Sudan and South Sudan

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I join others in paying tribute to the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) for securing this debate, and to the extraordinary resilience of the people of Sudan and South Sudan, who have undergone what, for most of us, are unimaginable levels of suffering over the years. I also want to pay tribute to the international members of the non-governmental organisations, including the many British aid workers involved, and to their local partners. My former parliamentary researcher, Anna Harvey, was working in Sudan before she came to work for me in this place. She spoke of a beautiful country and of lovely, welcoming people, but the area in which she worked was engulfed in violence some years later.

What has happened to those beautiful countries is a great tragedy. We are talking about 500,000 people having died in Darfur province alone, and 2.5 million people still being dependent on food aid there. The hon. Member for Foyle was right to point out that the aid agencies pleaded with us for years not to ignore the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur, but the international community was collectively very late in acting in a concerted way. He was also right to say that we must not let Darfur, Sudan and South Sudan slip off the political agenda again.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) pointed out the contrast between the two Sudanese countries and the rest of Africa, parts of which are now seeing phenomenal economic, political and democratic progress. Sudan and South Sudan are noticeably divergent in their failure to achieve development objectives or to make progress on human rights and democracy. People often say that war is development in reverse, and that is true. It is the continuing conflicts besetting those two countries that are responsible for this state of affairs.

I do not suppose many people thought that independence in 2011 would provide a magical cure to those conflicts, but many were more hopeful that some of the issues might be resolved after the Addis Ababa deal in 2012. However, we still have the unresolved issue of the border around Abyei, where the continuing lack of a referendum is inciting violence and encouraging attempts to displace people. There are also continued interruptions to oil supplies and a lack of oil flow, both of which are damaging the prosperity in the north and the south—and both sides are clearly supporting military rebels, in breach of the Addis Ababa agreement.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Another problem is that of regional terrorism, whereby support is sometimes given by, for example, groups in Yemen to groups in Sudan that want to undermine what is happening there. A lot of evidence suggests that there are dealings between the two groups of terrorists, who seek to undermine both countries.

[Martin Horwood]

The right hon. Gentleman speaks with great knowledge and I am sure he is right. One of the risks that we have seen time and again in the middle east and north Africa region is that instability and violence invite in even less desirable elements—if that is possible to imagine—who want to destabilise further the situation in their own interests.

I am happy to pay tribute to the British Government for being fully aware of the issues. In January, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development visited projects funded by the Department for International Development in Sudan, some of which address basic human rights. I gather that the water programme supported by DFID—this was probably the case under the previous Government, too—has now helped to provide access to clean drinking water for 800,000 people. I say to those who question whether it is right to spend 0.7% of our national income on international development that it is difficult to imagine money being spent more cost-effectively to provide such a huge number of people with such a basic thing as clean drinking water.

Another of the DFID projects that my hon. Friend visited promotes access to justice. This debate needs to address human rights and the rule of law, and many hon. Members have done so.

The Government’s most recent “Human Rights and Democracy” report discusses, as it has done for many years, Sudan, where human rights and democracy are, if anything, deteriorating. Political parties do exist, but there are frequent instances of harassment and imprisonment. Elections have taken place, but they are deeply flawed. Human rights defenders are detained and torture takes place. Other hon. Members have discussed instances of war crimes and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the persecution of Christians. Above all, there is continuing violence in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. It is sometimes difficult to escape the conclusion that the Bashir Government are almost using violence and interference in the oil supply for their own political ends in destabilising things and preventing democratic progress.

As the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) has said, the most recent report states that an Ethiopian peacekeeper who was part of the United Nations peacekeeping force was killed and others injured in a shelling incident. It is an even more worrying development if UN troops are not safe from artillery fire. The situation is deteriorating and I would be interested to hear the Minister say what has happened as a result of that incident.

The hon. Member for Foyle slightly criticised the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur and the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei. Although they may not be doing a perfect job, we have to acknowledge the courage of the UN peacekeepers and the difficult situation in which they have been placed.

It is difficult for us to influence the Government of Sudan directly, but there are countries with whom they are friendly. China plays a significant role and has traditionally been identified as a friend and economic partner of Sudan. What pressure could we put on China? It would be difficult to ask the Chinese to address human rights issues in Sudan when they are no angels themselves in that respect, but they could at the very least stress the economic importance of maintaining the oil flows and the need to achieve stability in order to allow prosperity to develop. I would have thought that the Chinese would see the benefit in doing that. Will the Minister address the possibility of discussions with China about the situation in north Sudan?

I think that many of us shared in the good will towards South Sudan on its independence. It is very sad to see its security forces also implicated in rape, torture and extrajudicial killing. The Government of South Sudan face a difficult situation, particularly given the crisis in oil revenues. If we think that we have difficulties with cuts, we should consider the idea of losing half our GDP. That would cause a complete financial crisis that any Government would struggle to cope with, let alone one in such a fragile and developing situation. The Government of South Sudan also face multiple instances of violent instability across the country. The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) spoke well about the additional problem of forced displacements from the north.

We must try to understand the almost unimaginable problems faced by the Government of South Sudan. At the same time, they must receive the message loud and clear from the British Government that the good will that they had on independence will evaporate quite quickly if they do not try to address the human rights issues. If the abuses continue and if a culture of impunity is allowed to develop in South Sudan, as it clearly did in the north, that will be a worrying development.

It is to the credit of the South Sudanese Government that the terrible abuses in Jonglei state were followed by the arrest and charging of members of the state security forces who were involved. I would be interested to hear the latest news on that, but I have not heard of any prosecutions. It involved only a small number of people, so it would be good to hear whether progress is being made. However, there are also cases such as that of Deng Athuai Mawiir—excuse my pronunciation—the anti-corruption activist who was arrested. There is also the continuation of the death penalty. Even if we count only the official executions, there have been eight since independence.

Other Members have talked about the position of women. The south does have quite a good record. Some 26% of National Legislative Assembly seats are held by women and 12% of heads of Ministries, Departments and agencies are women. However, the overall position of women is not good and violence against women is widespread. It is part of the Government’s strategy to counter that.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s stated priorities are to support UN peacekeeping, to support the African Union high-level implementation panel, to give financial and technical support to UN agencies and others, and to support capacity building in institutions in the south. Those seem to be exactly the right priorities. That is the right strategy in an intensely difficult situation. The only thing that we can ask in this Chamber and in this debate is that, if it is humanly possible, we raise our game even further and encourage our international partners to do likewise. If we can do that, we might thereby offer a positive message and hope to the people of this pretty unhappy region.