UK Leadership on Sudan

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds]

My hon. Friend raises a really important point. We are indeed seeing a huge amount of misinformation circulating, and a lot of it is digital. That is why we have been determined to support the Centre for Information Resilience, a research body that is gathering open-source evidence about the ongoing fighting. Where the facts about what is going on are being manipulated, that is linked to fuelling violence, so it is important that we see continued support for reliable information and evidence in this context and also that we combat that disinformation, which has been so damaging.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

The war in Sudan is plainly appalling. I heard that 14 million people had been displaced, but 11 million is also an appalling figure. As I understand it, this started out as a war between the general in charge of the armed forces and the general in charge of the Rapid Support Forces militia. That makes me think that we need to get upstream of such situations, to try to prevent them happening again. The UK used to be involved in defence engagement: we were delivering courses such as managing defence in a wider security context at the Kofi Annan international peacekeeping training centre, teaching things like democratic oversight and democratic control of the armed forces. Will the Government look again at that training, and see whether we might deliver more such training for military officers and officials in those developing countries that are receptive to it?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his interesting and important question. The issue of conflict prevention is absolutely fundamental, not just for me as a Minister but for the Foreign Secretary and, indeed, the Prime Minister. We have been seeking to ensure that the UK does all it can to exercise leadership in relation to what are often described as fragile and conflict-affected states. That includes states that are not yet in conflict but where there are the ingredients for conflict to increase. Unfortunately, of course, the climate crisis is now often linked to some of those conflicts. We have made sure that there is a stronger focus on economic development, for example. We had some good results a few weeks ago from the World Bank, which is focusing on this in its International Development Association replenishment. I will ensure that the specific issue of defence training is raised with the Defence Secretary, and I will definitely be thinking about it myself.