Violence against Christians: Central African Countries

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak as vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on international freedom of religion or belief. I thank our chairman, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) not only for securing this debate and for an excellent, passionate speech but for his enduring commitment to freedom of religion or belief.

I, too, want to focus on Nigeria. There are multiple drivers of the deeply concerning and increasing causes of violence there, including issues that are specific to a local area’s history, politics and ethno-linguistic make-up, and resource competition. However, we must call out the reality that, today, is this: extremist Islamist ideology is the key driver of violence across Nigeria. The victims are Christians, Muslims and those of other faiths or of no faith at all. I visited Nigeria in 2016 and took the then head of the Christian Association of Nigeria to meet UK Department for International Development representatives to convey to them that the root of so much violence then was religious tensions. As the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, I am mandated to lead on the full implementation of the recommendations of the Bishop of Truro’s 2019 review by July 2022. That review describes perpetrators of atrocities in Nigeria as “militant Fulani Islamist herdsmen” and concludes:

“Fulani attacks have repeatedly demonstrated a clear intent to target Christians, and potent symbols of Christian identity.”

In June 2020, the all-party parliamentary group published its report, “Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide?” That two-year in-depth inquiry described in detail violations of freedom of religion or belief. The report was taken extremely seriously by the US State Department. I have been told that it contributed to the US designating Nigeria as a country of particular concern. I know from meetings that I held earlier this year, from elected parliamentarians in Nigeria, from a governor there and from NGOs how much that report was appreciated by them in Nigeria. It is cited it as shining a light on the grievous violations of FORB in that country.

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for drawing out the point about ideology because that was the question that was forming in my mind after the speech of the hon. Member for Strangford as to what was driving this. My particular interest is in the report and the impact that she describes. Could she elaborate on whether anything is said about the impact of this terrible state of affairs on children?

[Fiona Bruce]

My hon. Friend raises a very pertinent point. The impact of this violence on the young and the upcoming generation is acute. Indeed, a recent UNICEF report stated that 1 million Nigerian children are missing school due to mass kidnappings. Their parents are now too frightened to send them to school. The knock-on effects of that on their loss of education and their ability to earn a livelihood are acute.

I welcome the new Minister to her post. I have had the pleasure of working with her and seeing how effectively she worked in her previous role. When she responds to this debate, I hope that she will agree to meet me, the hon. Member for Strangford and other officers of the APPG about our 2020 report and subsequent concerns. Since that report, those concerns have been exacerbated and are even more pressing. Dr Obadiah Mailafia, a former Nigerian presidential candidate and former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who provided oral and written submissions to our all-party parliamentary group inquiry, sadly died on 19 September 2021 after allegedly receiving poor treatment. In a speech that he delivered just a few days before he died, at a symposium entitled “The role of the Church in nation-building”, Dr Mailafia had warned that the country was

“certainly exhibiting the features of a failing state in terms of the kind of violence we are seeing, widespread insecurity, terrorism, the abuse of humanity, criminality, rape, killing, maiming and destruction. We are a failing state.”

He goes on:

“Rival groups control territory. Boko Haram is in control over half of Niger State and if they successfully take over Niger, Abuja will be a walkover. Government cannot provide security for the people. Nowhere is safe in the country. The forests have been taken over by foreign invaders. The economy is collapsing. There is the collapse of the institution. Police, university’s standards are low. Corruption has taken over in the country.”

On 4 August 2021, Intersociety-Nigeria released figures compiled from documented cases of violence that are deeply disturbing. The statistics reveal that in the past 12 years, 43,000 Christians have been killed by Islamist Fulani militia, 18,500 have disappeared—many, I have no doubt, also killed—and 17,500 churches have been attacked. Ten million people uprooted in the north, 6 million forced to flee, 4 million displaced and 2,000 Christian schools have been lost. Within that timeframe, 29,000 Muslims were also killed. The report states that moderate Muslims are targeted for several reasons,

“as collateral mistakes or punishment for those collaborating with the ‘unbelievers’ or in revenge for state actor attacks against their targets, or for purpose of enforcement”

of extreme interpretations of Islamic sharia law.

