Lord Alton of Liverpool – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Alton of Liverpool on 2016-10-17.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what role armed militias play in enforcing Sudan’s commitments under the Khartoum Process; whether they are being used to enforce border controls and to capture migrants; and what action the regime took, under its commitments in the Doha Document for Peace, 2012, to disarm militias.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
We are concerned by the reported use of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to tackle migration in Sudan and have raised these concerns with the government of Sudan, most recently during the visit of the UK Special Representative to Sudan and South Sudan in September. We have also made clear that our cooperation on migration will necessarily be guided by our human rights principles. The EU has also raised the role of the RSF with the government of Sudan and has made absolutely clear that no funding aligned with the Khartoum Process will be provided to them.
The government of Sudan has undertaken some of its disarmament commitments under the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD), but together with our international partners we continue to urge them to do more. The UK is a member of the DDPD’s Implementation Follow-Up Commission (IFC), which we use to press for progress on disarmament and other areas of the DDPD’s implementation. The most recent meeting of the IFC was in May 2016.
