Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment she has made of the humanitarian aid needs of people in Aleppo.
Answered by Lord Wharton of Yarm
The UN estimates that over 36,000 Syrians across Aleppo have been displaced in recent weeks. In besieged eastern Aleppo, where up to 275,000 people live, intensified attacks by the Assad regime and its allies has led to severe food and water shortages, near exhaustion of medical supplies and high numbers of people requiring urgent medical evacuation. In western Aleppo, the UN reports that indiscriminate attacks have also killed and injured civilians.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the effect of conflict in South Sudan on the availability of medicines in that country.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The recurrent shortage of medical supplies in South Sudan is a result of the failure of the South Sudanese Government to take responsibility for the procurement of medicines for their people, against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict.
The UK, along with donor partners, has agreed a staggered strategy (to December 2016) to prevent a major drugs shortage crisis across the country. In addition, the DFID-led Health Pooled Fund will help in the procurement and supply of essential drugs between 2017 and 2018. This programme will also include the establishment of a robust, South Sudan government-led, system for the future procurement, management and distribution of medicines. The UK continues to advocate for the South Sudanese government to allocate sufficient funds to essential medicines for their people, and demands both the government and opposition to work together to urgently implement the August peace agreement.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment she has made of barriers to humanitarian agencies reaching people in need in Yemen.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
Conflict is making humanitarian access within Yemen extremely difficult. Humanitarian agencies report that they are constrained in reaching areas of greatest humanitarian need and delivering assistance for a number of reasons including bureaucratic requirements imposed by the authorities, access challenges for international staff, insecurity in a number of districts, and a proliferation of checkpoints across the country.
We continue to urge all parties to the conflict to take all reasonable steps to facilitate rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access. We work with trusted and impartial partners such as UN agencies and NGOs who have good access and a strong track record of delivering and monitoring assistance in difficult and dangerous places.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment she has made of the living conditions of the Yazidi community in refugee camps in Iraq.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
To date, the UK has committed £79.5 million to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. UK aid is reaching hundreds of thousands of people across Iraq, including the most vulnerable groups, such as Yezidis. All UK-funded aid is distributed on the basis of needs and in line with humanitarian principles which ensure that no-one is discriminated against on the grounds of race, religion or ethnicity . According to the International Organisation for Migration, the vast majority of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Iraq live in host communities, with around 10% of all Iraqi IDPs living in camps.
On a field visit to Dohuk in January 2016, DFID officials met with a number of displaced Iraqis, including Yezidis, and discussed their shelter needs and living conditions. This included members of the Yezidi community who were living in poor conditions in informal settlements. The DFID team were told that the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) had undertaken to relocate these individuals to a camp with appropriate services and conditions. However, this offer had been declined by Yezidi heads of households because of a perception that the camps were too far from employment opportunities although it appeared that other members of the community held differing views about the suitability of the camps.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assistance the UK is providing for reconstruction of Sinjar in Iraq.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
Through the cross-Departmental Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), the UK has allocated £10 million in Iraq for 2015/16 to fund security and stabilisation work.
£2.5 million of this support has been pledged to the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Funding Facility for Immediate Stabilisation (FFIS). The FFIS is the principle mechanism for international support to stabilisation in Iraq and works to priorities set by the Iraqi authorities.
Assessments in Sinjar by the UNDP and other partners are proceeding. It is expected that FFIS-supported stabilisation activities will start in the near future.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to her Department's summary of its work in Indonesia 2011-15, published in June 2013, how many hectares of natural forest have been saved since the programme to protect forests in that country started.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
Our programme with Indonesia helps it to achieve low carbon growth and reduce poverty by managing its forests, land and natural resources in a sustainable way, and assists the country to meet its emissions targets. As part of this the UK supported the development of a Provincial Spatial Plan in Papua which was agreed in 2013. The spatial plan commits to preserving 90% of forest cover by 2100. The UK is providing support to the Papua Provincial Government to ensure effective implementation and monitoring of the Spatial Plan. If this target of 90% is realised, the spatial plan will preserve around 28 million hectares of natural forest. As with all projects, performance against indicators is published on an annual basis. Multilateral forest programmes, which the UK supports through the World Bank, and a centrally-managed programme, which assists the Indonesian government to tackleillegal logging, also contribute towards efforts to halt deforestation in Indonesia.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 9 November 2015 to Question 14770, when she plans to publish the contribution the UK will make to the World Food Programme for 2016.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The UK is currently the second largest donor to the WFP, after the United States. For 2015, the UK has so far provided a total of £270.6million in funding to WFP. UK contributions are made up of unearmarked core funding (£40m in total for the financial year 2015/16) and bilateral funding allocated by DFID country offices (which represents the biggest proportion of UK funding).
DFID will be in a position to announce the UK core contribution to WFP for the financial year 2016 / 2017 once the Multilateral Aid Review 2015 (MAR 2015) is published in March 2016. UK core contribution will be informed by the results of the MAR assessment of WFP and the review of WFP performance and effectiveness in using the core funding provided by UK.
Bilateral funding is decided by DFID at country level and is based on needs.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the financial contribution made by (a) the UK and (b) other nations to the UN World Food Programme to meet demand on that programme (i) in 2015 and (ii) from January 2016.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
Total World Food Programme (WFP) operational requirements for 2015 are £5.23 billion. The UK is currently the second largest donor to the WFP, after the United States.As of 15 October 2015 WFP had received £2.47 billion in contributions, of which the UK provided £252.5 million.
A full list of donor contributions can be found at http://www.wfp.org/funding/year/2015.Very few contributions for 2016 will have been made yet, and figures for 2016 are therefore not yet available.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the effect on Syrian refugees of fluctuations in the value of food vouchers provided by the World Food Programme.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The UK is at the forefront of the response to the crisis in Syria and the region and has pledged over £1.1 billion to date, our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis. By the end of June 2015, our support in Syria and the region had delivered almost 20 million food rations, over 2.5 million medical consultations and relief items for 4.6 million people.
Recent UN food security assessments have shown that fluctuations in assistance by the World Food Programme (WFP), as well as other agencies, has had an impact on refugee’s ability to provide for their basic needs. The UK is closely monitoring the situation across the region, alongside other key donors, to understand how this reduction in support will further impact the lives of Syrian refugees.
UN appeals for Syria and the region remain severely underfunded. We continue to lobby other partners to step up to the plate and match our commitment.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what her objectives are for the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The World Humanitarian Summit will provide a major opportunity to set out an ambitious vision for humanitarian and development action to guide our work until 2030.
The Secretary of State for International Development has four priorities for the Summit: