South Sudan
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Andrew Rosindell (Romford, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what support his Department is providing to the South Sudanese Government.
Henry Bellingham (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Africa and the United Nations), Foreign and Commonwealth Office; North West Norfolk, Conservative)
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials and I are in regular dialogue with the Government of South Sudan over the economic, security and humanitarian challenges they face, and I visited South Sudan myself in May, meeting the Vice President and a number of other Ministers.
We support our objectives in South Sudan through funding from the FCO's bilateral programme budget (£50,000 in 2012-13) and the tri-departmental Africa Conflict Prevention Pool. In 2012-13, up to £9 million from the pool is available for support to conflict prevention and stability in South Sudan and Sudan. The FCO also provides funding for the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) through our contribution to the UN peacekeeping budget. We estimate the UK share of the cost of UNMISS in 2012-13 to be around £35 million.
This is in addition to the Department for International Development's assistance programme of approximately £90 million per year.