Sudan

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate. You would have to have a heart of stone not to have been affected by the witness statements we heard yesterday at the APPG, and they built on many others I have heard. He is absolutely right: the conflict ending is the only way we can get help to the nearly 18 million people in desperate need of it.

The UK has a special envoy to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, which includes Sudan: Sarah Montgomery, who is very engaged and knowledgeable on this issue. We are obviously working with her, and we also have a representative for South Sudan, which is deeply affected. I shall be visiting South Sudan in the very near future to see the impact this is having on the surrounding countries. We want to do anything we can, and we will work with anyone to try to get the warring parties to cease their conflict.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right to be moved by the statement he heard yesterday at the meeting organised by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and South Sudan. Does he agree with the assessment of the representative of the World Food Programme, who spoke at that meeting, that the situation is “catastrophic”? Eleven million people are displaced; 16 million are facing catastrophic levels of hunger; tens of thousands have been killed; and atrocity crimes are being committed in Darfur. As he says, this has become a forgotten, brutal war which is just marking its first anniversary, as the right reverend Prelate said. With aid workers killed and access to only 10% of the population, how can we accelerate relief work without an end to the fighting by these warring parties? What more can we do to end the flow of Iranian drones and armaments into this appalling conflict, in which the daily suffering, misery and deaths mount, and such terrible atrocities are occurring? How will we bring to justice those responsible for some of these crimes?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

There are a lot of questions there, and all very pertinent. On the last one, we gave £600,000 last year to the Sudan Witness organisation. and I am sure we will give more in the future. We hope it is compiling a record of the atrocities and that we will be able to bring those people to justice.

The noble Lord may have seen the interview my colleague, Andrew Mitchell, gave in Chad, where he saw many of the displaced people. He was incredibly moved by what he saw, and nobody who sees this can have a different emotion. The most frustrating thing is our inability to act. We have doubled our bilateral aid to Sudan and we are supporting neighbouring countries. I was in Paris on Monday at the international meeting on Sudan, where €2 billion was promised to Sudan. But if we cannot get the aid in and we cannot stop the conflict—the Sudan Government have closed the border with Chad—it is incredibly frustrating. But I will work with the noble Lord, the all-party group and others, listening to any suggestions they have for alleviating this problem.