Sudan: Darfur

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his great experience and interest in this case. Where I would question what he says is that the UK certainly is not ignoring this. We are the pen-holder on Sudan at the Security Council and have taken a number of diplomatic initiatives, held events, working with IGAD and the quads, to try to make sure that we are moving forward as best we can in diplomatic terms. On aid, I agree with the noble Lord that the most regrettable recent event has been the closure of the Chad border, through which most our aid went, and the impact of that on people is devastating. We have given £600,000 for the Centre for Information Resilience Sudan witness project, which is examining precisely the points he raised and will, hopefully, be able to take forward cases to the International Criminal Court in the future. We are also taking measures to sanction individuals and organisations that we know are responsible for some of the atrocities he described.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister reminded us that the UK is the pen-holder and he talked about how we are working with our allies. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, is absolutely right that our eyes have been taken off this dreadful situation in Sudan. Can the Minister tell us what exactly we are doing, perhaps as pen-holder, to secure a further resolution at the Security Council, so that we can get the world to focus once again on this disaster happening in Sudan?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are taking our role as pen-holder extremely seriously. We have held in-confidence sessions within the Security Council to try to bring forward a solution. Alongside Norway, we jointly funded the Sudan humanitarian conference that took place in Cairo in November—an event that brought together Sudanese grass-roots organisations, NGOs and the international humanitarian system to develop co-ordination mechanisms to give greater voice to Sudanese organisations in the humanitarian response. We are involved in a number of different diplomatic efforts, as well as trying to get our aid through in this very difficult situation, with the Chad border now closed, but also through South Sudan. Our post in Khartoum is closed but is operating out of Addis. We have staff in Nairobi where the UN aid programme is being co-ordinated, and we are taking a lead in trying to get as much help as we can to the people of Sudan and then in due course hold those we can to international account for the atrocities they are committing.