Sudan: Humanitarian Situation

Alice Macdonald Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Elmore]

External support to the SAF and the RSF only fuels the conflict. We continue to emphasise to all parties the importance of refraining from actions that prolong the conflict. We ask that all those with influence over the warring parties bring them to the negotiating table to seek a political resolution.

[Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned recently of escalating drone strikes across Darfur and Kordofan and, as the Minister said, six peacekeepers lost their lives in a drone attack on Saturday. It is of course the humans controlling the weapons who must stop, but there is a live conversation about this issue and organisations have called for new legally binding rules to offer legal certainty and stability around the use of drones and autonomous weapons systems. What is the Minister’s assessment of those systems? What conversations are the UK Government leading at the UN?

[Chris Elmore]

We are alarmed by the use of drones to attack civilians. We are particularly concerned about the recent attack, which my hon. Friend mentioned and to which I referred in my opening remarks, that killed peacekeepers and may have involved drones. Our export controls on arms are strict and include military drones, and we are working as best we can to ensure that external actors refrain from fuelling the conflict and work together to secure peace, and particularly to try to introduce mitigations on the use of drones. We continue to work on all possible options in the multilateral space as the penholder at the UN.