Humanitarian Situation in Sudan

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

I certainly do, and I commend the hon. Gentleman on raising that issue. As I and others will reiterate, he is absolutely right that the priority is to reduce the level of suffering. As he rightly says, this is unconscionable, but our Minister and Government, in partnership with other countries, have an opportunity to do more.

Furthermore, Christian communities displaced by Sudan’s civil war have faced restrictions on worshipping in refugee areas. As both a Christian and the chair of the APPG for international freedom of religion or belief, that greatly disturbs me. In Wadi Halfa, a town in the Northern state, displaced Christians were blocked last year from holding a Christmas service in a public park, where they had taken shelter, as they had been internally displaced and moved away from the violence.

Pastor Mugadam Shraf Aldin Hassan of the United Church of Smyrna said at the time that officials told the congregation they needed written permission to conduct Christian activities in a Muslim area, despite prior verbal approval from national security officers. There had been an agreement, but radicals with extreme ideas decided that they would not let it happen. Again, perhaps the Minister can give us some idea of what can be done to help our brothers and sisters in the Christian communities out there who are subjected to this each and every day.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

There is no justification or excuse to prevent any human being from practising their faith, or no faith, wherever they live, in peace and without interruption or force. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that is a fundamental human right and should be protected wherever it can be?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. My APPG believes in the freedom of belief for those with Christian faith, another faith and no faith. We protect them all, we stand up for them all and we speak for them all. I want to live in a world where everyone has the autonomy to practise their individual belief, if they wish to do so.

Sudan ranks as the fifth worst country for Christian persecution on the Open Doors “World Watch List 2025”, which notes that over 100 churches, Christian buildings and homes have been forcibly occupied during the ongoing civil conflict. The situation is dire, and more has to be done to stop this. In his intervention, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) expressed the desperation that we all feel, and the hon. Member for Huddersfield set the scene so incredibly well.

I will conclude as I am conscious that others wish to speak. I urge the Minister and the UK Government to use their influence to call for an immediate ceasefire, and to press, with others, for increased national efforts to protect civilians and places of worship in Sudan. A sustainable peace in Sudan depends on the cessation of violence. The violence must stop; if it does not, this will never end for the good people of Sudan, and for the protection of freedom religious freedom in all its communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Harpreet Uppal), who is my constituency neighbour, for securing this really important debate.

Unfortunately, we live in a world of competing crises and wars, one overshadowing the next. Depending on how horrifying we perceive the situation to be, how close it feels, or how much the cameras are rolling, unfortunately some conflicts get forgotten or neglected. Some horrors are met with silence, not outrage. Sudan, in the grand scheme of reactions, is one of them. This is a really important debate to highlight the atrocities that are happening there today, and have been happening there for several years.

Since April ’23, Sudan has spiralled into a living nightmare for those living there or watching their country from afar. As we have heard, over 14 million people have been displaced, with cities reduced to rubble, markets bombed, women and girls raped, and entire communities starved. In August ’24, famine was officially declared in Zamzam, with a displacement camp in Darfur now home to over 400,000 people. As we have heard, over 25 million people across Sudan are food insecure, which equates to half of the country starving. Just like in most conflicts, more than half of those affected are children.

Most recently, just this month on 10 July, reports confirmed that at least 60 civilians, including 35 children, were killed in attacks near Bara. On 14 July, over 200 people were killed in RSF raids. El Fasher saw RSF shelling on 12 July, which killed five people, including children, and on 16 July shelling killed five more civilians, again including children. As we have heard, MSF warns of ongoing ethnically targeted mass violence, looting, sexual assaults, abductions, destruction of health infrastructure and starvation. This is unacceptable and we must do everything that we can to stop these atrocities.

Let us be clear: many of these atrocities, including using famine and starvation as a weapon of war, are not a natural disaster. It is not a drought or a crop failure; this is famine as a weapon of war, and the supply of weapons by our allies to the forces that are killing civilians on the ground. Warring factions, the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, are deliberately blocking aid and attacking humanitarian workers, turning hunger into a method of control. The United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the US and UK Governments have all confirmed that the atrocities are war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide. Still, the world barely watches.

This is not just about Sudan. We are seeing a terrifying pattern in Sudan, Palestine and beyond, where famine and genocide are becoming the tools of modern warfare. “Never again” cannot become a slogan; it must be a promise that we honour for as long as we walk this Earth. These crimes can be stopped. The perpetrators are not acting in a vacuum; they continue to act like this as they know the world turns a blind eye when the world keeps weapons flowing into the country and humanitarian aid is treated as optional, not urgent and necessary. Sudan’s partners must exert real pressure on the conflict to stop the targeting of civilians and to bring the perpetrators of international humanitarian and human rights law violations to justice.

Today, I ask the UK Government to do everything that they can to stop the atrocities, save lives, get food to starving babies, and support the women and girls who have been subject to sexual violence. We must demand immediate, unimpeded access to humanitarian aid. The people of Sudan are not nameless victims of a faraway war; they are mothers, students, teachers, children—human beings deserving of dignity, safety and hope. Let us not allow Sudan to become a forgotten catastrophe. Let us not accept famine and genocide as the cost of inaction from the international community. If the weapons of war of famine, sexual violence and genocide are allowed to continue, they will be normalised, they will be repeated—and as always, our silence will mean our complicity.