Before we begin, I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate who is not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, a member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any members partaking via MS Teams, prior to making a contribution to the meeting, to confirm they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if speakers' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative to comply with any such direction.

The committee is very keen to engage on the situation in Sudan, which unfolds daily before our eyes and is pretty catastrophic by any standards. I welcome the following witnesses to the meeting: Mr. Dominic Crowley, CEO of Concern; Ms Birke Herzbruch, head of the fragile and conflicted-affected states portfolio at Trócaire; and Ms Olive Moore, deputy director of Front Line Defenders. The format of the meeting will be to have opening statements from the witnesses, followed by a questions-and-answers exchange with committee members. I ask members to be concise in their questions to allow everybody the opportunity to participate.

We will take opening statements in the following order: Concern, Trócaire and Front Line Defenders. I invite Mr. Crowley to begin.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for their time today and for giving us the opportunity to discuss the deepening crisis in Sudan. Sudan was on the committee's agenda in mid-December and it, along with Afghanistan, is referenced in the programme for Government. It is important that the situation in Sudan receives sustained political engagement as it is in danger of becoming a neglected crisis. As we approach the conflict's third anniversary, civilians face a daily struggle against death, violence, hunger, displacement and fear.

Concern has worked in Sudan for 40 years, witnessing South Sudan's wars of independence, the Darfur crisis of the early 2000s, internal conflict, political unrest and chronic food instability. Today's humanitarian crisis is worse than anything we have seen previously and is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today. The scale of suffering is staggering but continues to grow. A total of 33 million people, or more than half the population, need humanitarian assistance.

By every metric, women and girls are disproportionately at risk and affected.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that the conflict in Sudan has displaced twice as many people in one year as were displaced in the country in the last two decades. More than 15 million people have been displaced, many multiple times. Each displacement strips people of the assets they were able to carry at the time of their previous displacement. There are now more than 4 million refugees in Chad and South Sudan. In Chad, Concern has supported 130,000 refugees with responses including malnutrition treatment and the provision of clean water and vaccinations. In South Sudan, we have supported nearly 50,000 refugees and returnees who have fled from Sudan in the hope that South Sudan is safer than the overcrowded and unsafe transit hubs in which they are stranded. According to the UN World Food Programme, WFP, 21 million people are food insecure, making Sudan the largest hunger crisis in the world. The most recent report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, IPC, confirmed that famine conditions exist in North Darfur and South Kordofan and warned that 20 additional areas are at heightened risk of famine.

With numbers as large as these, we risk falling into the trap outlined in the quotation often attributed to Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” Large-scale suffering should never become impersonal. Individual lives should never be seen as insignificant. The true horror of what is happening in Sudan can be summarised in two brief examples. In March, a UNICEF report identified 221 instances of child rape in nine states in Sudan in 2024. A third of these were of boys and 16 of the rapes were of children under five years of age, including four one-year-olds. Last October, the Rapid Support Forces, RSF, seized El Fasher after an 18-month siege, which saw, among other things: a drone strike on a crowded maternity hospital that killed 70 people and injured many more; the massacre of 1,500 people in a three-day attack on Zamzam camp, the largest refugee camp in the region; and the post-siege massacre of tens of thousands of civilians in El Fasher in the worst war crime of the conflict.

As ever, it is the civilian population that suffers most in all conflicts. In a recent piece in The New York Times that we shared with the committee, Nicholas Kristof cited Nathaniel Raymond’s estimation that the number of people killed in six weeks of fighting in late 2025 amounted to a pace of killing that would be unrivalled since the Rwanda genocide of 1994, and that the death toll in El Fasher in less than two months may be comparable to that in Gaza over two years, but what level of coverage has this received? This is the horror and brutality of Sudan’s war, one that is taking and ruining lives. Behind each statistic are families who no longer know where their next meal will come from, mothers who are walking, potentially for days, to reach a health clinic that may be closed because of aid cuts and children forced to flee their homes in search of safety when they should be in school.

The international response has fallen woefully short. Only 35% of the humanitarian appeal for Sudan in 2025 was funded and it was half the level of funding received in 2024. Global aid cuts are forcing humanitarian agencies to make devastating triaging decisions that deny growing numbers of people access to aid. For 2026, the UN appeal for Sudan is $2.9 billion to reach 20 million of the 33 million people needing humanitarian assistance. This means that 13 million people will not even be targeted, even in the unlikely event that the appeal is fully funded. Funding constraints are only one challenge in this hugely complex and volatile context. Humanitarian access is severely constrained by ongoing fighting, insecurity and bureaucratic obstacles. Provisional data for 2025 from the Aid Worker Security Database suggests that 44 aid workers were killed, 19 seriously injured and 27 kidnapped.

Despite these challenges, Concern staff and the staff of other organisations working in Sudan continue to adapt and assist people in need. National and international NGOs are at the heart of the humanitarian response, taking huge risks to save lives and support communities. Throughout the year, we reached nearly 500,000 people through the delivery of cash assistance, emergency healthcare, cholera prevention, nutrition support and the provision of clean water, sanitation, shelter and hygiene supplies. The continued support of Irish Aid and the generosity of the Irish public are critical in allowing us to deliver these responses. The sustained recognition by this committee and the Government of the suffering in Sudan is essential. We welcome the upcoming visit Irish Aid will make to Chad and the border area with Sudan. This will provide vital insights into the regional dimensions of this crisis.

