South Sudan: Famine

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right and I appreciate his remarks. On the specific points that he mentions, we have supported and encouraged the work of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development—IGAD—which has led a lot of this work, and have worked through the UN Security Council on that. We have worked with international partners. We are part of the troika with Norway and the United States, which is key in intervening in this area. My noble friend Lady Anelay is looking at the work we are doing across the border, because, although some 3 million people are internally displaced, increasingly, as refugees flow across the border in search of support, that is destabilising other countries in the region. My noble friend Lady Anelay was in Uganda visiting one of the refugee camps. We have committed another £50 million of support in that regard. A huge amount has been done, but the UK cannot do this alone; the international community must step up to the plate. We need to see more action there.

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, Radio Tamazuj in Juba reported on Tuesday that up to 5.5 million people are expected to be in food crisis in South Sudan by July. That is more than half the population. Pete Walsh, Save the Children’s country director in South Sudan, says:

“While the threat of a famine … has been looming for months, the worst-case scenario has … become a devastating reality”.


While the Government lead the response to Save the Children’s campaign in many other ways, can the Minister tell the House that we consider that the lives of a million children facing death by starvation must be a priority? Will we invest particularly in nutrition centres and in improving farming methods to make sure that food with nutritious value saves them from severe malnutrition?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord, who knows a great deal about the African continent and has focused on this area, rightly puts his finger on the importance of nutrition. We had a very useful debate on that subject yesterday evening, in which we looked at the importance of that area. It is an area on which we are focusing our efforts and where we want to see further action. However, one of the great problems that we know of is that when there is a conflict situation, invariably it is in rural areas. People then leave those areas and go to urban areas, leaving the agricultural land untended and uncultivated. We are now coming to the peak growing season for food crops. Therefore, that movement of people has a double effect, which we must respond to.