Nigeria: Fulani
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie
Baroness Cox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to revise their assessment of the situation in northern and central belt states of Nigeria, following the report by local church leaders of the killing and maiming of 6,000 civilians by Fulani Islamist terrorists between January and June and figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that almost two million people have been displaced by jihadist attacks.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, there has been a tragic escalation in intercommunal violence in Nigeria this year. While religious identity is certainly a factor, the drivers of the clashes are complex and need to be addressed if the violence is to be curbed. The United Kingdom Government have not seen evidence that links Fulani herdsmen to Islamist insurgency in the north-east and it is important that we avoid conflating the two issues, because that may risk exacerbating ethnic tensions.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply but, while the causes of violence are indeed complex and multifaceted, does she not agree that the asymmetry, scale and escalation of attacks by well-armed Fulani upon the predominantly Christian communities has an ideological basis that must be acknowledged? Will Her Majesty’s Government make representations to the Government of Nigeria to ensure that it will be safe for the huge numbers of people who have been displaced by Fulani attacks to return to their homes?
Baroness Goldie
There is no denying, having looked at the report from the noble Baroness’s charity with its deeply disturbing content, that the violence described is gruesome, chilling, repugnant and horrific, but we are all agreed that we must address the basic causes of the violence, which seem wider than simply a religious clash. Religion is a factor but attributing the violence to religious causes risks a dangerous oversimplification. I am aware that she is a member of the FORB APPG, which is undertaking an inquiry into the conflict in Nigeria and will produce a report. The Government keenly await the outcome of that report: it will be a very important step forward in trying to understand what is happening. To reassure her, I can say that the United Kingdom Government consistently represent to the Nigerian Government the need to address the causes of this completely unacceptable violence.
Sudan: Government Changes
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie
Baroness Goldie
My Lords, let me make clear in relation to the United Nations, and particularly UNAMID, that the UK Government continue to support a gradual, conditions-based withdrawal of that mission in Darfur. Our priority is to ensure that changes to the mission are made sensibly, with appropriate review points, and to make sure that a smaller, more flexible UNAMID is still able to fulfil the core components of its mandate. On President Bashir and the recent announcement that he seeks to be a candidate for the 2020 election, we urge the Government to engage meaningfully in the African Union-led peace process and undertake reforms that strengthen Sudan’s democracy. This will ensure free, fair and inclusive elections.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that earlier this year I visited Blue Nile state in Sudan with my small NGO, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust—HART—where we met 9,000 recently displaced people who were desperate. They had no food, they were at risk of starvation, and HART was the only NGO to reach them. We were able to raise emergency funding which saved many lives, but there are reports of a very high mortality rate, especially for children. Will the Minister therefore explain how the UK Government are working with the international community to fulfil its responsibilities to protect and provide for these very vulnerable, and indeed dying people?
Baroness Goldie
I thank the noble Baroness, who raises a very important point. She will be aware that the UK Government, through our Department for International Development, have been providing very significant help. Indeed, the UK remains one of the largest humanitarian donors to Sudan and we are the largest contributor to the Sudan Humanitarian Fund. We contribute approximately £15 million a year to that fund and we are trying to provide help with clean water and sanitation, particularly helping children, women and girls through food and nutrition interventions. We are also doing everything we can with emergency food assistance and support, because there are South Sudanese refugees and newly displaced people arriving in Sudan.
Nigeria: Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie
Baroness Cox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of recent developments in Nigeria, including violence by the Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, we remain concerned by clashes involving pastoralists and farmers. The root causes are complex, including access to land, grazing routes, and water, exacerbated by population growth and insecurity. We have raised our concerns at federal and state government levels. Urgent action is needed by the Nigerian authorities to prevent further loss of life. We remain committed to supporting Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram, and we are providing a substantial package of military intelligence and humanitarian assistance.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. Is she aware that last time I was in Nigeria I visited four villages that had been destroyed by Fulani and stood in the ruins of the pastor’s house, where he had been slaughtered? Given the escalation of attacks on Christian communities in which many hundreds have been killed recently and that the Nigerian House of Representatives has declared this to be genocide, does the Minister agree that while the causes of such violence are complex, there is a strong ideological dimension to the Fulani attacks? Will Her Majesty’s Government make representations to the Government of Nigeria to take more effective action to protect all its citizens and call to account all those who have been perpetrating atrocities?
Baroness Goldie
We are deeply concerned by the recurrent clashes, and we welcome President Buhari’s commitment to assist affected communities to bring perpetrators to justice and examine long-term solutions. Urgent action is needed to prevent further loss of life. The root causes of these clashes are complex. Our assessment is that they are not religiously motivated. However, they are exacerbated by deep-rooted ethnic tensions.
