South Sudan

William Bain Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Edward, and to have secured this important debate on the humanitarian tragedy that is continuing to unfold in the world’s newest state, South Sudan. I am grateful to members of the associate all-party group for the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan, which I chair, who have supported this debate and are present.

In less than two years of statehood, South Sudan has experienced an unprecedented shock to its national income; its gross domestic product fell by nearly 250% in 2012, at the height of the dispute between South Sudan and Sudan over oil charges and compensation. There has been some progress since then on what have been generally dismal indicators on health, maternal mortality rates, mortality during childbirth and education. In that respect, the past four weeks have been a tragic and massive step backwards.

When members of the associate all-party group, including me, visited Juba and Lakes state in April 2012, we saw at first hand the challenges and the great opportunities before the new state of South Sudan. We heard of the problems in bringing together a cross-tribal, cross-community Government able to function efficiently in order to alleviate hunger and educate the country’s children. We heard of the need to adopt a genuinely pluralist constitution that provides for the accountability of the state to its citizens and of the Government to Parliament. We listened to the complex issues regarding the future of Abyei state and the need to resolve the continuing border problems with Khartoum.

We witnessed the positive effects that investment by the Department for International Development and its partners in the United States and France, through the UN, is having on the economic empowerment of women and the attempts to rebalance the economy in favour of agricultural production, which the rich foliage, particularly in the southern parts of the country, strongly promotes. We experienced for ourselves the problems of a country that has only 60 km of paved roads and, in many respects, a very weak—in many states, non-existent—infrastructure. We saw the intense difficulty that that causes to farmers in getting their goods to market and in distributing seeds and other agricultural products from the capital out to the other states. We also met farmers who had fled to Uganda during the earlier civil war and were making painstaking efforts to rebuild their businesses and their lives on land that had been returned to them after that civil war ended.

I will not forget the huge numbers of female fruit and vegetable growers north of Rumbek, in Lakes state, who greeted us when we visited their UN World Food Programme-supported plantation. They were all wearing T-shirts proclaiming: “Marriage can wait, women’s right to education first.” I asked one of them how many children she had, and she told me 12. She was determined to make a success of the agricultural co-operative, so that her children would have something that she had been denied: the right to an education. It is tragic that the avoidable humanitarian situation is putting at risk all that essential work in one of the poorest countries on earth. The avoidable political instability, the internal displacement and the tribal conflict that is being stoked up for political ends, or to settle old scores, mean that the extraordinary work of many such women, who are empowered in South Sudan’s economy for the first time, and of the UN and the United Kingdom in carefully supporting such programmes, runs the risk of being lost.

The conflict could not have come at a worse time. The planting of crops is due to take place next month. The rainy season in South Sudan is due to begin in April and May. In that period, 60% of the country will be inaccessible by road, and many parts will be accessible only by air. The country struggled to cope with spiralling food security problems in 2011 and 2012—nearly 4 million people were threatened by hunger in that period—and the risk is that the situation will get worse in the spring if agreement cannot be reached between the Government and their Opposition.

Nearly two years ago, the biggest humanitarian challenge in South Sudan was the returning refugees who had spent many years in Sudan and were returning to their former homeland in the south without jobs to go to or the means of ensuring a livelihood in the future. Additionally, the current conflict means that there are up to 400,000 displaced South Sudanese nationals, with some 50,000 having fled into neighbouring states. The UN estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 people a day are fleeing South Sudan into neighbouring Uganda. The violence is having a tragic and serious impact on the region.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of this morning’s news reports that more than 200 people appear to have perished in a ferry accident while fleeing the fighting? Does that not show the absolute desperation of the terrible situation that the South Sudanese face?

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the growing disaster. The UN’s best estimate is that 10,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict in the past month alone. As we know, the impact of conflict is always felt most profoundly by the most vulnerable. Women and children in South Sudan are bearing a particularly harsh burden in a conflict that is not of their making. The UN has also said that health facilities in many states of South Sudan are already beginning to creak at the margins. There are shortages of blood and transfusion supplies. There is one hospital at which 192 patients are awaiting surgery pending blood becoming available. That is the scale of the crisis that the violence is beginning to produce among the weakest in South Sudanese society.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is not a serious development the fact that refugees are now moving to surrounding countries, such as Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and, of course, Sudan? That is putting further pressure on those countries, and further exacerbating the difficulty of getting humanitarian support to people who are now dispersed over a wide area.

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[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct that that is making the job of the UN Mission in South Sudan even harder. An added burden is also being placed on the mission, as a number of refugees are fleeing into neighbouring states.

The conflict has exacted a deadly toll. The International Crisis Group estimates that some 10,000 people have already perished in the conflict. Mass graves are being discovered, and humanitarian access is limited in conflict areas, with battle having spread to seven of South Sudan’s 10 states. The very real prospect is that the final number of deceased may be even higher.

