Sudan: US Determination of Genocide

Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as with all these things, there is much high politics, but meanwhile over 90% of children are not receiving schooling, as the Minister for Development in the other place pointed out yesterday. Can the Minister tell us some practical ways in which we can help those children to get the education they so desperately need?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

That is a really important point. Last summer my right honourable friend the Minister for Development, Anneliese Dodds, visited South Sudan on one of her first visits after her appointment. She got as close to the border as she could. She met many of the women and children who had been forced to flee and who had experienced the most awful violence. She has managed to secure a doubling of our aid to Sudan—it is now around £113 million—and that is for food, healthcare and, importantly, education, to make sure that those young people are educated as close to their homes as possible, because to miss out on that education just compounds the terrible circumstances in which they have found themselves.