It is also critical that Ireland continues to raise Sudan and the Sudan crisis in the UN and at Brussels level to press for a resolution to the conflict, unfettered access for humanitarian aid, the security of civilians and aid workers, and a fully funded response. The culture of impunity that characterises the conflict must be challenged. In the next two months, there are two opportunities to take meaningful action: the EU senior officials meeting on Sudan in March and the three-year anniversary of the conflict conference in April. Ireland’s EU Council Presidency is also a critical opportunity to demonstrate political leadership and mobilise increased EU engagement on one of the world’s most severe and neglected humanitarian crises. We cannot allow the people of Sudan to continue to suffer in silence.

I omitted to welcome remotely Mr. Faisal Elbagir, co-ordinator general of Journalists for Human Rights with Front Line Defenders.

I thank the Chairman, Deputies and Senators. I will not repeat our written statement, but I will highlight some of the stark realities we are currently seeing in Sudan.

This month, Sudan marked 1,000 days of war, with no meaningful change for the Sudanese population on the ground. Instead, the crisis has deepened and spread. Sudan today is a crisis of superlatives. It is a country that is holding all the wrong records. It is the world's largest humanitarian crisis that we have seen so far, it has the largest displacement crisis, the largest hunger crisis and one of the most severe protection crises globally. After 1,000 days of war, more than 33 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and nearly 12 million have been forced from their homes, many of them repeatedly. Famine has been confirmed in many places and is spreading more and more.

In September 2025, the UN independent international fact-finding mission described Sudan as "a war of atrocities". We see that violence against civilians is being used deliberately. Following his recent visit, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, described Sudan in two words: "hell" and "horror". For the second time in less than 30 years, it has been suggested genocide is taking place in Sudan, first in Darfur in 2004 and again in January 2025. If we include the atrocities that happened during the late eighties and early nineties in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, where Trócaire is operating these days, Sudan alone accounts for three genocides in a single generation.

While Darfur remains central to the international concern, the conflict has shifted into Kordofan, a region larger than Germany and strategically vital for trade, oil and gas supplies. What is unfolding there is a war of attrition. We see sustained violence, sieges, starvation, displacement and the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure. We have seen a similar pattern unfolding in El Fasher over the last month.

From Trócaire's work in South Kordofan, an area that was previously stable but has now become a battlefield, we see the human costs of this every day. The 17 health facilities that Trócaire is supporting with its partners operate far beyond capacity. Nutrition supplies are exhausted within weeks. We see over 250% morbidity rates spiking and a fivefold rise in cases of malnutrition in children under five. Prices for basic commodities are so high that a teacher's salary now only buys 4 kg of sugar, yet communities continue to share the little that they have with incoming families who walked for days without food and water. Civilians currently are trapped in what is called a dynamic stalemate between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, sustained by external political and military support from countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. What began as a refuge has rapidly turned South Kordofan into a front line.

We are seeing on the ground the growing use of drones and aerial attacks that are increasingly putting civilians, our Trócaire team and our partners at risk. The war is no longer contained within Sudan. It has become a regional proxy conflict with global implications, driven by all of the external actors we have just stated, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but foremost by the absence of sustained diplomatic pressure. At the same time, global aid cuts are stripping away the little buffer that there was. Life-saving programmes are being reduced, not because the needs are falling but because of political will.

Just as our colleague from Concern has stated, there is a number of areas in which Ireland can be active at UN and EU level. Foremost, they must use Ireland's Presidency of the EU to keep Sudan firmly on the agenda, including through the expanded EU sanctions framework, halting the flow of arms, targeting entities involved in arms production and procurement, delivery of military assets and training, and targeting broader financial systems and networks that fund the conflict. Ireland must use its human rights council campaign to press for greater accountability and targeted sanctions on Sudan. It must maintain that focus on accountability. Within that, I ask that the Government continues to support the work of the international, independent fact-finding mission to Sudan, which is the only body examining the atrocities across the whole of Sudan and not only in Darfur. It should also intensify humanitarian diplomacy at UN level and with the Quad, particularly influencing UAE and Saudi Arabia, as the main backers of the warring parties, to protect civilians, secure humanitarian access and address the external drivers of the war.

Ireland's voice matters. It is principled and it is heard. What is needed now is for that voice to be used relentlessly because, for civilians in Sudan, time has run out already.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to brief it today. I am speaking on behalf of Front Line Defenders, an Irish-based organisation that works to protect and support human rights defenders at risk. I am joined by a human rights defender from Sudan, Mr. Faisal Elbagir. He is joining us remotely. Faisal is a prominent Sudanese journalist and human rights defender. He is a founder and co-ordinator general of Journalists for Human Rights. After my comments he will address the committee directly from that perspective.

Some members of the committee are very familiar with our work but, for those who might not be, our mandate is very specific and focused. We work directly with individuals and groups who work peacefully to promote human rights but who face targeting and persecution because of this - people like Faisal and many of his colleagues. We provide practical protection supports for them so they can continue their human rights work.

