Lord Benyon: I absolutely agree with my noble friend. We are working with others to stem the flow of arms and support for these organisations, which is flowing through countries that we deal with regularly. We have a situation where civilians are trapped in the conflict zones, unable to access basic services. There is a lack of supplies and the food security crisis that is increasing day by day has all...
Lord Benyon: 17.7 million people in Sudan (37 percent of the population) are now thought to be experiencing acute food insecurity. This is likely to worsen in the coming months. As much as 70 percent of the population could be experiencing acute food insecurity by June. Some experts are warning of the risk of famine. We are providing £38 million in humanitarian aid to support people in Sudan this...
Lord Benyon: It is likely that some criminal networks engage in illicit trade, including trading of weapons, with terrorist groups in Nigeria, including in its northern states. This is distinct from intercommunal violence, which occurs particularly in Nigeria's Middle Belt and is driven by lack of economic opportunities, disruption to traditional ways of life created by environmental degradation and...
Lord Benyon: Displacement in Nigeria has a significant impact on children, who are often no longer able to attend school and therefore lack education provision for an extended period of time. This can also increase vulnerability to trafficking and other safeguarding issues. While the UK funds development initiatives in some Middle Belt states, our humanitarian assistance is aligned with the UN...
Lord Benyon: The proliferation of weapons is exacerbating security challenges across Nigeria, although exact sources of weapons used in the recent violence in Plateau state remain uncertain. We are supporting Nigeria to address the proliferation of weapons by providing x-ray image interpretation training to the Nigerian Drugs Law Enforcement Agency to assist them with detecting weapons and weapon parts...
Lord Benyon: The UK Government condemns the abduction and captivity of all persons for ransom. We are aware of a rise in kidnappings in central Nigeria. It is difficult to provide a definitive figure because of differing recording practices across agencies and because not all kidnaps are reported to the Nigerian authorities. At the latest UK-Nigeria Security and Defence Partnership (SDP) dialogue in...
Lord Benyon: The humanitarian situation in Sudan continues to deteriorate, with almost 18 million people now thought to be in acute food insecurity and 700,000 children already acutely malnourished. The UK is providing more than £38 million in humanitarian funding in 2023-24. The lack of humanitarian access to Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps continues to make it extremely difficult for...
Lord Benyon: Over the last five years (2018/19 - 2022/23) the UK spent £1,397 million of Official Development Assistance (ODA) on programmes that protected and restored nature, including £865 million specifically targeting forests. Between 2021/22 and 2025/26 the UK has pledged to spend at least £3 billion of our International Climate Finance (ICF) on restoring and protecting nature, including £1.5...
Lord Benyon: Work is in hand on the legislation and other measures needed to translate the detailed and complex provisions of the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (the BBNJ Agreement) into UK law before we can ratify the Agreement. Legislation will be taken...
Lord Benyon: The UK condemns the continuing violence and suffering being wrought by the warring parties on the people of Sudan, including in Darfur. We welcome the UN Panel of Experts' report and look forward to its final publication. The UK remains committed to ensuring that those responsible for atrocities in Sudan are held to account. As well as the work of the UN Panel of Experts, we continue to...
Lord Benyon: Sudan currently represents the largest displacement crisis in the world, including almost 9 million people internally displaced. We don't hold data for more recent influxes or any data for the Nuba Mountain region, but as of 23 January, 127,119 people had fled to Blue Nile and 125,373 to South Kordofan since 15 April 2023. While we don't hold specific data on crop failures and locust...
Lord Benyon: A press release relating to the Ombudsman's report was issued on 30 January. It did not state what evidence the Ombudsman team were basing their observations on or what methodology they had used to determine cause of death. We use all available data sources to assess the severity of food insecurity across northern Ethiopia. In his recent visit to Ethiopia in February 2024, Minister Andrew...
Lord Benyon: In 2023, the Forced Marriage Unit delivered training to a total of 3657 professionals through their bespoke training and workshops. We currently do not have the figure for how many people took the free online course in 2023 - these will be released in due course. In 2022, 5,029 people from a wide range of professions took the Government's "Awareness of Forced Marriage" free online course.
Lord Benyon: The UK has a strong portfolio of Comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) programming globally, which includes abortion services. We report our spend, according to the OECD Development and Assistance Committee (DAC) sector codes, in our annual Statistics on International Development publications [https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-on-int...
Lord Benyon: We held a public consultation on key proposals for the English deer management strategy in 2022. Consultation responses have been collated, analysed and fed into the development of the deer management strategy. We are also working to refresh the Grey Squirrel Action Plan. It is our intention to publish them as soon as we are in a position to do so.
Lord Benyon: We lobby for the protection of human rights directly with the Government of Côte d'Ivoire and work closely with local civil society and human rights defenders, particularly on good governance issues, including media and civil society freedom, encouraging political reconciliation and stability, as well as the rights of women and girls. Côte d'Ivoire held municipal elections in September 2023...
Lord Benyon: South Sudan is an FCDO human rights priority country. Media freedom and civic space remains limited, with journalists and human rights activists threatened, harassed, illegally arrested, and arbitrarily detained. Sub-national conflict continues to result in human rights abuses against civilians. At the UN Human Rights Council on 9 October 2023, the UK called on the South Sudanese Government...
Lord Benyon: The UK is one of the largest contributors to the fight against malaria in Kenya. We have contributed £5.5 billion since 2002 to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is procuring additional malaria commodities for Kenya, including distributing over ten million bed nets for malaria prevention. We support the recently announced rollout of malaria vaccines - which...
Lord Benyon: The UK has been an overseas development assistance (ODA) donor to Ethiopia over the last four years. Our overall ODA allocations have been: £300 million in 2019-20, £254 million in 2020-21, £134 million in 2021-22 and £90 million in 2022-23. Since 2019, the UK has allocated over £400 million to tackle humanitarian crises in Ethiopia. UK funding has provided 950,000 Ethiopians with...
Lord Benyon: Recovering nature is a priority for this Government, which is why we have set legally binding targets to halt and then reverse the decline in species abundance, reduce the risk of species extinction and restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats. Action under the Environmental Improvement Plan to deliver our biodiversity targets will address key pressures impacting...