Alice Macdonald
Main Page: Alice Macdonald (Labour (Co-op) - Norwich North)Department Debates - View all Alice Macdonald's debates with the Department for International Development
(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Anneliese Dodds
The Sudanese doctors’ groups have been very important in the UK in raising the profile of these issues, and in trying to ensure that information about the situation on the ground is getting through and being reported in the media. We will continue to work multilaterally, but also bilaterally. I have discussed these matters with, for example, counterparts from Norway, Germany and a number of other European nations, and also with the current European Commissioner for Development, who will of course be moving on with a new commission. We clearly need to work together to try to resolve these matters.
Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)
Children are often on the frontline of conflict, and that certainly applies in Sudan, where a whole generation of children are living a nightmare and facing a catastrophe. Can the Minister expand on the specific measures being taken to protect children, both in terms of immediate humanitarian aid and to raise the important issue of children’s rights?
Anneliese Dodds
My hon. Friend brings considerable expertise to the House, gained before she became a Member of Parliament. The appalling circumstances in which children are finding themselves because of this conflict really must be raised up the international agenda. When I was in South Sudan, I met some children who had escaped from Sudan. Those children could not smile any more. There was nothing that they could see for their future. It was extremely disturbing. They had lost their parents, and they had seen, for example, siblings dying of measles or diarrhoea while they were trying to escape the conflict. This is a truly horrendous situation. Children’s rights must indeed be raised, and we should of course also consider the situation of children in the context of the activity of the warring parties. Again, the UK Government will be calling on those parties to ensure that they are following international humanitarian law and, above all, that we have the ceasefire that is so desperately needed.