Sudan

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)]

Last week at the international Sudan conference in Berlin, the Foreign Secretary announced £146 million of new humanitarian funding for Sudan this year, which will reach nearly 2 million people. This includes doubling UK support for local Sudanese responders delivering vital aid in the hardest-to-reach areas. But funding alone cannot solve this manmade crisis, and that is why the Foreign Secretary joined participants in urgently pushing for an immediate ceasefire and for every possible tool to be used to improve humanitarian access to get aid in.

[Lord Bates (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that very helpful Answer and for her personal commitment and engagement on this important issue. Sudan is the greatest humanitarian crisis currently happening in the world, with 33 million in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, including 17 million children, and 13.5 million people having fled their homes in search of food, water and safety. The situation is getting worse every day. The events in Berlin last week were very welcome in producing additional much-needed assistance and pledges for humanitarian aid, but the great crisis now is how that aid, which has been pledged, will reach the people in such desperate need in Sudan at present, when vital humanitarian access is being so cruelly denied by military forces and even by its own Government.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. This is not particularly a challenge with money; last week, the international community rallied together and raised more than £1 billion to spend on aid for the people of Sudan. As he rightly says, it is how we get that aid to the people who need it most. We are doubling the amount that we spend with local responders, because often they are the right people and the best people to co-ordinate in the most effective way on the ground. It is vital that the warring parties in Sudan, and anyone who is obstructing access for aid, stops doing that immediately. It has almost become competitive, to see who can put the most restrictions on agencies, which are hoping to get aid to where it is needed. It is completely wrong—the aid is there and the resources are there, and we just need the ability to get access.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in this fourth year of Sudan’s war, will the Minister take the opportunity to underline the link between the 14 million people whom the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says are displaced in Sudan and the desperate Sudanese people who end up in small boats in the English Channel? Secondly, can she say how the Government are responding to what a UN report says are defining characteristics—“hallmarks of genocide”—with mass killings of over 59,000 people, rampant sexual violence and war crimes, including attacks on hospitals, ambulances and medical workers?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

As the noble Lord knows, the UK is supporting a sexual and gender-based violence representative to make sure that there is accountability. The fact that sexual violence is used in the way that it is, to the extent that it is in Sudan, often with absolute impunity, is something that the international community needs to act on now and make sure that we reflect on constantly once this is over, because it is something we have seen before, we see it repeatedly and we need to be steadfast in our determination to outlaw it. What the noble Lord says about displaced people is also correct: there are Sudanese people finding their way into small boats and crossing to the UK, but by far the largest number of Sudanese displaced people—around 5 million of them—are living on the border, either in Chad, in South Sudan, in Uganda or in Egypt. That is where the majority of people are and where the focus of our support is, to help those people close to their homes.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is a stain on the international community that this war is now entering its fourth year. Of course, the UK is the penholder at the United Nations and therefore there should be an even greater moral duty that we do more to ensure that there are practical steps to protect civilians and that there is access to basic humanitarian aid, as the Minister said. Does she agree that there is inspiration in the very diverse and decentralised community groups that are doing amazing work to save lives and provide some form of assistance? I have been in touch regularly with many of these groups and they are calling for the UK to take the lead in a political process that can start now to ensure that civilians are part of the future and that there is transitional justice to ensure that those who have committed these horrific crimes are held to account for them.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I could not agree more. I have met with the local responders too, and they are an incredibly impressive group of people. They are very well organised and are using technology and developing apps to make sure that their limited resources are allocated in a way that is most efficient and responsive to local need. It is something that I do not think many of the larger agencies could possibly achieve anywhere, never mind in Sudan. They are essential to our effort, which is why we have doubled the funding to them.

The noble Lord is also right to say that the UK has a leadership role to play here, on a civilian track. We are prepared to do that and we are doing that. I do not think that this is a time for getting too far ahead of others, because that kind of leadership does not seem to have been very effective in this circumstance, and it is important that we work closely with Sudanese voices and work in a way that is led by them and centred on their needs. It was good to see, at the conference last week, that strand of work having such focus. That is important, and he makes a very good point.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, last year, OCHA and organisations on the ground working with the humanitarian aid agency reached 17 million people in Sudan. This year, the aim is to reach 20 million people. They do a fantastic job, working in great danger. Will my noble friend join me in paying tribute to their courage?

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[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I do. I met Tom Fletcher yesterday to talk about exactly this. I pay tribute to all those who are working in the most dangerous and difficult circumstances in Sudan. It is tragic that we see so many of them losing their own lives as part of that endeavour, so I join my noble friend in her remarks.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness has highlighted and acknowledged, the conflict in Sudan has been marked from the very beginning by horrific violence against women and girls, including sexual violence, abductions, forced marriage and countless other abuses. How are the Government supporting UNFPA and other local organisations to ensure that UK aid is specifically reaching women and girls caught up in this conflict?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

We have put in gender-based violence advisers on the border to help with the psychosocial effects of what people have had to endure. We are now the biggest funder internationally, I think, of UNFPA, because this is such a priority for us, but the noble Baroness is right to draw our attention to the fact that this method of violence, this subjugation, terror and attempts to humiliate and control women in this conflict as a weapon of war is abhorrent and is among the worst that we have ever seen. I hesitate to compare different humanitarian crises, but this is on the largest scale that we have seen this century.

[Lord Stirrup]

My Lords, we have spoken before in this Chamber about the link between the war in Sudan and instability more widely in the Horn of Africa. Does the Minister agree that we need to do much more to persuade and convince the people of this country that this is not a war in some distant country they can forget about, but that it is closely linked in the long term to our own economic growth and inflation rates?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I think it would be great to have much more focus globally on the conflict in Sudan and the suffering of the people of Sudan. That includes the public consciousness in this country, because, in the end, that does help force political focus internationally as well. But there is no doubt that the conflict in Sudan is in many ways an expression of disagreements that have emerged elsewhere. The noble and gallant Lord talks about the horn, but obviously in Somalia, Yemen, even across to Iran, we see this instability—it is all connected. It is very poorly appreciated how closely connected these conflicts are. The more we can do to make that case, the better.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, with so many terrible conflicts ongoing in the world at the moment, there is a danger of this one falling underneath the radar, so it is right that we are discussing it today. I thank the noble Baroness for the funding announcements that she has made. Perhaps some of them are more closely linked, as she indicated. Is she aware of the reports yesterday from the US of the arrest of an Iranian woman accused of selling £50 million-worth of bombs, drones and ammunition from the Iranian revolutionary guards to the Government of Sudan?

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[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

We are deeply concerned that there are arms flows through many, many routes. Nobody should be selling arms to Sudan. There is an embargo in Darfur that should be extended and should be properly enforced.

[The Deputy Speaker (Viscount Stansgate) (Lab)]

My Lords, that concludes Oral Questions for today. When I sit down, any Members who wish to leave before the next business are invited to do so quickly and quietly.