Earlier this year, I read a well-evidenced report on the impact of covid from testimonies on the ground in Plateau state and Kaduna state. I will pass details of that well-evidenced, authoritative and lengthy report onto the Minister. I quote briefly from it:

“In Nigeria, the attacks on Christian villages during the pandemic were religiously motivated. Local politicians are perceived to deploy security forces and distribute aid along ethno-religious lines. Participants reported”—

that is, participants of the research for the report—

“that soldiers appear indifferent to their communities and fail to pre-empt or repel attacks.

In Nigeria, the lack of protection and security for Christian villages in Kaduna and Plateau exacerbates the impact of covid-19.”

It goes on to say:

“The loss of access to schooling for children is universal, across all the groups. It is exacerbated in Nigeria by the attacks on Christian villages, where schools and churches have been burnt down, and teachers have fled.”

Looking at the Christians, even in their facial outlook, the research team talks of them being

“emotionally broken, psychologically demoralised”.

They were

“representing anxiety of an ambiguous future caused by the loss of husbands, children, wives, relatives and their sources of livelihood.”

Christian men in Plateau state spoke of attacks, which in Kujeni took place during Sunday mass. They felt the response from the Government was inadequate and that the attacks were religiously motivated, as they targeted Christian villages, not neighbouring Muslim villages. One said:

“Yes, yes because I know this has everything to do with my faith, why burning my church, why burning my church?”

The critical deficit of governance is evident in the lack of security services provided by the state.

This morning, I had the privilege of speaking with an individual who has direct knowledge of what is happening in Nigeria now. He is an authority on the issue. I want to quote his words. They are lengthy. Just a few hours ago, he told me this:

“The violence is getting worse by the day. It is affecting the whole country. ISWAP”—

that is, Islamic State West Africa—

“has taken over the command of Boko Haram and have joined forces with the Fulani militants. The Governor of Niger State has declared that Boko Haram and ISWAP have planted a flag just 2 hours from Abuja. Just 2 weeks ago they have new headquarters set up in Southern Kaduna. With the developments in Afghanistan they have become emboldened. If Nigeria collapses it’s a fragile area surrounding it—there is an impending implosion—Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Mali, Ghana, Central African Republic.

In the NWest there is Muslim on Muslim violence—Sokoto, Kebbi and Katsina. The Governor of Katsina has said that people doing the violence are Muslims, Fulani and some foreigners. People cannot send their children to school for fear of violence and abductions. No reasonable parent can send their child to school…People dare not farm their land. The situation of Christians is pathetic.

Recently, a bus carrying Muslims was attacked, and there was anger across the country. This does not happen when Christians die.

Muslims are dying at the hands of fellow Muslims, however, the attacks are incessantly on the Christian communities, whilst the federal government remains silent.”

He continued:

“If only the British Government would regularly call out this violence against Christians, and ask the Nigerian Government to do something.”

I asked him what he wanted the Nigerian Government to do. He said:

“I want them to guarantee security. When schools and villages are attacked. The army and police don’t take action. I want them to take action.”

He added:

“People are being attacked with AK47s and machetes and more recently the Islamic jihadists showed they have the capacity to shoot down an aircraft—they did so. Two weeks ago, they attacked the Nigerian Defence Academy in Kaduna and killed two officers and took one captive, released three days ago. What they want is to take over Africa.”

I will close with this: we need to acknowledge the scale of ethno-religious violence, and to urge the Nigerian Government to hold those responsible to account. Security and stability need to be ensured for all communities, especially in the north and middle belt regions, and the Yoruba and Igbo people urgently need to be provided with the help and protection that they are crying out for.

As fellow parliamentarians in our all-party group, such as the noble Baroness Cox and Lord Alton, have said previously, for the sake of all the people in Nigeria, and for the sake of security across the continent and beyond, we urge the UK Government to press the Nigerian Government swiftly to address this violence, and to ensure protection, justice and recompense for victims of all ethnicities, without bias.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for once again ensuring we have a debate on these matters. I have been taking part in these debates for the best part of two decades. At first, the position of our Government was studiously neutral, but I am glad to say that progress has been made.

This debate is part of a process of drawing attention to what is happening and trying to shine a spotlight on these matters. I will go through a few cases. We have heard about the situation in South Sudan. In April, there was a violent attack against the then Father—now Bishop—Christian Carlassare, the Italian missionary appointed as Catholic bishop of Rumbek in South Sudan. The Government invaded his residence and fired 13 bullets, injuring the bishop-elect, who had to be airlifted to hospital in Nairobi. South Sudan is, of course, a majority Christian country but is still plagued with violence, as groups have been jockeying for power for the 10 years since independence.

