Sudan: Protection of Civilians
Debate between Stephen Doughty and Chris Law(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Stephen Doughty
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. As I have said, we fund the Centre for Information Resilience, which is an NGO that collates evidence of these crimes, and we look at all the evidence that is provided. It is incredibly difficult. We play a leading role in the UN fact-finding mission, but of course that mission has not been allowed physical access to the region, which is one of the major challenges in assessing the allegations that have been made.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
In relation to the atrocities that have been committed by the RSF in Sudan, Amnesty International has said that
“the UK kept approving arms sales to the UAE, even when the risks were staring it in the face. This raises serious questions about the UK’s…complicity in mass atrocities.”
This is not the first time that the UK has sold weapons to those accused of genocide. Does the Minister agree that arms export licensing is broken, and that we need to immediately re-establish a stand-alone Committee on arms export controls, which was abolished here two years ago? Given the atrocious risks that the UK Government faced, why did they choose to ignore them?
Stephen Doughty
The hon. Gentleman knows how seriously I take these issues, not least as a former member of that Committee. Obviously, though, it is for this House to determine its Committees, not me. I can assure him that we have one of the most robust and transparent export control regimes in the world. All licences are assessed for the risk of diversion, and we regularly prevent exports that might be diverted to an undesirable end user. I will keep these matters under very close review, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that they will be considered fully, in line with our strategic export licensing criteria.