South Sudan

Debate between Alison McGovern and William Bain

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Edward, and to have secured this important debate on the humanitarian tragedy that is continuing to unfold in the world’s newest state, South Sudan. I am grateful to members of the associate all-party group for the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan, which I chair, who have supported this debate and are present.

In less than two years of statehood, South Sudan has experienced an unprecedented shock to its national income; its gross domestic product fell by nearly 250% in 2012, at the height of the dispute between South Sudan and Sudan over oil charges and compensation. There has been some progress since then on what have been generally dismal indicators on health, maternal mortality rates, mortality during childbirth and education. In that respect, the past four weeks have been a tragic and massive step backwards.

When members of the associate all-party group, including me, visited Juba and Lakes state in April 2012, we saw at first hand the challenges and the great opportunities before the new state of South Sudan. We heard of the problems in bringing together a cross-tribal, cross-community Government able to function efficiently in order to alleviate hunger and educate the country’s children. We heard of the need to adopt a genuinely pluralist constitution that provides for the accountability of the state to its citizens and of the Government to Parliament. We listened to the complex issues regarding the future of Abyei state and the need to resolve the continuing border problems with Khartoum.

We witnessed the positive effects that investment by the Department for International Development and its partners in the United States and France, through the UN, is having on the economic empowerment of women and the attempts to rebalance the economy in favour of agricultural production, which the rich foliage, particularly in the southern parts of the country, strongly promotes. We experienced for ourselves the problems of a country that has only 60 km of paved roads and, in many respects, a very weak—in many states, non-existent—infrastructure. We saw the intense difficulty that that causes to farmers in getting their goods to market and in distributing seeds and other agricultural products from the capital out to the other states. We also met farmers who had fled to Uganda during the earlier civil war and were making painstaking efforts to rebuild their businesses and their lives on land that had been returned to them after that civil war ended.

I will not forget the huge numbers of female fruit and vegetable growers north of Rumbek, in Lakes state, who greeted us when we visited their UN World Food Programme-supported plantation. They were all wearing T-shirts proclaiming: “Marriage can wait, women’s right to education first.” I asked one of them how many children she had, and she told me 12. She was determined to make a success of the agricultural co-operative, so that her children would have something that she had been denied: the right to an education. It is tragic that the avoidable humanitarian situation is putting at risk all that essential work in one of the poorest countries on earth. The avoidable political instability, the internal displacement and the tribal conflict that is being stoked up for political ends, or to settle old scores, mean that the extraordinary work of many such women, who are empowered in South Sudan’s economy for the first time, and of the UN and the United Kingdom in carefully supporting such programmes, runs the risk of being lost.

The conflict could not have come at a worse time. The planting of crops is due to take place next month. The rainy season in South Sudan is due to begin in April and May. In that period, 60% of the country will be inaccessible by road, and many parts will be accessible only by air. The country struggled to cope with spiralling food security problems in 2011 and 2012—nearly 4 million people were threatened by hunger in that period—and the risk is that the situation will get worse in the spring if agreement cannot be reached between the Government and their Opposition.

Nearly two years ago, the biggest humanitarian challenge in South Sudan was the returning refugees who had spent many years in Sudan and were returning to their former homeland in the south without jobs to go to or the means of ensuring a livelihood in the future. Additionally, the current conflict means that there are up to 400,000 displaced South Sudanese nationals, with some 50,000 having fled into neighbouring states. The UN estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 people a day are fleeing South Sudan into neighbouring Uganda. The violence is having a tragic and serious impact on the region.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of this morning’s news reports that more than 200 people appear to have perished in a ferry accident while fleeing the fighting? Does that not show the absolute desperation of the terrible situation that the South Sudanese face?

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the growing disaster. The UN’s best estimate is that 10,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict in the past month alone. As we know, the impact of conflict is always felt most profoundly by the most vulnerable. Women and children in South Sudan are bearing a particularly harsh burden in a conflict that is not of their making. The UN has also said that health facilities in many states of South Sudan are already beginning to creak at the margins. There are shortages of blood and transfusion supplies. There is one hospital at which 192 patients are awaiting surgery pending blood becoming available. That is the scale of the crisis that the violence is beginning to produce among the weakest in South Sudanese society.