In 2021, an Anglican priest, Rev. Daniel Garang Ayuen, was murdered. In 2018, a Jesuit priest, Father Victor Luka Odhiambo, was murdered. In 2017, the Pentecostal leader, Joel Mwendwa, was murdered.

I hope the United Kingdom Government have been quietly proactive—I am afraid it probably is only quietly—in trying to bring peace and security to South Sudan. I recently met our former ambassador to South Sudan, Chris Trott, in the context of his becoming the ambassador to the Holy See. He assured me that our Government took the situation in South Sudan seriously, and that he was trying to work with Church leaders of all denominations to resolve it. It seems to me that working with the Churches is key to all this and to understanding what is happening on the ground.

In South Sudan, Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok of Khartoum told Aid to the Church in Need, which is a Catholic charity I work with closely, that

“Terror reigns in South Sudan, with warriors, government and politicians grappling for power, positions and not minding the fate of the ordinary Southern Sudanese. The fact that until today no one knows—the government itself does not know—how many people died in South Sudan since the start of the war in December 2013 is indicative of how the value of the human person has become of no worth in South Sudan.”

One of the reasons for this sort of debate—my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) rightly articulated the point of view that black lives matter—is that there is precious little interest in this in the media and among the general population in Europe. These places are considered to be faraway places of which we know little. Perhaps the general view is that life there is not of such importance, as it is in Europe. Although we will mention a whole series of cases, names, figures and facts, as my hon. Friend said, the fact is that every one of these murders is a human life. All these children have mothers and fathers, and all these mothers and fathers have children. It does not matter that it is happening in a very poor, remote and faraway place. Every single one of these massacres and incidents of horrible violence is tearing a family apart. It is cruel and horrible. Once again, the hon. Member for Strangford is to be congratulated on trying to draw attention to this, even if only here and not in the main Chamber.

Let us look at other countries we have heard about. The so-called Allied Democratic Forces—the ADF—is a Ugandan violent Islamist group that is being forced slowly out Uganda, we hope. It now operates in the North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and beyond. In December last year, 17 people in the village of Mwenda were killed in a machete attack. Weeks later, on 4 January, 22 more were killed in the same village. Simultaneously, 25 were murdered in the village of Tingwe. This is all in the past 12 months.

Members will have noticed that I started speeding up when I read those out—22 murdered here, 25 here, 35 there. These are all individual human beings. Imagine if it was going on in Europe or America. In 2016 the United Nations estimated that ADF had killed 645 people since 2014. Five years later, that number has hugely increased. The ADF is hardly the only group involved, either. There is a group calling itself the Islamic State Central Africa Province, affiliated to ISIL in Iraq and Syria. It has been operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and infiltrating neighbouring states. In June this year it claimed responsibility for an attack on a Catholic church in Beni in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as a suicide attack at an intersection at the same time.

In Mozambique, Islamic State militants have linked up with a pre-existing local group, Ansar al-Sunna, to expand the insurgency in the Cabo Delgado province. Illia Djadi from the charity Open Doors has said,

“These predominantly Christian communities are attacked by an Islamic extremist group with a clear Islamic expansionist agenda”.

He pointed out that, while different groups with different origins are involved, there is a common agenda. Militants want to create an extreme Islamic state, stretching from the Sahel, where French soldiers have been hugely successful in fighting rebels, all the way through central Africa, Kenya and Somalia.

[Fiona Bruce]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, as he always does. He talks about a common agenda. Does he share my concern that not only do these individual groups have a common agenda, but they are now linking up? That is what is really concerning, because there is serious danger across a wide range of countries in a continent.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I think we should take that extremely seriously, in terms of western geopolitical interest. We are not talking about uncoordinated local attacks, terrible as they might be in terms of human lives. We are talking about whole provinces in danger of being lost by the central state. We have seen what has happened in Afghanistan. If anybody thinks this will not come back to bite us in terms of terrorism being exported, that may be a rather sanguine point of view.

