Dame Caroline Spelman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dame Caroline Spelman on 2016-10-17.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to Scorched Earth, Poisoned Air, published by Amnesty International on 29 September 2016, if he will comment on the alleged destruction of 170 villages in the Jebel Marra region of Darfur by the Sudanese armed forces since January 2016.
Mr Tobias Ellwood
We are very concerned by the alleged destruction of villages as well as the other allegations of human rights and International Humanitarian Law violations in Jebel Marra. We are deeply troubled about the humanitarian situation in Darfur, which was made more acute by a renewed outbreak of hostilities in January and which has displaced at least 80,000 civilians; adding to the 2.6 million people long term displaced in Darfur. We continue to believe that urgent humanitarian access and a lasting cessation of hostilities leading to a permanent ceasefire are crucial to ending the conflict in Darfur and have made this point directly to the Government of Sudan, most recently during high–level discussions on 10-11 October.
