Sudan

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in my allotted three minutes, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds for his long-standing commitment to the people of Sudan. I commend to the Minister, and ask for her response to, the first-hand report by Marcus and Tomas Ray, presented to the APPG on Sudan and dedicated to the memory of my late friend the Earl of Sandwich. Rivers of Blood – Escaping Darfur lays bare a crisis of staggering human suffering and a failure of international responsibility; of impunity; of the absence of protection mechanisms; and of global neglect. In the foreword to the report, I write:

“We cannot say we did not know. The evidence is here. The voices are here. The responsibility is ours”.


Following my own first-hand reports of earlier atrocities and genocide, there were reports in early 2023 of new outrages—and, later, of mass graves. That led to the all-party group asking me to chair a fresh inquiry, which led to our 2023 report, entitled Genocide: All Over Again in Darfur? It described the consequences of impunity and daring to think you can neglect the issue of justice. Development becomes impossible in a cauldron of repeated atrocities.

With the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, I recently sent a letter to the Foreign Secretary, copied to the Minister, along with a copy of this report, following reports that the FCDO atrocity prevention team may be disbanded. Is that so?

Last week, the Minister told me:

“The last Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability (JACS) assessment for Sudan was completed in 2019”.


These JACS reports are supposed to be the basis of assessing whether crimes against humanity and/or genocide are either under way or probable. Post 2019 and post 2023, why was no JACS report commissioned?

Since 2001, when I first went into Sudan’s war zone, I have repeatedly warned that a culture of impunity would entrench violence and atrocities, undermine attempts to create civil institutions and political progress, and destroy or impede humanitarian initiatives. If we do not tackle root causes, it simply adds to the flow of displaced people in this world—around 125 million of them now. How many of the arrivals referred to by the right reverend Prelate arrive on small boats that originate from Sudan?

Today’s RSF atrocities in Darfur are of a piece with the Janjaweed’s systematic rape of women and the burning and looting of villages, 90% of which were razed to the ground—all driven by an ideological hatred of difference. The International Criminal Court said it was a genocide, yet Omar al-Bashir and some of the warlords now involved in today’s horrific atrocities have still not been brought to justice. Impunity is a death sentence for the innocent and a licence to kill for the perpetrators.

Wicked as the RSF and its avaricious overseas funders undoubtedly are, we are naive at best in painting the army junta and their overseas backers as benign. The jihadists in the SAF officer corps remain emphatically opposed to democracy, accountability and the rule of law. As they fight for supremacy, it is the people of their great country who are condemned to grotesque suffering.