Since the conflict began, Sudan has been one of the most dangerous contexts in which we support human rights defenders globally. Defenders are not simply caught up in the conflict; they are being deliberately targeted and silenced. This is happening both inside and outside Sudan. Defenders who are forced to leave are being targeted and silenced in other countries. Both the RSF and SAF, as well as the affiliated militias, are responsible for targeting these human rights defenders. If we think of who these defenders are, they are individuals like Faisal, who has worked in this area for decades now, doing human rights work for justice, accountability and peace in Sudan. There are also newer individuals, people who are caught up in the most horrendous situations and people who step up and try to represent their communities, work for their communities, document what is happening and hold those responsible accountable for what they are doing. They are individuals who are put into the most challenging circumstances. When they speak out and step up, they face huge risk, dangers for themselves and for their families because of what they do.

These defenders are working on documentation. They are working in humanitarian contexts, where they are doing humanitarian distribution and supports, trying to identify ways to support their communities. They are doing legal support. They are challenging sexual and gender-based violence and they are doing peacebuilding work. As a result of this, they face arbitrary detention, torture, home and office raids, confiscations of their phones and laptops, death threats, enforced disappearance and judicial harassment, including charges that carry the death penalty. The targeting of these human rights defenders is systematic and intended to silence them very deliberately.

I want to share a number of cases to give the committee a sense of the type of human rights defenders and the risks they are facing. Defenders involved in the emergency response rooms face grave risks. One such defender had his house raided three times by the RSF before he was forced to move. We supported him to move to another town last June. Immediately when he moved he was raided again by the RSF. He was told that if he did not cease his work, he and his family would be killed. Another woman human rights defender working with internally displaced persons as part of her role volunteering with the emergency response rooms was arrested by the Sudanese Armed Forces last year and only released three months later. Human rights lawyers have been subjected to judicial harassment. In October, in the Singa Criminal Court, Sudanese lawyer and human rights defender Abubakr Mansour Abdela was sentenced to death by hanging for human rights work. Human rights lawyer Montaser Abdullah faced the death penalty under Sudan's anti-terror laws. This is abusive use of counter-terror legislation against human rights defenders, something we see in Sudan and in many other countries globally. Eventually, after significant advocacy, their prison sentences were moved and they were convicted to life imprisonment under the cybercrimes Act.

We have also documented serious risks faced by defenders who flee the country. Sudanese writer and human rights defender Husham Ali survived an assassination attempt in Ethiopia. We also have other examples of attempted killings of human rights defenders. In another case, a woman human rights defender was deported from Chad back to Sudan, to west Darfur, placing her at immediate and significant risk because of the human rights work that she did. After a month of detention, we supported her to move to another region within Sudan to try to continue that work.

Women human rights defenders have been targeted in particularly large numbers by both sides in the conflict. They have been physically and sexually attacked, threatened with death, detained, and forced to flee. At the same time, these women defenders are carrying the burden of the human rights work that they do, but also sustaining their families and the social fabric of their communities.

The ability of human rights defenders to document violations has been severely constrained. Communications have been repeatedly disrupted, particularly in areas controlled by the RSF. Defenders report that connectivity is limited, monitored and inaccessible. Militia groups routinely stop individuals and inspect mobile phones. If you are known to be a human rights defender, as you move about, at every checkpoint that you come to, on every corner, your phone is taken from you and routinely checked to find evidence of who you are talking to and what you are sending or saying. Social media accounts are being monitored continuously. Any defender who tries to speak out about what is happening is routinely being monitored, checked and silenced.

By whom?

By the RSF, Sudan forces and other militia. It is from all sides. It depends on the location of the defenders and who is currently in control. Mr. Elbagir can give more examples of this. Essentially, this is a huge challenge for the human rights defenders. They are in the middle of all these armed actors and each of the armed actors is accusing them of working for the other side in order to silence them. Essentially, there is no path for them whenever they speak out.

We believe that the human rights violations against defenders generally - in Darfur, Kordofan and many other areas - are severely under-reported because of these huge limitations and the silencing of the human rights defenders trying to get information out.

These issues are not just for defenders who are in Sudan. It is also an issue for many defenders who moved to neighbouring countries such as Chad, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and who also are facing severe risk. The risks follow them. This is because of this trend we see around transnational repression. Again, defenders who are outside the country and are receiving information from the defenders who are inside are regularly told by people who come to their homes that they know who they are, who their families are and who are the people they have who are in Sudan. Defenders are told that if they continue to document and speak about these human rights violations, their families will be targeted and will be killed. We have some suggestions for how Ireland can support human rights defenders in protection. We might come to them in the questions and answers exchange because at this point I would like to hand over to Mr. Faisal Elbagir to have the opportunity to add his own experience from a human rights defender perspective.

Let me start by saying that the Sudan conflict is being fully and totally under-reported, if not forgotten or neglected. Whatever information we used to get as journalists or human right defenders, it is really becoming very difficult work. At this moment, I hail and appreciate the great struggle which is being done by our colleagues inside the country, that is, the human rights defenders and journalists who are working in a completely unfriendly situation. Human rights defenders and journalists have been targeted, silenced and killed. They are facing a lot of troubles, including unfair trials in the south area and in the RSF area. In both areas, human rights defenders and journalists are really suffering a lot. As my friend Olive mentioned, it is not easy to say you are a human rights defender or a journalist. The moment they know that you are a journalist or a human rights defender, it means you will be killed and your family also will be targeted. This is the situation. We are facing really huge unfair trials, harassment, forced disappearance and threats, including against women journalists. They face more than what male journalists are facing. Especially now that it is soon to have the Presidency of the EU Council, we are depending on Ireland. The people in Sudan are waiting to hear from Ireland and to see that it is putting political pressure on the two warring parties and on the others who are supporting them.

