Mr. Maurice McQuillan:

When I landed on 1 June last at Yida refugee camp on the airstrip in Unity State in the north of South Sudan I was lucky to meet Sr. Lucy Rocio, a Mexican-born Comboni missionary sister in her 30s who was heading back up through Yida to Gidel hospital in South Kordofan. When I asked her about the situation in Gidel hospital she gave me a plethora of statistics. However, her eyes lit up when she talked about her special patient for the past two months, a 12 year old boy called Kalo who was the victim of an Antonov bomb and who, rather than having the usual type of shrapnel injuries that would go with that, was severely burned by the radiant heat when the bomb landed near him. Sr. Rocio described to me the stench she and the staff endured as they tried to change his bandages and cut away the dead tissue and rebandage him. She said he was one of the most stoic children she had ever nursed and that while he rarely cries, changing the bandages is sometimes too much for him and he and the staff cry. Towards the end of June, when I was back in Ireland I received a short message informing me that Kalo had died. He went into shock and although they tried to keep him alive and urged him not to give up he could not hang on. Members will see a picture of Sr. Rocio and Kalo on the front of the short handout which I have provided. That is the reality of life and death for Sr. Rocio and the people of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan.

Indiscriminate aerial bombing means that children get killed.

I will give a quick update on the current position and refer to the two maps in the presentation. On 9 July 2011, south Sudanese independence was declared, with border demarcation disputes continuing after that, including disputes over oil revenues. Not everybody is aware that a state of active violent conflict continues within the borders of north Sudan, particularly the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan. The conflict is primarily between the Sudanese Government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North. Since our last informal meeting with some members of this committee, the public profile of the position in South Kordofan has changed but the reality for most families living there has not. On the same day as our last meeting, Baroness Valerie Amos, head of the UN office for humanitarian co-ordination and assistance, issued a statement expressing the UN's deep concern about the deteriorating position in Sudan, particularly in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, where hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in the conflict zone, with little access to food, water, shelter and medical services.

I considered a number of statistics in this regard and according to the UN population census of 2010, the population of South Kordofan is 2.5 million people. A conflict such as this causes people to flee, becoming refugees outside the country or internally displaced people within. The UN estimates that the population affected by the conflict stands at 520,000 people, with the total number of refugees in south Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia from South Kordofan estimated at 252,000. The number of internally displaced people within the Nuba Mountains is roughly estimated at 70,000.

This leaves 198,000 of the affected population within the Nuba Mountains unaccounted for. These are the people who have been badly affected by the ongoing conflict, and they are feeling the effects of the aerial bombardment, current flooding, high malnutrition rates and the associated food insecurity. These men, women and children are affected by the 27 separate incidents logged of serious conflict in the past two months, which range from shelling to aerial bombardment and open conflict between the warring parties. As a result of hunger, many of these people had to eat the seeds they should have been planting in June and July this year. They are the people who were afraid to go into the fields and plant whatever seeds they had not eaten because they feared the Antonov planes would bomb or fighter jets would strafe the open fields. The harvest has been severely affected not by drought or crop disease, as in other areas of Africa, but rather people's fear of going into the open because of a sustained bombing campaign. The Famine Early Warning System, FEWS-NET, estimates that over 200,000 people now face a crisis at emergency levels with regard to food insecurity. That position will deteriorate as long as the conflict persists and current restrictions on humanitarian access continue. Trócaire is working with these people in the Nuba Mountains and we want the Government to help them.

There are photographs detailing what Trócaire is doing in the presentation. Since June 2011, Trócaire has been working with the diocese of El Obeid to keep Gidel hospital in the Nuba Mountains open and deal with food insecurity in and around the area. The first phase ran from June to January last year, with a budget of €1 million. Trócaire supplied programme management and practical logistical support to the diocesan staff, as well as co-ordinating the fund-raising effort. The first phase focused on medical supplies for the hospital, food and cooking utensils for the sick and wounded in the hospital. There were also limited food supplies for general distribution in the Gidel area.

The second phase, running up to this December, involves scaling up the budget to €2 million. Relief flights with medical supplies have continued and we are also providing 188 metric tonnes of food, hygiene and cooking items to approximately 38,000 people. This is a drop in the ocean when one considers the 500,000 people affected by the conflict and the large-scale operation south of the border. For the 38,000 men, women and children, it is a very important drop in the ocean. We are calling for greater access for larger humanitarian organisations in South Kordofan.

This is probably one of the most complex, difficult and risky operations that Trócaire has been involved with since Biafra. Many areas in South Kordofan are in open, violent conflict, and the big issue within South Kordofan is access. All the big humanitarian agencies have either been thrown out or denied access, and the added value we can bring comes from church structures and facilities, which remain in place, as well as committed and dedicated professional medical staff in Gidel hospital. It is nonetheless difficult. This summer I travelled to the UN headquarters in New York for confidential talks at a high level. I am well aware that what we are doing is a risky business but I am convinced we are doing the right thing. The bottom line from a humanitarian perspective is that saving lives and alleviating suffering in and around Gidel hospital must take precedence.

What can the joint committee, which has been supportive of the efforts to date, do about South Kordofan? The committee can request the appropriate Minister to raise the Sudan issue as an agenda item at the EU Council foreign affairs meeting on 15 October. That would be a continuation of the call by the EU Council on 23 July. The committee can also request that the Minister maintain pressure, as necessary, at both general affairs and foreign affairs meetings throughout the Irish Presidency of the EU from January 2013.

The committee can request the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, in his role as chairman of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, to advocate to fellow members with regard to the opening of South Kordofan to humanitarian access for both the UN agencies in the north as well as agencies such as Trócaire and other international non-governmental organisation which can support and assist families from the north and south. The committee can also continue to advocate with the Sudanese Government for the full implementation of the recent memorandum of understanding for humanitarian access to South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Committee members can engage directly with parliamentarians and colleagues in the European Parliament through the various pan-European parties so that the Sudanese issue and the current humanitarian crisis in South Kordofan is placed on the agenda of the equivalent of foreign affairs parliamentary committees across Europe. They can also engage directly as parliamentarians and humanitarians with counterparts in the US and other G8 and G20 countries, including Brazil, Russia, India and China, asking for practical support in exerting whatever influence is possible on the two parties to the conflict to complete the political negotiations under the UN Security Council resolution. The fighting must be stopped before humanitarian access becomes possible, and that leaves the last step of political negotiations, which can be protracted. Our experience in Northern Ireland indicates that the first step is to stop the fighting.

We are talking about 500,000 people affected by a crisis, with approximately 200,000 unaccounted for in South Kordofan. In the 21st century we cannot stand by and accept the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. We should not stand by and see hunger being used as a weapon of war. We must not tolerate more horrific deaths of children like Kalo. I do not apologise for relating how his injuries were described by Sister Rocio, as he had third degree burns to 40% of his body. Instead of the beautiful black skin that is characteristic of his people, his skin was a melted mass of white, red, black and green colours. It was green because the tissue was so gangrenous. Sister Rocio attempted to nurse him back to health but he died on 20 June this year at 10 a.m., with his crime being to stand 5,000 feet below an Antonov bomber when it indiscriminately released its load. We are asking the committee to engage on the South Kordofan issue in order to prevent more deaths of children like Kalo.