Sudan: Human Rights
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie
Baroness Cox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the situation in Sudan, with particular reference to violations of human rights and access to those in need of humanitarian aid.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, improving human rights remains a key objective in our engagement with Sudan. Although, regrettably, there has been little overall improvement in the human rights situation, we continue to raise concerns at senior levels, including by the Foreign Secretary in a recent meeting with Foreign Minister Ghandour in December. We welcome recent improvements in access to populations in need, but the humanitarian situation in Sudan remains of concern, with nearly 5 million people requiring assistance.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, but is she aware that military offensives by the Government of Sudan in Blue Nile and South Kordofan have forced 300,000 people from their homes? During a visit to Blue Nile last month, we met 9,000 civilians who had not been visited by any other NGO and who are at risk of starvation. They are very disturbed by reports that the Government of Sudan are using the ceasefire to buy more weapons, including fighter aircraft and missiles, with a build-up of armed forces in the area that they fear will be used for renewed military offensives. Will Her Majesty’s Government raise again the need for food aid for civilians not from Khartoum, as the people do not trust aid from a Government who have been trying to kill them for years, and obtain information regarding the reported disturbing build-up of military forces?
Baroness Goldie
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. We all acknowledge her distinguished record on these issues, in particular in Sudan. She raises perplexing issues, on which I have no specific information other than to say that she will be aware that the UK is providing humanitarian assistance to conflict-affected populations in the two areas through the Sudan Humanitarian Fund—we gave £16 million to that fund in 2017. In addition, we give general bilateral aid to Sudan. The issues that she raises are deeply concerning and I undertake to make inquiries. If I receive any further information, I shall happily write to her.
Sudan and South Sudan
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, the dinner break business is down at least one speaker—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury has scratched—and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, may be detained in getting here. That means that speeches can be slightly extended, but please show due balance and understanding and do not go over the top. Six minutes, or a little more, will be perfectly all right.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who are contributing to this debate on two countries where people are suffering so much, but for very different reasons.
I begin by focusing on Sudan because through my small NGO, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, or HART, we work with local partners who can provide information not readily available, especially in South Kordofan’s Nuba mountains and Blue Nile state, known as the Two Areas. I visited the Nuba mountains earlier this year and witnessed the destruction perpetrated by the GOS—Government of Sudan—armed forces, including the destruction of homes, in which many civilians were killed, a school and the office of the local commissioner. I climbed for two and a half hours up a mountain to visit civilians forced to flee their homes by GOS military offensives and live in caves with deadly snakes. I listened to many people who described their anguish including a father, five of whose children had been burned alive when a bomb from a GOS Antonov set the hut ablaze. His sixth child, whom I met, is suffering from burns and mental trauma. I also met a girl who survived a cobra bite; most do not.
Where fighting has subsided, the humanitarian situation in the Two Areas continues to deteriorate: 23.9% of children suffer from acute malnutrition and 8.4% from severe malnutrition, increasing the risk of child mortality. Overall, stunting rates are a staggering 38.3% with severe stunting at 14.7%, creating a high risk of physical and mental developmental disorders. GOS troops still occupy vast tracts of ancestral farmland, displacing a substantial proportion of the population. Farmers who plant in these areas risk losing their lives or crops. Many villages remain ghost towns, as the 2016 offensive forced civilians to flee to the mountains. In many places I have seen, schools, churches and markets remain in rubble and people still live with the inherent fear of further attacks by the GOS. Episodic attacks continue. For example, on 10 October a long-range missile was fired from Dilling into Hejerat village and, according to local monitors, a significant amount of houses, farms and pastoral land have been destroyed by fire along front lines in South Kordofan.
In Blue Nile, 39% of households had reached levels of severe food insecurity in July and 11% are at the highest possible level of household hunger. Those numbers are expected to rise. There are also acute health problems. For example, there was concern over the spread of acute watery diarrhoea just north of the border and going into Blue Nile, where such few clinics as there are have no drugs to treat this condition. The internal SPLA-North conflict in Blue Nile ceased in October, allowing relatively free movement of civilians and goods. However, tensions remain high as the two SPLA-North factions have shown no signs of reconciliation. There is therefore an urgent need for initiatives to bring an end to this conflict, which has undermined the planting of crops and will lead to even more severe food insecurity in coming months. My small NGO, HART, has been one of very few NGOs enabling aid to be taken into Blue Nile. May I again—I have done this before—request that Her Majesty’s Government increase efforts to allow cross-border aid to reach these people? I appreciate the political complexities, but those heighten the need for an emergency response by the international community to fulfil the mandates to provide protection for vulnerable civilians.