In a few words, the Sudan conflict is a proxy war. The two warring parties are fighting this war on behalf of others, whether regionally, internationally or even locally. Now, the people who are supporting the war are known to the world. At this moment, as we speak today, we have entered a new phase. This war has entered a new phase, that is, the drone war, which means no part of Sudan can be a safe zone. No place in Sudan can be safe because these drones can reach everywhere. Today, tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow we are afraid that what has happened in El Fasher may be repeated again in El-Obeid, for example, or in some other places. We look for Ireland's interventions. We look forward to Ireland, as President of the EU, putting all its practical efforts to see that this war is stopped. Hundreds of journalists were forced to flee the country to the neighbouring countries, whether Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda or Kenya. Some of them may need to go to some other places. They do not have the luxury of doing their work as journalists because they and their families also face legal issues and medical issues. It is high time, when Ireland has the EU Council Presidency, to say that this war has to stop, today before tomorrow. Otherwise, more atrocities will happen. More displacement of the people will happen. There are millions of displaced people and it is continuing. It is better to see that this war is stopped today before tomorrow. It is better to see that the human right defenders and the journalists are really protected from both warring parties, whether the Sudan army or the RSF. Both of them are targeting the journalists and the human rights defenders. There are a lot of figures but I do not want to take all the time because I know this meeting is a very essential meeting and I need to keep to time. Thank you.

Mr. Elbagir is bang on time. We appreciate that. We will come back to him. We do not promote particular media here but I was very taken by "The Rest is Politics" podcast. Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell had a piece on Sudan last week and they were saying they needed to return to it. I thank Mr. Elbagir for that. There was much food for thought. I call Deputy Brian Brennan.

I thank the witnesses for their attendance. I read their statements with interest. I am totally taken aback by the whole silence that surrounds this war. That will be a question that is coming up. There has been 1,000 days of silence and 33 million people needing assistance. I was struck by the fact that 17 million of those are children. Fifteen million people have been displaced. Those figures are just beyond comprehension in modern society. We have never seen those numbers before in our lifetime. I have read in detail about the deliberate targeting of citizens, including journalists, medics. I want to make a number of points. Can the witnesses explain why there is silence? How are they able to operate there? I totally admire what they are doing but on the logistics, are they getting food across the border? How can they deal with 15 million displacements? I know some of them are gone abroad but a lot are internal displacements. My last question is the one they touched on themselves, namely, what can Ireland do? There are three main factors here. First, we are having the EU seminar later in March, then we are marking the third anniversary of the start of this crisis and then our EU Presidency will follow. Will the witnesses be clear on the word "sanctions"? I come from a humanitarian background and I feel sometimes sanctions go to the wrong people, namely, the people on the ground. It is clear the witnesses want to target access, travel bans and arms embargoes. As there is a lot in that, I will throw it out to Mr. Crowley to start off.

The hospital pass.

That is what we are here for.

I thank Deputy Brennan. His questions are spot on. As Birke Herzbruch said, it is a crisis of superlatives. It is the worst of everything. The problem is that we give up and say there is nothing we can do, as it is just too big a problem. If I take the questions, not necessarily in order, as to what we would look for the Irish Government to do, keep it on the agenda. Keep raising, keep asking, keep challenging the way in which the conflict is being prosecuted. We know the countries that we believe are supporting the conflict deny it to the hilt. There are weapons from, as we understand, the same countries going to both sides of the conflict.

It is all about economics but there is also the regional conflict going on between Iran and the UAE. At one level, everything is fine; at another level, as Mr. Elbagir said, this is a proxy conflict. The fact the US has no interest in it actually makes it more difficult. It is not one of the eight or more conflicts Donald Trump has solved in the last five minutes. All we can do is keep putting pressure and keep raising awareness.

Does Mr. Crowley believe the war is being controlled from within Sudan, externally or both?

It is both. We did not expect the conflict to start when it did, in the middle of Ramadan, though we knew conflict was coming. We did not expect it to start in Khartoum; we expected it to start in Darfur, which is the RSF stronghold. It confounded expectations. Then we did not expect it would last more than a few weeks. Again, it confounded expectations. It can only continue with the current severity and intensity if there is external support. There is no way the parties to the conflict inside Sudan can sustain what they are doing without that support. The volume of money and weapons going in is what is keeping it going. There are irreconcilable differences between the RSF and SAF, which both want power. They were together in government, they fell out with each other and now they are trying to kill each other. The war is not being fought with pitched battles between big armies; it is a lot of hit-and-run with fast movements, using land cruisers or jeeps with heavy machine guns on them and terrorising. It is the same way the Janjaweed fought in the early 2000s. We are seeing the routine and systematic terrorisation of the public and the deliberate targeting of civilians. It is a combination.

Doing our work is enormously difficult and some areas are more difficult to access than others. Kordofan is especially challenging to get goods into because they have to cross front lines, moving from SAF-controlled areas to RSF-controlled areas, but I know Trócaire is managing.

