Asked by: Lord Mann (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much overseas aid they provided to each country in Africa in 2024.
Answered by Lord Collins of Highbury - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
"Statistics on International Development" is the official source of information on UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) spend. Country-level data for 2024 will be published in Statistics on International Development (SID): Final UK ODA Spend 2024 in autumn 2025.
Asked by: Lord Mann (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many individual cases they have been involved in in the past three years concerning (1) the arrest of UK nationals or their immediate family in Eritrea, (2) deaths of UK nationals or their immediate family in Eritrea, and (3) the imprisonment of UK nationals or their immediate family in Eritrea.
Answered by Lord Collins of Highbury - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The British Embassy in Asmara provides consular support to British Nationals in Eritrea, alongside neighbouring countries providing remote support. As such, our case management system does not enable us to isolate all consular assistance cases from within Eritrea. However, we can isolate some cases managed in Eritrea, and the number of these is less than five. When a figure is five or less, we do not publish a breakdown which may risk identifying individuals involved. British Nationals planning to visit or already in Eritrea can visit the FCDO travel advice pages for Eritrea and sign up to email alerts.
Asked by: Lord Mann (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with the government of Eritrea about human rights in that country over the past three years.
Answered by Lord Collins of Highbury - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
We consistently raise human rights with the Eritrean Government through our Embassy in Asmara and during senior official visits including in June 2024 by the UK's Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa and The Red Sea. We also engage with the Government at the multilateral level, including at the Human Rights Council.
Asked by: Lord Mann (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what representations they have made to the UN Human Rights Council about the situation of Tamil communities in Sri Lanka.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The UK, alongside our partners in the Core Group, have led international efforts to promote human rights for all communities in Sri Lanka, including through resolution 51/1 at the UN Human Rights Council. The resolution renewed the mandate of the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights to report on Sri Lanka and to protect and preserve evidence of past human rights abuses to use in future accountability processes. We have made our stance clear in statements to the Council, most recently on 7 March. The UK also made recommendations including on the need to address issues around the expropriation of land in the North and East during Sri Lanka's Universal Periodic Review in February.