I do not have time to discuss Darfur, where GOS aggression continues, but much of that aggression is well reported. I turn briefly to examples of concern elsewhere in Sudan. On 6 December, Sudan’s security forces or their apparatus kidnapped Mr Rudwan Dawod, a leading member of the Sudanese Congress Party, an adviser to the “Sudan of the Future” campaign—SoF—and a well-known human rights defender. He has been taken to an unknown place after he showed solidarity with the people of Elgiraif, who are struggling to protect their land as the GOS has been illegally confiscating lands from indigenous people to give to so-called foreign investors. Several other supporters of the SoF campaign have also been arrested. Will Her Majesty’s Government urge the Government of Sudan to release these civilians immediately and stress that President Omar al-Bashir will be held responsible if they are subjected to torture or any other harm? Is the UK embassy in Khartoum aware of the GOS policy of land confiscation from Sudanese civilians and has it made representations to the GOS regarding this serious violation of human rights?
A recent report by Global Justice Now shows the UK providing £400,000 from CSSF funds to strengthen the capacity of the Sudanese armed forces. Is this accurate and, if so, what is the justification for this support? Regarding all discussions with GOS, especially in the context of the Sudan strategic dialogue and the conditions for lifting sanctions, will Her Majesty’s Government ensure that there will be a thorough, accurate monitoring of compliance and genuine, demonstrable proof of the meeting of these conditions for the lifting of sanctions?
I turn briefly to South Sudan, where the UK has an important role as the second-largest bilateral donor and a member of the troika. I offer a brief overview of the situation there nationwide: 7.5 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, with 6 million severely food insecure; 1.8 million have fled to neighbouring countries, more than 85% of whom are women and children; there are 2 million displaced internally. Disease outbreaks, including cholera, kala-azar and measles, along with more than 2 million cases of malaria, were reported between January and November 2016, with at least 246 deaths from cholera since June 2016. More than 1.17 million children aged three to 18 have lost access to education due to conflict and displacement, while about 31% of schools have suffered attacks. An adolescent girl is three times more likely to die in childbirth than to complete primary school and 76% of school-aged girls are not in school.
Our HART partner, Archbishop Moses Deng Bol, sent this update from Wau in Bahr el-Ghazal. He said:
“The most pressing issues in South Sudan are as follows: Insecurity has increased all over South Sudan. Dr Riek’s rebel movement the SPLM-IO is still fighting inside South Sudan and still considers him as its leader. More rebel groups have also been formed, including the National Salvation Front. As a result of the insecurity and hunger caused by the wars, thousands of civilians are still crossing the borders daily. More than 2 million people are now internally displaced in IDP Camps. New camps are being established, including one on the outskirts of Wau town and hundreds of civilians are entering the camp daily. The UN has stated that over 6 million people will be in need of food assistance in the coming year. The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has initiated a process known as High Level Revitalization Forum (HLRF) to try to revitalize the peace agreement by asking the warring parties to recommit themselves to the agreement and to bring new rebel groups on board.
It is very important that the UK Government, especially with TROIKA, uses the forthcoming meetings to ensure sustained pressure on the warring parties to revive the collapsed peace agreement; to recommit themselves to permanent ceasefire; to open humanitarian corridors so that civilians can be given food aid; and to reach a political settlement so that the millions of refugees and IDPs can return to their homes and rebuild their lives”.
The archbishop also highlights problems of bureaucratic procedures for emergency funding—for example, food to save the lives of starving IDPs. When many hundreds of IDPs flooded into Wau earlier this year, he had to borrow money from local traders to obtain food and save them from starvation. Might Her Majesty’s Government urge DfID to consider working more with local partners such as the churches, which have the confidence of local communities, and to make the application process more user-friendly and the response to emergencies more rapid? The archbishop urges the UK to ensure that the HLRF process is genuinely inclusive and gives a strong platform to the voices of grass-roots South Sudanese groups, including churches, traditional leaders, women’s and youth groups. He also urges the UK’s approach to conflict resolution not to focus solely on the high-level peace process but to address root causes of conflict on the ground, investing in community-based peacebuilding and locally led reconciliation initiatives.
