Mr. Michael Gaffey:

I acknowledge the role that Dóchas and the Irish NGOs have played in highlighting in Ireland the crisis in Sudan and in lobbying for increased attention and increased humanitarian assistance for it.

There are major challenges, as the Cathaoirleach set out, in the provision of that humanitarian assistance. Initially, when the war started all the international staff left and many then gathered again in Port Sudan. However, there have been issues of access down to Khartoum, although those have been gradually dealt with. There are many Sudanese who are ready to drive trucks to deliver aid. However, access across the whole country is almost impossible. There are areas where it would be impossible to get to. Only recently there has been an improvement in opening up access from Chad but it is limited. That is a huge problem and it is accentuated by the fact that, as the Cathaoirleach said, there are gross abuses of international humanitarian law right across the country by all parties to the conflict. We are not confident at all that international humanitarian law is being observed in the conflict in Sudan by any of the parties. That increases the danger massively for the people of Sudan and for those working to provide assistance.

The issue of funding is a huge one. I am going to ask Ms McHugh, the humanitarian director, to brief the committee a little on how the multilateral system is attempting to be as flexible as possible on this. A major way that we provide funding is through flexible and quick-responding UN mechanisms such as the central emergency relief fund and the Sudanese humanitarian fund. We have been working hard, not just on this crisis but in general to link up the approach that we take and that the international community should take, linking up immediate response, resilience measures, longer-term development and a focus on peace.

This famous humanitarian-development-peace nexus is often a term that is bandied around but it also has to be a way of working where we are not just operating in silos such as "I am humanitarian", "I am development" and somebody else is looking at peace. For the people of Sudan, the reality of life combines a humanitarian crisis, under-development and the need for international actors to be working on peace. We cannot just work in one area. That requires greater flexibility in funding than maybe has been the case in the past. Apart from operating through the UN system and the multilaterals, which we will come back to, we have been funding the Irish NGOs in their response. There is increasing recognition by Irish civil society that they need to work in conjunction with Sudanese civil society and Sudanese communities. That is also something we are doing through the United Nations. Ms McHugh might brief the committee on that humanitarian response and its flexibility.