I will talk more about Darfur. The entirety of our response-----

To be clear on that, we can get food into Sudan but the internal transport is the problem.

As well, yes. There has been a convoy from Khartoum going down but I do not think that has been repeated. It was a huge convoy. All our response in Darfur is coming from Chad. We can get it across because there is only one faction controlling the territory we are moving through but they still make it difficult. They still want us to register and pay taxes and we are fighting against that. The Government is demanding registration and taxation and the RSF is demanding registration and taxation. If you do one for either, the other side will attack you.

I am conscious of time and would not mind hearing from our other guests. I thank Mr. Crowley.

On getting food in, depending on where you are, Sudan is quite fragmented. In the south Kordofans, most of the goods and items are coming from South Sudan. This is only possible during the dry season, which is usually the fighting season. When the rain starts, there are tremendous difficulties getting food, medicine or any supplies in. Organisations like Trócaire and our partners need to pre-position supplies regularly to make sure we do not have any gaps.

On the silence around Sudan, Gaza has definitely overtaken a lot. There are discussions around Ukraine. The year has started quite badly as well with what has happened in Latin America. Greenland is back on the agenda. While Darfur has been of international concern and what we have seen in El Fasher was atrocious, we need to keep the focus on Sudan. As I said earlier, the fighting is shifting into the greater Kordofans and will be going more and more into those areas.

I have to stop Ms Herzbruch there but she will have more opportunities. Senator Stephenson has swapped with Senator Higgins. Is that agreed? Agreed.

This may be the first session back but it is harrowing. I will focus on two pieces: the humanitarian piece and the international pressure piece. On the former, it would be interesting to hear of anything we could do to get ahead of the obstacles to access likely to arise in Kordofan. I have seen figures indicating this is three times the length of the siege of Stalingrad - that went down in history for what was faced by people, but that was prior to the massacre in El Fasher. There are huge hunger issues. Will the witnesses talk about the food and humanitarian piece? What can be done there?

Going to the international aspect, I am struck by two things. There is moving towards resolution and getting humanitarian access and then there is the element of justice. The International Criminal Court was mentioned by Trócaire. Strengthening accountability within that court is something to think about in relation to the Presidency. We need a focus on aid and the disgraceful and shameful cutting of aid, not solely by the United States but also European Union countries, at a time of great need. Aid is one element and the other is supporting international law and the International Criminal Court, as well as perhaps expanding its jurisdiction. Will the witnesses comment or elaborate on that?

On international pressure, I know most of the witnesses are in the humanitarian space, so their focus is on working with everybody to get access and move things forward. Does always negotiating with the Quad as the Quad close off some direct pressure? Is there scope for the European Union to put direct pressure on Egypt in terms of humanitarian access or, in terms of the weapons embargo, on the UAE and Saudi Arabia? Are there tools that could be used to specifically impact those members?

Emergency rooms were mentioned as front lines and we have heard of them as one of the grains of hope for civil society. Are there specific things that could and should be done to ensure the emergency response rooms are getting access to aid and are protected, and that the families of human rights defenders who travel are also given supported access, so that does not become a point of pressure, which is something we have been hearing from the witnesses?

Speaking about the humanitarian situation, I can assure the Senator an estimated 21.2 million people - that is 40% of the population - are facing hunger. This is human-made hunger by the two warring parties. While the war is continuing, no farmers can farm and no people can get medicine or food.

Coming back to human rights defenders, there are huge numbers of them and they are really suffering. We are looking for this war to be stopped today, before tomorrow.

An issue which should be mentioned clearly is that we have experienced many wars in Sudan, from 1955 to 2002, up to the CPA and so on. What is always missing in the solutions, resolutions and peace agreements is accountability rather than impunity. With impunity and without accountability, this war will continue and continue.

The people of Sudan and Darfur are looking for this war to be the last war in the country, and for the perpetrators of human rights abuses and all these atrocities to be brought to book. This is a very important issue which is to be discussed at this high-level meeting.

For the journalists and the human rights defenders inside the country, there should be a clear protection mandate. They have to be protected. Usually, we would say "Do not kill the messenger". The human rights defenders and the journalists are the messengers of this. They are telling the story and situation. Without them being supported and protected, the situation will continue to get worse and worse. We are looking for human rights defenders and journalists inside the country, in neighbouring countries or in the region to be protected. The protection of journalists and human right defenders is very important to keep the lifeline. Among the human rights defenders, there are teachers, a young generation of women and men, those involved in the emergency response rooms and the oldest people.

Every day, we receive messages from our colleagues inside the country saying, "Save us. Save our lives. We are facing unfair trials. We are facing arbitrary arrest. We are facing a lot of harassment from the two sides of the warring parties,” whether in the RSF-controlled area or the SAF area. People are really suffering. People are saying, "Help us. We need accountability. We need justice to be seen." As the committee knows, justice delayed is justice denied. We need justice to be done today before tomorrow.

Our next speaker is Deputy Shay Brennan. Before I call the Deputy, with the approval of the committee I have to step out for a few minutes if Senator Ahearn can take the Chair. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I know there was not the opportunity, but perhaps during other questions it might be answered if people have a chance to come in on the idea of targeted measures towards Quad members and the issue of access to Kordofan.

