§ 5. Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest)What aid has been given to Sierra Leone during 1998. [42501]
§ The Secretary of State for International Development (Clare Short)Since the return of President Kabbah's democratically elected Government, we have provided £1 million to re-establish core functions and services to enable the Government to be up and running; £1 million for non-governmental organisations delivering humanitarian and development assistance and £1 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross to enable it to continue its humanitarian aid and protection work. The European Union is providing 2 million ecu for seeds and tools, and 200,000 ecu to help refugees in Guinea to return home. We are looking at what more we can do to strengthen governance and bring immediate relief to the people. We hope in future to be able to assist in demobilising and reintegrating ex-combatants.
§ Mrs. LaingI thank the Secretary of State for that full and helpful answer. All hon. Members welcome the giving of humanitarian aid where it is greatly needed. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that none of her officials knew of or supported the activities of Sandline International in breaking the Government's embargo on Sierra Leone?
§ Clare ShortI can give the hon. Lady that absolute assurance. Beyond that, as she knows, an inquiry is taking place into the matter. The proper, democratically elected Government have been restored. The coup in Sierra Leone was vicious and brutal; a set of people went around chopping off the arms and legs of children. It is good for humanity that that is over. The paradox of the return is that it was led by the Nigerians, which means that an undemocratic Government helped to restore a democratic one. That is the biggest irony. The details of the Sandline operations will be resolved by the current inquiry, but my Department has no engagement whatever.
§ Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield)Now that there is a legitimate regime in Sierra Leone, does my right hon. Friend agree that, rather than waiting for the millennium and the Jubilee 2000 appeal to apply to every poor country, a group of nations, perhaps under EU leadership, could use debt relief in some poor test countries to determine the effectiveness of offering the remission of debts? It would be on the basis that those countries passed the money to the poor and not into some rich, elite pockets.
§ Clare ShortThat is exactly what we are doing. Forty-one countries are on the list of highly indebted 355 countries, with unsustainable debt affecting their capacity to deliver services to their people. A formula has been agreed by the International Monetary Fund and the World bank. I refer to debt to multinationals, not commercial debt; that is a confusion in some of the debate.
About 20 of those countries will qualify, if we can do better on post-conflict countries, which include Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Liberia, but debt relief is only part of the answer. The problem is poverty. Some countries have poverty without debt: some countries with debt are not interested in the poor. Giving debt relief within the context of supporting Governments who want to eradicate poverty and to provide for human development is what we are doing and will continue to do.
§ Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park)Does the Secretary of State agree that, in Sierra Leone last year, aid was reduced as part of the political pressure to oust the junta, yet, as in the case of Sudan, arms continued to flow into the country? Does she agree that, although humanitarian aid must never be reduced to the poorest people in the world, because poverty leads to conflict, which leads to poverty, we must also look at the supply of arms to those countries? It is only by the prevention of conflict that we shall ultimately solve the problem of the poor.
§ Clare ShortI agree with the hon. Lady's second point, but we did not reduce humanitarian aid to Sierra Leone to put pressure on the coup leaders. I personally met my officials and supervised everything we did on that. That allegation has been made by one NGO, and it just is not so; some of my officials have written to it on the matter. There was real trouble getting resources in without feeding the fighters. That is always a serious problem, but, through NGOs and the Red Cross, we put in as much relief as we could get through to people. We also funded a radio station so that people could gain access to the truth. We funded many refugees and prepared the Government to return. We did not cut resources to hurt people.
On the wider question of the feeding of conflict by access to arms, the hon. Lady is right. Oxfam and others have launched an important campaign on small arms. Africa is littered with them. They feed fighting in very poor countries, where having a weapon makes people strong and means that they can get resources that others cannot. Sadly, much of the ammunition is manufactured in Africa, so it is not a question just of imports, but we must do better. Conflict is breaking out in the poorest countries and impoverishing them further.