken care of. What I will do is draw attention again to the right reverend Prelate’s suggestion that the strategic defence review headed by my noble friend Lord Robertson should engage on the issue of peacebuilding. My noble friend joined us, although he has since left. Both he and I are ambassadors of the Halo Trust, an organisation working on not just mine clearance but conflict prevention. Its current CEO, a former soldier, intends to expand it into the space that was suggested, and I have no doubt that my noble friend will be willing to examine that possibility.