I thank the witnesses for their detailed and candid written statements, their attendance here today and for the work they and their organisations do.

I have questions on the financial aspect, particularly around the UN funding appeal. The target is €2.9 billion. That is a sizeable figure. It speaks to the scale of the underlying crisis. In the opening statements and accompanying documentation, there is concern that there is going to be a shortfall - a significant shortfall by the looks of things. Will the witnesses expand on what that shortfall is likely to be? Where is it coming from? The likes of US aid would be leaving the target short. Are there other areas that could contribute more or that have, for whatever reason, withheld funding going into 2026? Beyond the significant shortfall in funding, Mr. Crowley said there are 20 million individuals whom they can assist and that leaves 13 million who will go without assistance and aid, which is shameful in its own right. How do the organisations prioritise and decide? It does not look from that breakdown that everybody gets less. It looks like somebody has to make a decision. How is an incredibly difficult decision like that made? I ask the witnesses to expand on the funding aspect and touch on the questions I brought up. I would appreciate it.

Which witness does the Deputy wish to answer his questions?

Whoever is volunteering.

I am happy to give it a go. These are good and important questions. If we look at the UN appeal and the Global Humanitarian Overview, GHO, year-on-year, they set a figure for the number of people who are in need of assistance. Routinely, they knock a third of those off and say that they will target this number. In reality, if we look over the past five or six years, the funding has been at around 50%. There is enough funding to target a third of the affected population and half of the targeted population. What makes the revision to the GHO last year and the current global appeal this year worse is that the UN is self-restricting itself through what it calls a hyper-prioritisation process. It is only going to target those who are in most acute need. We can look at that at a global level or country-by-country level and the data is quite different. There is almost a self-centring and self-selection going on at the time the appeal is written.

If we take the example of Ukraine - a couple of the people from the office here visited Ukraine recently - we are now dealing with a situation where only the front-line communities are being assisted. This means that people are refusing to leave the front line because they know if they move to a place of safety they will not get any assistance. We are getting a compounding effect of a reduction in funding. The triaging that I mentioned to try to target the most vulnerable areas ends up locking people in place in areas that they should escape from. It is really challenging. At a UN level, it makes these selections. At our level, we make the selections. We end up targeting those for whom we can get assistance and funding. If we look at the global situation, Spain and Ireland are the only two countries to have increased their ODA allocation. Denmark retained it at the same level. Every other country has cut its aid. The most traumatic has been the cut from the US, which globally provided a third of ODA and between 40% and 47% of humanitarian funding. For it to have cut it as strongly as it has done has crippled the whole system and left us in crisis. Despite the US Congress approving a budget of $50 billion this year, $5.4 billion of which was to go to humanitarian, we are not sure if that is going to be released. It still has to go to the Senate and be programmed. There is a lack of confidence that this is going to happen. Every layer we look at is problematic.

If we look at the EU level and the negotiations on the next multi-annual financial framework, MFF, there is a suggestion that we have heard repeatedly over the past 12 months that 10% of all budgets are going to be cut and allocated to defence. That is increasingly what we are hearing. We saw the UK put 0.7% of GNI into law, which was the obligation that all member states made in 1970 to the UN. It then cut it to 0.5%. The Labour Party stood on an electoral platform that included a commitment to return to 0.7%. Two days before Starmer went to meet Trump, he cut it to 0.3% and said they are going to spend the balance on defence spending. The pandering to Trump in this sector, as in every other sector, is deeply worrying.

The funding crisis within the humanitarian sector is stunning, but it is also happening across other sectors. It is happening within the human rights sector. We have seen similar cuts across the board with devastating effects and impacts for the human rights defenders and the work they are doing. Going back to Senator Higgins, when we talk about the ICC we are talking about justice and accountability. What we need now is documentation. That is what has been closed and silenced, essentially, but also defunded and underfunded. This a deliberate strategy. There is nothing accidental about this closing of funding. This is a deliberate silencing strategy across the board. When we speak to defenders and when the small amount of funding they had is taken away, the risks increase. Their lives are at risk. That very small amount of funding to keep their communications and documents secure and to allow them to communicate with the outside world is removed from them. There is more silencing and risk for defenders as well.

We have the Global Humanitarian Overview and the number of people in need has significantly reduced, from 300 million last year to 87 million this year. These are not real figures. This is due to the prioritised humanitarian reset, where we needed to take really tough decisions about which countries are still in the most humanitarian need.

It will be really important to keep an eye on those figures because it is going to be impossible to deal with the 87 million who are currently targeted. We will be looking at 300 million people needing assistance. In the US last year, people spent €4 billion on Hallowe'en candy, which was more than was spent on humanitarian assistance. Places like Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Syria - all those forgotten places - will suffer because the funding is not there. This is where Ireland comes into the equation in the context of really committing its ODA to humanitarian assistance and keeping up the percentages. In Europe, we will definitely have more to discuss. So many governments are reprioritising, putting their funding into domestic affairs or into their military budgets, which will certainly benefit Europe and keep it safer. However, we will be seeing a lot more suffering throughout the world. Sudan is just a microcosm of that.