I greatly appreciate this opportunity to put on record some of the problems causing such suffering to the peoples of Sudan and South Sudan. I am very grateful to those noble Lords who will be able to highlight issues I have not had time to mention or discuss adequately. I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the people of these countries so that when I send them this debate, they will see a response by the UK Government compatible with the responsibilities which we have a duty to fulfil.
Nigeria
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie
Baroness Cox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of recent developments in the Northern and Central Belt States in Nigeria.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, we are deeply concerned by recurrent clashes involving pastoralists such as herdsmen and local farmers over land, farming rights, grazing routes and access to water. These conflicts, which are exacerbated by climate change and population growth, cause immense suffering to both the pastoralists and farming communities in central and northern Nigeria. We welcome President Buhari’s commitment to ending these attacks and call on all parties to find a peaceful solution to the causes of these incidents.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s sympathetic reply, because I have visited villages where Fulani have killed Christians and destroyed their homes—I witnessed their suffering. Is she aware of a new and disturbing development of severe threats by radical northern youth groups, who have ordered the predominantly Christian Igbo tribe to leave all parts of northern and eastern Nigeria or face dire consequences? Will Her Majesty’s Government ask the Government of Nigeria what measures they are taking to fulfil more effectively their duty to protect all religious and ethnic minorities in Nigeria?
Baroness Goldie
I thank the noble Baroness for her question, which I know is rooted in a deep knowledge of the area and the problems that exist there. The call by the northern youth groups for the predominantly Christian Igbo to leave has been taken very seriously by the Nigerian Government. Acting Nigerian President, President Osinbajo, has held exhaustive and wide-ranging consultations with stakeholders across the country—not just in the affected north but also in the south-east. National discussions have now moved on to the broader issue of restructuring Nigeria. As a result, tension around the initial statement by the northern youth groups has decreased significantly in the past few weeks, with the group itself moving towards rescinding the Osinbajo call for the Igbo tribe to leave. However, to our knowledge, it has not gone quite as far as that yet. The British high commission in Abuja will continue to monitor the situation carefully.
Myanmar and Bangladesh: Rohingya
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, while strongly endorsing every concern regarding the plight of the Rohingya people, may I ask the Minister whether she is aware that the Shan and Kachin peoples are often suffering from military offences by the Burmese army, including rape, torture, extrajudicial killings and expropriation of land, with hundreds of thousands driven from their homes into camps across the border in Thailand? I have been there and seen their suffering. Would the Minister therefore include the less publicised plight of those people, together with the Rohingya, in any representations to the Burmese Government from the international community?
Baroness Goldie
Again, I thank the noble Baroness for a very pertinent question. The British Government remain concerned over continued human rights abuses in Burma’s ethnic border areas, where hostilities are still taking place. We have repeatedly called on the military to end hostilities comprehensively, and called on all sides to enter into dialogue towards a sustainable and comprehensive nationwide ceasefire and political reconciliation process. Those points are made repeatedly through diplomatic conduits; the Foreign Secretary made those points in January this year, and the then Minister for Asia and the Pacific, Mr Alok Sharma, made the same points to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 27 February. We continue to take an interest in, and endeavour to represent, concerns about the detained Kachin pastors and the three Shan journalists.
Aleppo
Debate between Baroness Cox and Baroness Goldie
Baroness Goldie
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Cormack for his contribution. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend that meeting. I am sure that such a meeting would be of interest, and I would very much hope that the Church would feel able to share with the Government any thoughts that it has. We will all be aware that we are doing what we can to try to assist but, as I said earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, short of intervening, there is a limit to what we can do in supporting, advising and trying to influence. We are working as part of a partnership.
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Islamist military is occupying eastern Aleppo, having inflicted sustained military offences against the civilians of western Aleppo, including using cluster bombs and gas warfare? Is she also aware that the Syrian army is helping 1,500 civilians to flee the fighting in eastern Aleppo, although the Islamist terrorists in control there are trying to stop them leaving, using them as human shields? Everyone whom we met in Aleppo is deeply worried by the West’s commitment to regime change, which would give power to such Islamists, creating a situation similar to that in Iraq and Libya. Is there any chance that Her Majesty’s Government would listen to the people of Syria and reconsider their policy of inflicted regime change?
Baroness Goldie
I thank the noble Baroness for her contribution. She will understand that the United Kingdom Government, in conjunction with other powers, are doing what they can in a very difficult situation created by others, who bear a primary and singular responsibility for the appalling situation to which she refers and the appalling suffering that is taking place in Aleppo. We are very clear that the only thing that will change this and offer any hope of improvement is a recognition by the regime that humanitarian help must be allowed into Syria and Aleppo. We are also very clear that the future depends on regime change.