Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, what steps his department is taking to help reopen the Adre crossing in Sudan.

We condemn in the strongest terms the decision of the Sudanese Armed Forces to close the crossing point at Adré to humanitarian supplies, which is putting at risk the lives of even more people in Darfur. The UK is doing all we can to press for this further serious restriction on humanitarian access to be urgently lifted. On 27 February, we called for the UN Security Council to convene for a closed consultation in response to this. On 20 March, the Security Council heard a briefing on OCHA's White Note, at which the UK underlined OCHA's warning that obstruction of humanitarian access by the SAF and RSF is resulting in people in Sudan starving. Using starvation as a method of warfare is prohibited by international humanitarian law. In March, I visited the Chad/Sudan border and met with some of the 700,000 refugees who have fled conflict and hunger. I reaffirmed the UK's commitment to the people of Sudan and announced a near doubling of UK ODA to Sudan for this year, increasing to £89 million.