I thank the witnesses for referring to the crisis of superlatives. The committee has endeavoured to put a degree of focus on that matter, but it certainly has not got anywhere near enough attention in these Houses or in Irish or European media. I read about El Fasher again yesterday. I am not sure anything like it has happened in the 21st century, as a single, stand-alone event in terms of the scale of the massacre. We cannot even come close to quantifying it at this point. Tens of thousands of people are effectively unaccounted for.

I have two questions, but one might be difficult to get into. The matter to which it relates is similar to what Senator Higgins raised. All the witnesses have highlighted the need to keep this on the agenda and to keep raising it. It seems that this conflict is going to continue to escalate until the likes of the United States and the EU make it a serious priority. Both sides seem to believe they can succeed. What actions can be taken at a political level by smaller countries such as Ireland or larger actors such as the EU? The constant flow of quite complex, sophisticated and large-scale weaponry as opposed to small-scale, basic arms is escalating the crisis.

Coming back to the question of aid, it does not seem possible that there can be such a level of deprivation and a lack of access to food and decent sanitation without there being a risk of escalating disease and sickness. Often those things can go hand and hand during conflicts. I do not know that to be the case here, but it is the basis of my question. Is there a concern as to the potential for illness and disease, particularly in the camps in which displaced people are being housed, to spread? If the latter is the case, I suppose it would be a focus for potential humanitarian intervention.

I will make one or two quick comments. El Fasher is not unique. In the context of what happened in El Geneina in June 2023, the UN estimates that something like 1,500 people were killed and 350,000 or 360,000 fled across the border to find safety. I cited El Fasher just because it is the most current and the most horrific, but it is not entirely unique. There is something else I wanted to say but I have forgotten what is was, so I will hand over to colleagues.

We have talked today about the scale of the humanitarian crisis, but it is also about governments. Ireland is good at understanding and representing that this is not just a humanitarian crisis; it is a human rights crisis. This involves mass, systematic and scaled human rights abuses. It is a crisis of humanitarian law; it is a probable genocide. These are crimes against humanity being committed. It is about the importance of being able to hold both of those, to be able to have conversations around humanitarian access and the scale of need that exists but also to be able have conversations around accountability. We must be able to ensure that we have documentation, the defenders and other individuals who are inside Sudan are able to have a voice and a say in this and can document what is happening. We must also be able to have conversations around accountability. This is an aspect of foreign policy that the Irish Government is good at.

One of the challenges at EU level is that the old alliances we had in the context of speaking out and of human rights issues are shifting and changing. We need to build new alliances. We need to look at the governments of other countries that are stepping into some of these spaces. I am looking at the likes of Spain and Luxembourg. Some of the traditional voices are shifting, so we need to work in a different way to build alliances to talk about human rights, to profile this and bring visibility to it and to bring funding and support in order to ensure that it takes the form of a humanitarian response together with a human rights response.

Referring back to the ICC and the sanctions, there have been strong calls in relation to expanding the mandate of the ICC beyond Darfur. The UN resolution in that regard dates from 2005. There will be a need to change that resolution and to get greater agreement around a new resolution at Security Council level, which may not be possible. There are other ways to expand the mandate to the ICC, however. One is that the Government of Sudan will be party to the Rome Statutes. The other is that similar to Myanmar, which The Gambia has taken to the ICC, a country would need to refer Sudan to the ICC. All of this seems unlikely. However, pressure, particularly from Ireland, could be used to reinforce that.

The UN sanctions have been extended, probably until the latter half of this year. The UN panel of experts monitoring the UN sanctions has also been extended until October. This is already good but, similar to the EU, they need to be extended. Currently, UN sanctions only dictate the arms embargo on Darfur. They need to include the whole of Sudan, particularly the Kordofan region. In terms of the EU framework from 2023, a lot more can be done to expand the scope of the sanctions involved.

Mr. Crowley is ready to come back in with his second point.

It is a combination of answering Deputy Ó Laoghaire's question and coming back to that of Deputy Brennan. The acuteness of need and the requirement for this triaging to target the most acute need and those most in need means that the people who we could prevent from slipping into acute need are being neglected. There is no safety net for them. By refusing to fund our response adequately, we are creating a deeper crisis. That is the thing that worries me most, because it is exactly what I think we will see.

Access to the Kordofan region is highly restricted for international organisations, including the UN, which is why working through local partners is so important. The continued support of the mutual aid groups and local partners with which we work in South Kordofan is necessary. We get supplies across the border or across from one region to the other. It is all highly delicate at the moment. Local partners are taking great risks. If we want to deliver at scale, it only goes through local partners. There is a lot more that UN organisations and funding mechanisms need to do to support those local partners without great bureaucracy, compliance issues or anything else. We need to be really focusing on local partners and the mutual aid groups that can deliver assistance on the ground where it is actually needed.

Ms Moore mentioned shifting alliances. It is very important for our committee to remember that. We often think that our traditional allies are drifting away from us and maybe not thinking about new allies. Ms Moore mentioned Spain and Luxembourg, and there are others. We have a role in linking with them and building alliances, particularly on the question of overseas development assistance.

I would love the committee to write to the Department of foreign affairs and indicate that we would like the question of cuts to aid to be a part of the EU Presidency campaign, particularly as so many EU member states - we have seen it with the Scandinavian countries - have pulled back from their contributions quite significantly. While I am very proud that Ireland continues with its commitment to ODA, our economy is tiny in comparison with those of some other countries. Also, we would have more of an impact acting together. That is something I would really like to see on the agenda. It would also link to Sudan in general. I would like us to have the question of expanding EU sanctions as part of Ireland’s agenda over the next six months.

