Sudan

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Sudan and South Sudan, I join the Minister and others in my utter condemnation of the violence, which will make the situation of the 16 million people in the country in need of humanitarian assistance even more precarious. There is bound to be more migration and more innocent deaths. May I encourage him to continue to work with all regional and international partners to try to stop the violence and get humanitarian aid flowing? The APPG recently took evidence from Luis Ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, who indicted Bashir 14 years ago for genocide. The man has never gone to court and the prosecutor pointed out that, for so long as he stays out of court, other people will think they can get away with war crimes—other people locally and Putin himself. So, please, never give up and never let the international community give up on taking this man to court.

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend has wrestled with these issues recently in government, and I am grateful for what she said. We will continue to work together as she suggests. We will never give up. The point I made to the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), is true: we will never accept a culture of impunity. The ICC successfully indicted General Bashir. No one would have believed that he would go anywhere near the court, but today he is under house arrest. All those Bosnian leaders believed that they could flee and secure impunity, but in the end they were all subject to international justice. I give my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) an absolute undertaking that we will do everything we can, particularly in our role in the international community, to ensure that there is no impunity for the events taking place in Khartoum and across Sudan.