MPs Campaign for UN Intervention in Darfur, Sudan

3.20.55pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 31st Mar 2005

Local MP Annette Brooke today pledged her support for a new campaign launched by an alliance of MPs, human rights groups and survivors to stop the violence and conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The Protect Darfur campaign was launched today in the House of Commons by Clare Short MP, with support from over 100 MPs and Peers, who are calling for the UN to authorise peace-enforcement operations to be led by African Union troops.

This new campaign comes just a day after the publication of a report by the House of Commons International Development Select Committee which states that the death toll in Darfur is around 300,000 - significantly higher than the estimates made by either the UN or the World Heath Organisation.

The report calls for the international community to fulfil its responsibility to protect the people of Darfur and states: "Attacked by the government which is meant to protect them, the people of Darfur, who we have collectively and demonstrably failed, deserve no less. We demand that there is action now."

Local MP Annette Brooke, who is already a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Sudan, has signed up to a new All Party Group on Genocide Protection. Proposed by Clare Short MP, the group will focus specifically on the current events in Darfur, in an attempt to highlight and condemn to the international community the atrocities occurring there, before the violence escalates into another Rwanda, where over 800,000 civilians were brutally murdered in 1994 and where the international community failed to intervene.

Annette said: "More than 2 million people have been uprooted by the fighting in Darfur and the situation has been precarious in the region for over 2 years. Too many people have suffered for so long and the international community has been too slow to react. This campaign and the Select Committee report - which has made nearly 80 recommendations to the government - must be acted upon quickly."

Mrs. Brooke, who has received many letters from concerned constituents about Darfur, has written to Jack Straw urging him to act decisively and to take a leading role on the future of Sudan.