Let me finish with a comment from Bishop Paluku Sikuli Melchisédech of Butembo-Beni in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He has given a harrowing account to Aid to the Church in Need of the Islamist insurgence in the country, saying that

“The number of incidents is particularly high in the northern part of our diocese. Armed groups are destroying schools and hospitals. Teachers and pupils are being killed. They are even killing the sick as they lie in their hospital beds. Not a day goes by without people being killed.”

He added:

“We need centres where people can go for therapy. Many people are traumatised. Many have watched as their parents were killed. There are many orphans and widows. Villages have been burned to the ground. We are in a state of utter misery.”

The bishop implied that the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are complicit in the violence. He said that

“The state as such does not exist.”

I have been to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it is a failed state. There is no doubt about it. The Bishop said:

“The reach of the government does not extend into the east, be it out of weakness or complicity.”

Responding to the growing threat of extremist Islamisation, the Bishop said:

“Islam is being forced on us. Mosques are being built everywhere, even though no one needs them. The mosques do not look like the traditional ones we are familiar with.”

He added that

“anyone who has been kidnapped by these terrorist groups and managed to escape from them alive has told the same story. They were given the choice between death and converting to Islam.”

What about the UK response? We have the Minister here. What can we do? The evidence is overwhelming and appalling in terms of human dignity, rights and peace, and also a danger to us. I have said the Government, and the previous Government, were too reticent in these matters, but we have had progress. We welcome the changes we have seen in recent years, particularly the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s review chaired by the Bishop of Truro into Government support for persecuted Christians. The review issued its report in July 2019 and we received a solid commitment from Ministers to implement its recommendations.

The situation in central Africa shows the Government need to do more. In particular, the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton, needs to have—I say this directly to the Minister—a properly dedicated civil service resource. She cannot say this herself; she is an absolutely committed lady, but she has not been given the support she needs from our Government in terms of support from senior Ministers, such as the Foreign Secretary, or in terms of resources given to her. Too often in Government, hon. Members are appointed as envoys to keep them quiet, but this lady is not going to be quiet. All right, Minister?

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[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate. It has been said by others better than I can, but this is clearly an important issue that we need to give due attention to. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. I must confess that I had not intended to speak—I had some questions and made interventions accordingly—but I am moved by what I have heard. I think that there are some important points to add to what has been said.

I would like to make two key observations, and both draw on my own experience. I was an engineer before I came here, many years ago. I went through university and learned the ways of an engineer. As an engineer, one is taught to look at problems and seek their causes before jumping to solutions and answers. I was particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for talking about the cause of this problem: militant Islamic extremism. We have to acknowledge that. Those were not her words but the words of reports that she cited. It may be uncomfortable, but we have to look at it. If an engineer is building a bridge, they cannot say, “I would really rather this foundation sprang from a rock instead of a sandy riverbank.” They have to deal with the situation that is there to successfully deliver a solution. We have to deal with reality.

Let us face it: in a secular western society, that is uncomfortable for two reasons. First, we have lost some of the fluency of the language of faith that would allow us to apprehend these issues and understand the motives and behaviours involved in them. Secondly, that lack of fluency has flowed through into our policies, our institutions and the way in which we deliver these things. These are institutions that have built up over decades. That is the reality of the situation. If one is an engineer trying to build a bridge, one has to deal with the conditions. If the bridge is a long way from supplies of concrete and steel and from roads, one still has to get those supplies there. We have to deal with the situation as it is.

In her speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton talked very effectively about the impact and consequences. I asked about children in part because my sense from her speech was that there is a much wider impact than simply, as the title of the debate has it, “violence against Christians”. It is clear that this militant extremism is displacing people. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) listed a litany of displaced peoples and nations: refugees who have moved as a consequence of this behaviour. Again, we have lost some of that fluency—understanding what impact beliefs and ideologically driven behaviour can have. Perhaps it is because we approach things with our western, rational, secular mindset. We say, “This does not make sense,” or “I cannot understand or explain.” For other peoples in other parts of the world, this may seem like reasonable, sensible, logical and acceptable behaviour.

