Sudan

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

We have put in gender-based violence advisers on the border to help with the psychosocial effects of what people have had to endure. We are now the biggest funder internationally, I think, of UNFPA, because this is such a priority for us, but the noble Baroness is right to draw our attention to the fact that this method of violence, this subjugation, terror and attempts to humiliate and control women in this conflict as a weapon of war is abhorrent and is among the worst that we have ever seen. I hesitate to compare different humanitarian crises, but this is on the largest scale that we have seen this century.

[Lord Stirrup]

My Lords, we have spoken before in this Chamber about the link between the war in Sudan and instability more widely in the Horn of Africa. Does the Minister agree that we need to do much more to persuade and convince the people of this country that this is not a war in some distant country they can forget about, but that it is closely linked in the long term to our own economic growth and inflation rates?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I think it would be great to have much more focus globally on the conflict in Sudan and the suffering of the people of Sudan. That includes the public consciousness in this country, because, in the end, that does help force political focus internationally as well. But there is no doubt that the conflict in Sudan is in many ways an expression of disagreements that have emerged elsewhere. The noble and gallant Lord talks about the horn, but obviously in Somalia, Yemen, even across to Iran, we see this instability—it is all connected. It is very poorly appreciated how closely connected these conflicts are. The more we can do to make that case, the better.