The source of the renewed political instability in South Sudan is the aftermath of President Kiir’s Cabinet reshuffle last July, when Vice-President Machar was removed from his posts—along with the secretary-general of the governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Pagan Amum, and others—after Riek Machar issued a public challenge to President Kiir and indicated his desire for a leadership contest. The President then announced the dissolution of all internal Sudan People’s Liberation Movement party structures in November. That step was described by his internal critics as unconstitutional. There was a walk-out by the Opposition at the national liberation council on 15 December, and fighting began later that day between factions of the presidential guard in Juba, spreading to other parts of the armed forces in the following days. That violence has now become ethnic in nature, and has led to as many as 60,000 people seeking refuge in the South Sudanese compounds of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, particularly those in the capital, Juba.

The conflict has spread to the other states in South Sudan, with former Vice-President Machar declaring it an armed rebellion. There is now evidence that the armed forces are splitting along ethnic and tribal lines. There has been prolonged fighting over the city of Bor, with control switching between the forces loyal to the President and those loyal to Machar. There have been harrowing accounts of ethnic killings in Jonglei, along with the deaths of two UN peacekeepers. The obvious consequences of that are that non-governmental organisations’ staff and others have had to be evacuated from the country, making an already difficult humanitarian situation even worse and reducing access.

Some of the international responses have been welcome. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development has dispatched a delegation of Foreign Ministers to Juba. The African Union is now engaged, and talks are continuing in Addis Ababa to try to find a resolution. While that happens, people continue to die and women and children are facing a terrible humanitarian position. Can the Minister update the House on how many areas of South Sudan are open to humanitarian access? We need to ensure that the South Sudan crisis response plan is fulfilled, and that the shortfall of $106 million to meet the immediate needs in the crisis is contributed to by supportive Governments. I welcome the fact that DFID has allocated a further £12.5 million to help deal with the crisis, but can she say what representations have been made to other Governments to help to meet our collective responsibilities as an international community to the many hundreds of thousands of people at risk?

There is a wider question about the UNMISS mandate. After the UN Security Council passed a resolution in late December, extra troops were promised to provide a peacekeeping function in South Sudan. Will the Minister state what the latest intelligence is on when those troops will be deployed, in which states and with what remit? Will it be to support food supply lines? Will it be to support hospitals and schools? What will be the function of those additional troops?

A wider question has to be asked on the future of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. Questions have been asked about its capacity to provide security in that country. When we visited in 2012, there was already tension between dealing with the day-to-day alleviation of hunger and deprivation, and longer-term development objectives. Is it the view of the Minister and the Government that those two functions are still compatible, or does the crisis mean that a review of UNMISS’s mandate in South Sudan should be considered? There are also issues with the perceptions that some in South Sudan have of UNMISS. How can the international community act to overcome that, and to ensure cross-community, cross-tribal confidence in what UNMISS is doing?

My sense is of a state that has had an enormously difficult start in its birth and early years. My sense in visiting the country was of a state that has enormous capacity to supply economic benefits and be the bread basket of central Africa, but it badly needs support from the rest of the world to establish an effective system of governance that gives proper democratic rights under a permanent constitution, that observes the normal relationship between the armed forces and the people, that allows democracy to come to the fore, and that has a mechanism to resolve the territorial disputes between South Sudan and Sudan.

My other strong sense is that a process of reconciliation has to happen. It was necessary before the conflict, and it will be even more necessary now. I wonder what our country, with its hugely important diplomatic heritage in Sudan, South Sudan and the entire region, can do together with other countries, such as the United States, China and our other partners, to ensure that a proper process of reconciliation can take place once this conflict has been resolved.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In exactly that regard, and in the current terrible context, does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that as humanitarian aid is directed into South Sudan, Governments and foreign donors make a point of trying to ensure continuing engagement and support for national civil society organisations and faith networks, so that they can maintain their fabric and ethics and underpin that course for reconciliation?

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, because the sense of anyone visiting Juba and the outlying states in South Sudan is that civic society—non-governmental organisations—largely constitutes the means of delivering health, education and other services to the people in those areas. Those groups are critical in rebuilding the country, particularly after this hugely devastating conflict, and in securing the international community’s development goals for the area.

It is clear that we have to document the human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law committed in the past few weeks. Those responsible for any violations have to be held to account. What is the Government’s view on dealing with that situation when the conflict comes to an end? Will the Government be prepared to call for the reinvigoration of the national peace and reconciliation committee to bring people together? That committee should reflect the diversity of South Sudan society and encourage further nation-building initiatives.

In conclusion, South Sudan has had a tragic first two years of its life. We have a strong history in the area: this country has contributed enormously to the improvement of the diplomatic situation in Sudan and what is now South Sudan over the past few decades. We and the rest of the international community cannot walk away from this issue; people look to us for leadership. I hope that in replying to the debate, the Minister will show that the United Kingdom is prepared to offer that leadership on a devastating and tragic situation.