I was very interested in the choice of words of the hon. Member for Strangford at the end of his speech: “in deed and in truth”. I will come back to this at the end, when I address comments to the Minister. We must take action—in deed—but that action must be in truth: it must be in proper cognisance of the challenge that we face and of our capacity to deal with it. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) for making his points about the civil service and the capacity that we have to deliver these things. There are others more experienced in these matters than I am and will know better what Government have done and can do. I would only add my own name, voice and weight to that plea for the necessary resource to do this work. From what has been said this afternoon, there can be no doubt that we are of one mind and intent in seeking to alleviate and resolve this problem.

My second point might seem small and inconsequential; again, it occurred to me when I was listening to the earlier speeches in this debate. They brought to mind a report that I heard recently of the return of some of the Chibok girls who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram some while ago. I understand that recently the girls have started to be released. Again, I am not an expert in these matters, but my understanding is that the Nigerian Government have a programme of deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration, which is encouraging some of Boko Haram’s terrorists to put down their weapons, and to come out of the wilderness—literally—and back into civilisation.

However, the reports were talking about one or two girls who are coming with their family: with their children and husband. That concerned me, because they did not go with a husband; they did not have a family when they were kidnapped. I am concerned that in some of this reporting we are losing sight of something else that happens alongside this conflict and terror. An important part of the conflict and terror is the violence perpetuated against women in these situations; I think we all know what I am referring to.

The kind of man described in the report is not the “husband” of one of those girls, as we would understand it in a normal, consensual marriage—or even perhaps in an arranged marriage, as might be normal in a different culture. We have to be sure and somehow, in addressing this problem, to address the violence perpetuated against women, and not simply accept or allow such casual reporting of an abuser as a “husband”.

[Fiona Bruce]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, particularly as he had not intended to speak in this debate. Does he agree that we need to stop using the terms “forced marriage” and “forced conversion”, because they simply are not acceptable terms? Marriage should be a relationship entered into freely; when one makes a declaration of faith, or a decision about faith, that is something that one does individually from one’s heart. Neither marriage nor faith should be “forced” on someone else. We need to start talking about such situations for what they are—the most dreadful abuse, often of young women, including rape.

[Robin Millar]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; she is absolutely correct.

I try to read around subjects and understand them, having entered politics—with a splash, I suppose, here in Parliament. Reading some essays about freedoms in society, one that really struck me was about exactly this point: about how freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of action follow on from each other. What we have seen in this case is an obliteration of each one of those: the freedom of belief is removed through coercion; the freedom of speech, including the freedom to consent to a marriage, is also removed through coercion; and then the freedom of action is removed through rape.

I will draw my remarks to a conclusion, but I will make one further comment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough really made a compelling argument for us to be interested in this subject. If it is not enough for us to recognise that people and groups are displaced, to recognise the damage that does to geopolitics and to recognise that such instability eventually laps against these shores as well, then it is enough to say that this is about human lives and that we are connected to them. That connection is much greater than any division by colour, race or distance. That is why we must take an interest in this issue and pay attention to it.

I will stop there, but first I thank the Minister for her interest; I know that she has a keen interest in these issues. Secondly, I thank the Government for what they have already done, and I urge them to address the point that the hon. Member for Strangford made at the start of the debate about acting in deed and in truth. There must be full acknowledgement of this problem, including its scale.

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[Vicky Ford]

Let me deal with the first of those points, as clearly we can scrutinise arrangements in many different ways in this place, including being able to intervene in Westminster Hall debates on the newly appointed Minister for Africa on a Thursday afternoon. As we all know, there are many ways to ask questions of the Government. I also point the hon. Lady to the integrated review, which is worth reading, because it sets out in great detail how different Departments will work together not only to support British interests across the globe, but to help build partnerships with other countries.

We recognise that women and girls from religious minorities can often suffer because of both their gender and their faith. That is why our human rights policy looks at the intersectionality of human rights: for example, the importance of addressing specific interests such as gender-based violence, which may be experienced by women from religious minority communities. The Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion and belief, my fantastic hon. Friend the Member for Congleton, has spoken about that double vulnerability that many women from religious minorities face, including at an International Women’s Day event organised by the UK Freedom of Religion or Belief Forum this March. I thank her for the effort that she puts into this work, because having that additional voice on those sorts of platforms really helps in continuing to reiterate these important messages.

