Sudan and South Sudan: EUC Report

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Jay of Ewelme]

My Lords, it is difficult to follow the right reverend Prelate the Archbishop of York, but I shall do my best. I join other noble Lords in welcoming the Minister to her job. It is very good that she is in the Foreign Office and that the ministerial team in the Foreign Office is no longer 100% male. Perhaps the noble Baronesses, Lady Kinnock and Lady Chalker, will join me in saying that.

I feel a slight frustration that in this House, when we discuss Africa, we tend to move from crisis to crisis. I hope that I will be forgiven if I say a few words about Africa more generally before moving on to Sudan. The broader context is changing rapidly. We have come a long way from the day 10 years ago when the economists described Africa as the hopeless continent. There are positive developments. There has been strong growth in sub-Saharan Africa. It was nearly 5% last year and considerably more in some sub-Saharan African countries. Investment and labour productivity are growing.

There are also some startling statistics. Between 2010 and 2050, the population of Africa is expected to double, which means that by 2050 one in every four people in the world will be African. These changes of course provide opportunities and I shall give just a couple more statistics. British exports of goods and services to Africa last year were about the same as those to China and India combined. When I first read that statistic, I blinked slightly and checked it. But I am told that it is true, and African exports to Britain have now doubled since 2000.

With that good news, as always, comes the need for caution. To comment on another part of Africa, something that looks good one year can look pretty ropey the next. Mali was a success story until the takeover in the north and the coup in the south. We now have in the north of Mali, an al-Qaeda/Boko Haram/radical Tuareg state which threatens our interests in the region and across the Mediterranean seaboard. I find it profoundly depressing that just as the desperate scenario in Somalia begins to get better, we risk having a quasi-terrorist state further west. Therefore, there is all the more reason to ensure that the tensions elsewhere in the continent, such as in Sudan, are well handled.

As others have said, the recent agreement between north and south on restarting the oil pipeline is positive, even if it is still fragile. However, that agreement did not touch other flashpoints. It did not touch Abyei, South Kordofan or the Blue Nile, and horror stories in Darfur remain. I feel that there is a slight risk that with the focus on the north and south, we forget about Darfur. We still need to remember that there are atrocities in Darfur which, if they were the only thing in Sudan that attracted our attention, really would attract our attention. I urge that we do not forget that.

While these tensions remain, particularly those between north and south, there remains too the risk of miscalculations leading to renewed and serious conflict. That includes the south overplaying its hand in the expectation that international support will always be there, and the north committing atrocities in the border areas and intervening in the south to a degree that causes the south’s neighbours, perhaps Uganda, to intervene or attempt to intervene to protect it.

Just as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, there is a key role for the international community to work with both Sudans to ensure that those sorts of miscalculations do not happen, and to help with the humanitarian and development needs, particularly in Darfur and the south. There is a need first just to keep Sudan at the top of the international agenda. Good news or relatively good news, such as that over the oil pipeline, is not a reason for shifting our attention elsewhere but for ensuring that there is no backsliding. I hope that the Minister can give us an assurance that Sudan will remain a key part of the Government’s priorities. Despite the difficulties, there is a real need, too, for closer co-operation between the EU, the African Union and, as we said in our report, China, which has a real interest in the north and the south.

There is also a need for new and improved mechanisms for aid funding to meet the huge needs of South Sudan in particular. I declare an interest as chair of the international medical charity, Merlin, which operates in South Sudan and Darfur. A few years ago when I was in Juba, much play was made by donors, bilateral donors and the World Bank of new interim donor co-ordination measures that had been put in place and how they would provide some assurance of continuity. However, three years later, they are still interim measures and there has not really been the improvement in donor co-ordination which will make a real difference to people in South Sudan. I hope that there, too, the Minister can give us an assurance that we will do all we can to ensure that donor co-ordination is improved.

As well as keeping Sudan and South Sudan firmly in the headlights, and ensuring that western countries, the EU and China work together to prevent potential disastrous political miscalculations, we need also—perhaps above all—to strengthen our donor mechanisms and continue to focus on the real humanitarian needs in much of South Sudan and Darfur.