Lord Alton of Liverpool
Main Page: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Alton of Liverpool's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, human rights defenders face persecution and wrongful detention around the world and Sudan is a place where we have acted through our embassy work to try to ensure that human rights defenders are not subject to this wrongful action. With regard to specific citizens, if the road map itself is successful then the Government of Sudan will of course have to show that they have a better human rights record than they have had heretofore.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister recall that as long ago as 17 May 2012, my noble friend Lady Cox and I cited the view of Dr Mukesh Kapila, the former high representative of this country in Sudan, that the second genocide of the 21st century was unfolding in South Kordofan, Darfur being the first? In February of this year we raised the Human Rights Watch report detailing how civilians, including children, were,
“burned alive or blown to pieces after bombs or shells landed on their homes”.
One month ago, on 27 May, two days after the bombing of St Vincent’s school on 25 May, the noble Baroness told me that they had told Khartoum that they must,
“distinguish between combatants and non-combatants and uphold International Humanitarian Law”.
What response have the Government had? When will President Omar al-Bashir, wanted for genocide, be brought to justice?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, first, the noble Lord will understand that I was extremely disappointed—using House of Lords language—that President Bashir was able to travel to Djibouti on 8 May and Uganda on 12 May without being arrested by those countries, which are signatories to the ICC. I hope they will reconsider if he ever travels to those countries again. We welcome the Government of Sudan’s more recent announcement on 17 June of a unilateral cessation of hostilities in the two areas. As we say, we would like to see it extended to Darfur, and we are working to make that a reality.