The hon. Member for Strangford spoke very powerfully about incidents of violence and abuse in the DRC. The UK is deeply concerned about the violence against civilians in the DRC, including the recent attacks by the armed group Allied Democratic Forces. Back in April, the British embassy in Kinshasa issued a joint statement with international partners condemning the attacks perpetrated by the ADF in Beni and North Kivu, and we continue to urge the DRC Government and the UN to work together to protect civilians from ongoing violence and address the root causes of conflict. The previous Minister for Africa, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East, raised this issue with the President on multiple occasions. We are committed to ensuring that the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO remains focused on delivering its mandate to protect civilians, and that vulnerable communities remain central to the UN’s work in the DRC.

In the Central African Republic, there are long-standing concerns about violence along religious lines. I am grateful for the APPG’s explorations of the nuances of the conflict and the religious tensions in that country, which will further enrich the Government’s understanding and help to inform our approach. Sadly, hate speech and inter-communal tensions remain prominent in the CAR, and disinformation can be used to drive divisions for political and economic gain, so while the current conflict is not predominantly religious in nature, the lack of formal justice and reconciliation mechanisms mean that tensions could become defined along religious and ideological lines. We will continue to monitor this issue very closely, and FCDO officials are working with researchers in the CAR to understand more about the role that disinformation is playing in fuelling this conflict. We continue to shape the peacekeeping mission mandate in both countries to protect vulnerable communities and promote inclusive dialogue.

Turning to Nigeria, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton and many others spoke passionately about the violence and, indeed, the increase in violence in Nigeria. We are very troubled by the rising insecurity in that country, including terrorism in the north-east, where insurgents from Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province are responsible for regular attacks on both Christians and Muslims. Both groups regularly attack Nigerians of all faiths who do not subscribe to their extremist views, causing immense suffering in both Christian and Muslim communities. Separately, there is inter-communal conflict and banditry occurring across multiple states; again, that continues to blight both Christian and Muslim groups. The drivers of those conflicts are deeply complex; they can be highly localised and relate to a number of different factors.

We really welcome the APPG report on Nigeria. It analysed inter-communal violence in the middle belt, and acts of terrorism committed by Boko Haram and ISWA in the northeast. A full response was issued by my predecessor as Minister for Africa, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East, which emphasised our support for solutions that get to the root causes of the conflict—addressing the root cause is so important if the violence is to be reduced. My predecessor visited Nigeria in April, and discussed the increasing of security across the country with the Government and community leaders. During the Nigerian delegation’s visit to the Global Education Summit in London in July, he also discussed the impact of insecurity, potential religious dynamics, and issues such as school kidnapping with the Nigerian Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister of State for Education.

We totally condemn the devasting impact that this violence has had, and is having, on people in Nigeria. We continue to make clear to the Nigerian authorities, at the highest levels, the importance of protecting civilians—including all ethnic and religious groups—and protecting human rights for all.

[Fiona Bruce]

I have been listening very carefully to the Minister, and I thank her for much of what she has said. However, when a Minister talks about the fact that they have mentioned something when visiting a country, it is often the case that that has been done quietly and in private. What many of us are now sensing is that there needs to be a clear and public calling out of what is happening in Nigeria, and a call to the Nigerian Government to tackle it in the way that I have previously spoken about. Private discussions will no longer cut it.

[Vicky Ford]

I know that my hon. Friend thinks about this matter very deeply, and I am looking forward to discussing it with her in more detail. What I am hearing from groups that are expert in this area is that it is really important that we look at the different things that are happening in different parts of the country, and that we try to avoid conflating the north-east conflicts with the inter-communal violence that is occurring, for example, between farmers and herders. We do not want to risk exacerbating ethnic tensions. These are incredibly complex matters, but I hear what my hon. Friend is saying. We do not want the ideology that can be seen in the north-east extending into broader inter-communal violence. These are complicated issues, but issues that we are right to discuss and to tackle.

The hon. Member for Strangford outlined the UK’s support for the Lake Chad basin regional stabilisation facility. I can confirm that the UK is committed to security and stability in the wider Sahel region. We have currently deployed 300 troops to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, as part of a long-range reconnaissance group. We are providing further conflict, security and stability programming to support the reduction of violent conflict and promote long-term stability in the region. There is an investment of approximately £12 million a year in that programme. It includes local stabilisation projects in Mali, strengthening civilian-military co-ordination to facilitate humanitarian access, for example, and improving the participation of women from all communities in stabilisation projects and the peace process in Mali.