Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if she will work with the government of Tunisia to improve inter-faith dialogue.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
DFID has not supported any inter-faith dialogue projects as such in Tunisia. However, under the joint FCO-DFID Arab Partnership Participation Fund (APPF), the UK funded the Centre for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) in Tunisia to support the development of the constitution and the electoral process (£510,210 over the last two years). One component of this work involved promoting constructive dialogue between Islamists and Secularists.
Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of sanctions on people considered to be impeding the peace process in South Sudan.
Answered by Grant Shapps - Secretary of State for Defence
To respond to the ongoing conflict in South Sudan the UK helped to secure UN sanctions against six military commanders that impeded the peace process. As these sanctions were adopted on 1 July 2015 it is too early to assess their effectiveness.
Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if she will take steps to (a) reduce the size of and (b) increase the number of independent members on the Board of the Disasters Emergencies Committee.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The Disasters Emergencies Committee (DEC) is an independent charity and therefore is subject to UK charity legislation, and registered with the Charity Commission. As such, the composition of their Board of Trustees is a matter for the DEC.
Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment she has made of the humanitarian situation in East Sudan.
Answered by Grant Shapps - Secretary of State for Defence
The UK remains extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation in Eastern Sudan. The United Nations’ ‘Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan 2015’ estimates that 328,000 people are in need of humanitarian assistance in three states of East Sudan (Red Sea, Kassala and Gedaref), out of a total of 5.4 million in need across the country. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is supporting some 92,000 long-term refugees in the east. DFID is providing a further £38 million over the next two years for additional humanitarian assistance to Sudan, including Darfur.
Delays and restrictions imposed by the Government of Sudan in the issuance of travel permits has limited our ability to conduct our own recent assessment but we continue to work closely with NGOs and International Agencies to better understand the situation. We, along with our partners (EU and US) continue to press the Government of Sudan to allow unrestricted humanitarian access but we remain deeply concerned about the situation.