EU and Sudan: EUC Report

Lord Sewel Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sewel]

My Lords, this has all the features of a red-line debate, in which you sit and look at your notes and put a red line through the points made by earlier speakers. In that case, even by the time you get to the third speaker, you are left with a rather short speech. The alternative formulation is that if a point has been made and is a good point, it bears repeating. There is likely to be a number of points that will be repeated over the next three-quarters of an hour or so—or perhaps more.

The report was published in June and we are debating it in December. Normally, a delay of that length would be a matter of regret, if not criticism. In this instance, it has actually created an opportunity, because it has given us five months to see how the new state of South Sudan has emerged and how some of the issues are moving towards resolution or not. It gives the Government the opportunity to give us their assessment of where progress is being made and where it has either not been made or the agenda has slipped back. I very much look forward to hearing the Government’s assessment.

The challenges facing South Sudan are many, and so overwhelming that, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has said, we had a very real fear that what we were seeing was a state almost born to fail—that it would quickly join the growing list of failed states. There must be a real, co-ordinated international effort to try to prevent that happening, but there remains a probability. Our underlying doubt was whether the state of South Sudan had, from its inception, sufficiently developed state institutions to enable the state to operate in anything approaching what one would expect of a properly functioning and effective organisation. At paragraph 263, we observed:

“Their prime need is for administrative capacity building, not least so that they can absorb the assistance which they need from the international community to enable them to fulfil fully the functions of a sovereign state. The EU should use the existing instruments at its disposal to assist in the task of strengthening weak institutions, building an effective police force and judicial and dispute resolution institutions, and addressing powerful ethnic and political grievances and intense competition over land and natural resources”.

That paragraph really sums up the scale of the problem facing the world’s newest state—newest and perhaps most vulnerable.

Another series of fundamental concerns relate to the area of external and internal security. Externally, the threat of destabilisation originating from the north centred around outstanding boundary disputes and failure to reach agreement on future oil revenues. Internally, the threat arises from local armed militias and the horrific activities of the Lord's Resistance Army. It would be useful to know from the Government if they see any glimmer of hope in that area at all.

Internal causes of concern focus around the problem of endemic corruption and especially how it impinges on the distribution and proper use of oil revenues within South Sudan and on the effects that it has on donor confidence. That is of major importance. People are not going to go into South Sudan—NGOs or states—if they think that they are at such a level of corruption that it will basically nullify their efforts.

A further set of internal concerns relate, as has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk of Douglas, to the areas of the rule of law, independent judiciary and human rights. I have to say that sitting on an EU Sub-Committee these concerns are not just limited to African states; there are some that are trying to knock at the door at the EU where the same sort of issue arises. So let us not compartmentalise this and say that it is purely a developing world issue; it is not.

We are an EU Sub-Committee, and throughout our report we make a number of observations on the role and contribution of the EU. In paragraph 250, we observed:

“We are very concerned that the EU has not built up its presence in Juba sufficiently or quickly enough. Given the size of the task ahead this must be acted upon immediately. The EU's performance in South Sudan will be a test for the effectiveness of its new External Action Service. We strongly urge the EU to expedite the administrative procedures for appointing a new Head of Delegation and setting up a fully functioning and expanded office with adequate accommodation”.

Could the Government give us an up-to-date account of where that has reached and what sort of capacity the EU is now able to bring to the problem?

There is another international organisation of perhaps growing importance in this part of Africa, the African Union, which historically has not been an interventionist organisation—and, quite honestly, I think that Africa has suffered from that. In the lead-up to the referendum, it asserted itself and helped to resolve problems. The critical question is whether that has been capable of being sustained and is the African Union now helping to resolve the outstanding problems to which noble Lords have referred. Again, it would be useful if the Government could give us an up-to-date assessment of the situation.

I have drawn attention to the African Union because, although the EU and individual member states of the EU and the United States—and the UN, to an extent—can help through aid and expertise, the problems that South Sudan faces are essentially African problems. That is so not least because how far developments in South Sudan go will have inevitable consequences on its neighbours, inhabiting one of the most sensitive and difficult regions of Africa.