Gaza and Sudan

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend has been raising her deep concerns and championing these issues for some time, including in her work to deliver the London Sudan conference, which took place last year. She asks a series of questions about the ICC forensic teams and the ICRC, and I agree with her.

[Sir Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement, but she will know that, in plain sight of the international community, a slaughter of immense proportions is taking place in El Fasher. There have been clear and present warnings and evidence that this is ethnic cleansing, far worse than anything that took place in Srebrenica, and as the Foreign Secretary made clear in her statement, it is spreading outwards. This is a specific UK responsibility at the United Nations. Does she agree that it is essential that she and the Prime Minister hit the phones, speak to those at the African Union and in senior UN countries, and use our position to lobby President Trump to act? On solemn occasions each year, we piously intone—including in this place—“never again”. Does she agree that it is happening again, in plain sight before our eyes, and there is no effective plan to end it?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Member has been a champion of the people of Sudan in the face of the most intense suffering for a long time. I agree that there is simply not yet the kind of urgent plan for Sudan that we desperately need. Bluntly, for far too long, the international community has failed and turned its back. The UK put forward the resolution, which has now been fully agreed at the Human Rights Council; when we sought to put a resolution on similar issues to the Security Council a year ago, it was vetoed by Russia. We have sought to increase aid, but that is simply not sufficient if aid cannot get in because of the continuing conflict. When it comes to Sudan, we need the same sustained, intense effort across the international community that rightly went into securing peace in Gaza. It can at least start with a humanitarian truce. That is urgently needed. I can assure the right hon. Member that this is a topic in every phone call that I am having, not just with those in the Quad, but more widely.