Sudan: Human Rights

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, I can only endorse the grim catalogue that my noble friend outlines. It is absolutely so. We will continue to use all pressures we can and to urge the Government of the Sudan back to a better path in their human rights performance. The outlook is not good and there are obviously many major concerns ahead in dealing not only—as we all know—with the continuing horrors of Darfur, but with the potential instabilities arising from the forthcoming referendum in the south. We continue to want the comprehensive peace agreement to work; that must be our main focus.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, Concordis, the Christian reconciliation organisation of which I am a patron, has just run two workshops in Upper Nile and Unity provinces. It tells me that there is a marked lack of international organisation presence on the ground and a real danger that there will be conflict arising from boundary demarcation disputes since the CPA is mapping the area from the air without discussing with local communities their views on the border. Will the Minister look into this? To what extent is he happy with the lack of engagement by the international community in the process leading up to the referendum?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Lord makes a very good point, which I will certainly feed into our thinking. As to international involvement in helping with the process leading up to the referendum and thereafter in managing its results, much more clearly is needed. We are doing our bit. We are increasing our staff in Juba, for instance. Our eye is very much on the ball about this, but we want others to work as well. We want to encourage UNMIS to get more involved and we have several other proposals for increasing our input. No one should for a moment assume that there will not be a very difficult situation, whichever way the referendum goes. Of course, there are wide forecasts that it will go in favour of some kind of autonomy.