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International Affairs

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey). I endorse the gracious tribute that the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright) paid to the newly elected hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies), who made a passionate, decent and admirable speech of which he should be proud. Of course, there is terrible violence and an enormous crisis in the middle east, and that is the immediate pretext for today’s debate. However, there are other crises elsewhere, and I would like to focus briefly on a couple of them. First, there is the running sore and international shame of what continues to take place in Darfur. So far, more than a third of a million people have lost their lives and 2 million people have been displaced—250,000 have been displaced in 2006 alone. The crisis has erupted over the border into Chad. Foot-stamping by the Sudanese Government has already prevented a vital deployment of troops by the United Nations to Darfur. It cannot be allowed, through procrastination, delay and objection, to prevent that necessary deployment again. I appeal to the Minister for the Middle East to advise the House today of what the Government are doing in response to the cri de coeur from the African Union, the aid agencies and others to press the matter, bring it before the United Nations Security Council and try to ensure that, sooner rather than later, there is a vote. Secondly, there is the long-running crisis—the slow-burn genocide, as I would characterise it—in Burma. Early-day motion 902 has attracted the signatures of 312 hon. Members who are united in calling for United Nations Security Council action. We need a resolution. We have support from European states and we enjoy the backing of the United States. We need the British Government and others to exert diplomatic muscle to exhort African states such as Ghana, Tanzania and Congo-Brazzaville to secure support for a discussion, with the consequence—I hope—of a resolution, binding or otherwise, to try to insist that the regime, which has an appalling human rights record, is brought to book. Those two important crises need to be tackled. There are many others but the United Nations must now decide what it is to be in future: a vehicle for necessary change in the world or simply an instrument of passive acceptance of an unsatisfactory status quo. Let it be the former, not the latter.