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Sudan

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble colleague for introducing the debate. His diocese and the diocese of Bradford have shared links with the Episcopal Church of Sudan over many years, and we have many friends in that vast and troubled country. I was privileged to be in Juba 18 months ago for the enthronement of Daniel Deng as the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church. It seemed to me that it was a case of "cometh the hour, cometh the man". At his enthronement, the archbishop committed the Church to work for peace both in the north and south. Other denominations share that commitment. The archbishop is living by his word. He has been criss-crossing the country since his enthronement, witnessing at first hand the suffering that the people are experiencing, especially in the south. At Easter he visited the Nuer area of Ayod. He was one of a group of Dinkas. He spoke of love and peace between the tribes and discovered, after he had returned to Juba, that the trouble between the two tribes—the cattle rustling and the violence—had stopped. Across Sudan, the Church is determined to work for peace. The archbishop said: ""The church is one of the most effective ground-level players in the peace process, and is proof that our message of love and reconciliation is one that is most effective in the peace building among the tribes of southern Sudan"." The Church is present in nearly every small village in Southern Sudan. Its presence is unmatched by either the military or government. The Church does not run away when the NGOs run away. My noble colleague has already referred to the Lord’s Resistance Army attacking over the border. Whereas all the NGOs fled, the Church has remained there, doing its work in schools. There is a concerted effort to undermine the peace agreement. People in Sudan need to believe that peace is in the best interests of all of them, whatever part of Sudan they come from. I worry that sometimes we might imagine that there could be a neat tear across Sudan from Darfur to the Red Sea. It would not be a neat tear at all. Some of our links are with the diocese of Kadugli in the Nuba mountains. That is right on the boundary—the area is technically in the north, but its heart is in the south. During most of the country’s life, Muslims and Christians have got on happily side by side. That is not the case now. Many people from the region, along with others, have fled to Khartoum. There are something like 3 million internally displaced people, many of them from the south. Some of them are now fairly well established, but others are living in desperate poverty. It is a hopeless situation. I visited Jabarona. The people there had been forcibly moved from the desert on one side of Khartoum to the desert on the other. They named their new settlement "Jabarona", which means, "We were forced". That illustrates how so many people in Sudan feel at the moment—forced hither and thither, with no say over their destiny. Our Government, as has been said, are one of the guarantors of the peace agreement. I believe for myself that the elections should not take place until after the referendum, but it seems that no one can dare say that because they would be accused of undermining democracy and it was used as an argument by their opponents. But it is necessary to have the referendum and then to work beyond it, whether in one state or two states. On behalf of the Church in Sudan and its friends in this country, I offer the Government our wholehearted support in working for peace, whether it be the Church on the ground over there or the Church here represented by the two right reverend Prelates.