---

Darfur Crisis

Our ambassador in Khartoum is in regular contact with the Government of Sudan. However, I should tell my hon. Friend, who has also achieved great distinction, because of the way in which he chairs and leads the all-party group and keeps the House well informed about what is happening, that several of us talk to a considerable number of people as we seek to support those who are trying to resolve the crisis. That is the sad truth, and I will therefore need to check whether particular representations have been made about the individual to whom my hon. Friend referred. Once people have been put on the sanctions list or otherwise identified by the organisations that are investigating these events, however, all hon. Members would clearly expect those bodies to take the appropriate action against them. It is too late to undo the terrible crimes that have been committed, but if the international community is to achieve justice for those who suffered and lost their lives and, indeed, more widely—that is why I referred to the crisis as a test—we must send a message to those who are thinking of committing such actions in other places that they will eventually be caught if they do. Elsewhere, we have seen the indictment of Charles Taylor and those who have been brought before courts in Arusha in connection with the Rwandan genocide. What is being done is important because bit by bit, inconsistently and sometimes hesitantly, the international community has the power to demonstrate that we will not sit back and let such things happen. Have we got things right? No. Have we got a long way to go? Certainly, but those steps forward really matter in showing that we are serious about trying to put into effect the fine words that have been passed in declarations and agreements over many years. We find them in the UN’s universal declaration of human rights, in the text on the founding of the UN and in the agreement on the responsibility to protect, agreed by the millennium summit last September. However, someone on the receiving end of the trauma in Darfur might be inclined to say, ““Those are fine words and I am glad to read them, but when will someone apply them to me?”” That is the real test. Darfur is the most complex humanitarian operation in the world today. Nearly 14,000 people are working there in extremely difficult circumstances. In the past three years, thousands of innocent people have been killed. The figures range from 80,000 to 400,000. The truth is that no one knows, and frankly no one is ever likely to know, how many people have lost their lives in the conflict, but we do know that about 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes and a further 1.5 million have been affected by the conflict. Reports continue of sexual violence, in particular against women and children. I, along with other hon. Members here today, have visited some of the camps: Kalma, near Nyala, and el-Meshtel and Abu Shouq, which are near el-Fasher. There, we saw with our own eyes the conditions in which people are forced to live, and we heard testimony from women, men and children about what had happened to them to make them flee their homes, and about the continuing insecurity that they face, in particular when they venture out of the camp. That burden is felt particularly by women, because the task of looking for firewood falls on them. Sadly, they are from time to time attacked as they go beyond the confines of the camp. I pay tribute to the UN, the non-governmental organisations and the 14,000 individuals on the ground—some are international, but the vast bulk are Sudanese—who have worked tirelessly in very difficult circumstances to try to provide for the needs of the people forced to flee their homes. Their efforts mean that today we can recognise that, compared with two years ago, malnutrition and mortality rates have fallen. Last year, they fell below the emergency threshold. That was entirely due to the international relief effort in terms of money, and the skill, dedication and commitment of those staff. However, because of the increase in insecurity since last autumn, those improvements have begun to be reversed. There has been further displacement of people. Since the beginning of the year, just under 200,000 more people have had to flee their homes because of fighting, a significant proportion of which is down to the rebel movements. In some areas, the UN and the NGOs have had to reduce their presence and operations because of insecurity. That is the first point. Secondly, banditry and harassment on all sides have got worse and more brazen, and are getting in the way of the ability of humanitarian agencies to gain regular access to the worst affected areas. Sadly, humanitarian workers have to deal with such situations in a number of countries, as I saw for myself in Somalia yesterday. I shall digress slightly, if you will allow me, Mrs. Dean, to pay tribute to the people working in southern Somalia, who frankly, in some circumstances, are putting their lives on the line—the same is true of people in Darfur—to ensure that others get the help that they need. We all owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. We have continued throughout to lobby, press and urge the Government of Sudan to ensure that they place no obstacles in the way of those trying to carry out the relief effort. That is the only country in the world in which as Secretary of State for International Development I have had to raise—I have done so willingly—individual cases of consignments of goods that have been held up. I remember one case in particular from a couple of years ago: 30 tonnes of medical supplies brought into the country by Médecins sans Frontières had been sitting in a container in Port Sudan for three months. Those supplies were desperately needed by the people of Darfur, but the necessary permit had not been obtained. Experience has shown that one has to keep up the pressure to ensure that the Government of Sudan support and help those humanitarian agencies. The third, and sad, fact is that those humanitarian workers have now been affected by a funding crisis as some donors, frankly, get a bit weary. UN agencies responsible for some of the most important needs in Darfur are being forced to make major cuts to their programme; most significant of all is the decision of the World Food Programme to halve the rations provided in Darfur. That means that malnutrition will worsen. I am pleased that the United States Government have decided to speed up the delivery of their substantial contribution, which had, I think, been undergoing the congressional process. I hope that that will mean that full rations can be restored as soon as possible. Hon. Members will be aware of the leading role that the United Kingdom Government have played in providing humanitarian relief. We are the second largest bilateral donor after the United States of America. Since September 2003 we have allocated more than £93 million to UN agencies and NGOs. We have provided a further £45 million in support of the UN’s 2006 Sudan work plan and its eastern Chad appeal. We are pressing other donors to do more. Two weeks ago I announced that the UK is to provide a further £9 million to the common humanitarian fund, which will help the UN to react more quickly and flexibly to the crisis in Darfur and to meet humanitarian needs in other parts of Sudan. It is a desperately poor country, in large measure because of the conflict that its people have had to endure over the past generation and more. That means that our total contribution to the UN work plan this years stands at £54 million—more than we provided last year. I wish that that was true of all the other donors, but it is not. We are also providing £18 million to NGO operations, £5 million to the Red Cross for both Darfur and the south of the country and £4 million for the relief effort in Chad. I shall continue to urge other donors to respond as generously as they can. The people of Darfur need that. The second thing that we have been doing is backing the African Union Mission in Sudan, which has deployed ceasefire monitors and a protection force and police since the middle of 2004. Until last summer, the last but one time I went to Darfur, there was no doubt that in the previous 12 months the presence of that force had improved security. That was what I was told not just by the AMIS force itself and its commander at the time, but by the UN agencies to whose representatives I spoke in both north and south Darfur. However, since the autumn the situation has deteriorated, not for want of effort on the part of AMIS but because of the increasing failure of parties to various ceasefires and humanitarian agreements to honour the obligations that they have entered into. The result has been a new wave of people who must flee their homes. The situation has become very difficult. When in February I met Major-General Ihekire, who took over, as I remember, about four weeks previously, he was very frank and said, ““I haven’t got enough troops on the ground.”” That was the first time that the AMIS force commander had said that. He said he needed more. As hon. Members will be aware, AMIS does not even have the 7,700 troops and civilian police that were envisaged for phase 2 of the operation, because it was hard to find an additional battalion from Africa. We should recognise, also, that the force faces an enormously complex and challenging task. We should pay tribute to the African Union, despite the difficulties: if it had not taken the initiative and put in that force, who else would have gone to do that work? Its presence is a demonstration in deed by Africa that it is prepared to begin to take responsibility for solving conflict on that continent. It has added to the sum total of forces that are capable of doing that work, and in doing so has made it easier to decide to act. We face two problems when such situations occur in the world. First, is there the will to do something? Secondly, if there is the will, are there people who are prepared to do the work?