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Darfur Crisis

I could not agree more. It would be the ultimate tragedy to lose the chance of peace because we failed to follow through and to lose so many Darfurians, if not quite a generation, through lack of food aid, just when we thought that we had achieved a resolution of the conflict. What people at large very much want to tell this Government and Governments across the globe is, ““Don’t give us the spin. Give us the beef”” and, in this case, ““Deliver the food.”” I therefore agree that the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion is significant. I shall make just two more quick remarks before I sit down. We must be conscious of the context of the Darfur crisis, and it would be helpful to understand how much Darfur is at risk from surrounding instability. Civil war is spiralling out of control in Chad, and many of us are anxious to ensure that at least the Chadian rebel strongholds in Darfur are closed down and dealt with in the context of the peace agreement. East Sudan is scarcely ever discussed, but many people say that a potential humanitarian crisis is developing there, on a scale that overshadows the crisis in Darfur. Who on earth is negotiating with the Eastern Front rebel group? Knowing more about that would help us to set the current issue in context. The Secretary of State talked about the success of the north-south comprehensive peace agreement in the south, but many feel that it is not playing out with quite the robustness that was intended. Simple measures, such as the promised publication of data on oil resources, which would allow us to understand the allocation between north and south, do not seem to have worked their way through into practical reality. Darfur, like Sudan generally, was once a peaceful multi-ethnic society. Then came drought, and people started to move, to look for other land and to displace other people. In a strange way, we have seen a microcosm—a very localised form—of the disruption, conflict and suffering that comes from climate change. There is a lesson in that, but if we cannot deal with Darfur, as contained as it is, I wonder how we will deal with the much larger dislocation that climate change will cause in the future.