Ms Olive Moore talked about the human rights crisis and crimes against humanity. It is important to flag those as well. Often, when we talk about these matters, we refer to the humanitarian crisis. Using that term almost takes the power out of the word in terms of the people who are doing these awful things. This is not a flash flood or a famine in the traditional sense; these are all man-made crises.

Maybe Mr. Faisal Elbagir could speak a bit more to the question of transnational repression. What kind of impact is that having on Sudanese defenders inside and outside of the country? Is he aware of any surveillance technologies that may be being used by either the SAF or RSF? It would be interesting to hear whether they are finding surveillance on laptops and phones, and how that is impacting the Front Line Defenders. Perhaps we are not as aware or cognisant of transnational repression and the impact it can have on them and on their work.

The Senator has mentioned a very important issue, that is, the issue of technology. Surveillance of each and every human rights defender and journalist inside the country is continuing. The two perpetrators, the two warring parties, have high technology that allows them to follow up on journalists and human rights defenders. To counter this, human rights defenders and journalists need high technology to be able to document events, because the only thing that is missing now is the day-to-day documentation. It is important that human rights defenders are greatly equipped with technology that will allow them to continue their work and documentation. As we know, there is an Internet blackout in many places in Sudan. There is a media and information blackout. This makes the reporting of the human rights situation very difficult and complicated. Still, the journalists and human rights defenders are continuing. If we look at the laws, the media law in Sudan is very old. It is a special, oppressive law. These laws must be targeted and stopped.

We have to mention the importance of training journalists and human rights defenders in the areas of safety and protection. It is highly important to do some kind of training of journalists and human rights defenders around protection and safety, including digital security and safety for those inside and outside the country. The atmosphere in many countries outside the country is not friendly to freedom of expression or freedom of information. They are not friendly to media freedoms. We need to see journalists and human rights defenders highly equipped. We thank all the organisations that are helping the Front Line Defenders, among others. They are supporting us. They are a great support but we still need more support because the situation is totally too much. It is too much.

The two warring parties also have their own media. This proxy war has its own media. It is not media but, rather, propaganda. They spread propaganda, hate speech and fake news. Even in the regional capitals in Sudan, the information or news is not real reporting. We monitor and observe it on a daily basis. It is hate speech, fake news, misinformation and disinformation. We need to train our journalists and human rights defenders in respect of how they can report and document properly. They also need protection and safety in their lives as well as online safety and protection. We need to see that journalists and human rights defenders inside the country and in neighbouring countries are protected by laws and technology. We must protect and help them to continue their lives and profession. We are seeing that some journalists were forced to flee the country. Later, some of them were forced to leave the profession. Being a journalist is not easy in Sudan now.

I am sorry for interrupting, but I only have a few seconds left. The idea that there is no free media reinforces why it is important for our committee and the Government of Ireland to platform Sudan in order that international media are looking at and focusing on it. Hopefully, some international media will get into the country.

I have a question for Ms Moore. Are there any known technologies – I know there was Pegasus that came out of Israel - or technological providers that we should be cognisant of in the context of surveillance?

At this point, we are not seeing extensive, sophisticated surveillance. Some of the surveillance is very traditional. It includes the infiltration of communities and the extensive monitoring of social media and all the spaces the defenders are communicating in. It is physical surveillance, including following defenders and saying, “We saw you go into that office. Who are you talking to? What are you saying?”. It is questioning and so forth. There is some technology that we are starting to see being used but, essentially, from speaking with defenders in Uganda, Nairobi and defenders outside of the country, a lot of it is around access to the Internet and satellites. That is the wider piece about access to communication technologies being shut off extensively. A lot of it is traditional methods, such as surveillance, intimidation, harassment and, exactly as Mr. Faisal Elbagir said, propaganda and smear campaigns against defenders online in that whole space of social media, which is where those defenders have to be. This is how they communicate, engage, talk to and represent their communities, but it is a dangerous and unsafe space for them because it is weaponised against them.

I am next. I just have one or two questions because some have been asked already. When Mr. Crowley spoke about the start of the war, he said the timing and location of it was not predicted. Can he expand on that? Was the timing not expected simply because it was Ramadan? Why did Concern think it would start in Darfur? Why did it start where it started?

I am sure Mr. Elbagir has a more informed opinion on this. There was no expectation that something would happen in the middle of Ramadan. The feeling was that tension was growing but that it would not start until after Ramadan. In the context of why it started in Khartoum rather than Darfur, it was purely because the RSF support base was in Darfur. The analysis at that time, as I understood it, was saying the fighting would start in Darfur and then may spread. I will defer to Mr. Elbagir in this regard, but I do not think anyone expected it to be going into the third year now.

Can Mr. Elbagir expand on that?

Sorry, I did not hear the question.

Why did the war start where it started and not where it was predicted to start? Why did it start when it did? Why has it gone on so long, given the view was that it might only last a couple of weeks?

This war, as I mentioned at the beginning, is a proxy war. It is not only a war fought between two generals; it is more than that. It is a proxy war. There are regional and international interests involved in this war and they keep supporting this war. The two warring parties said the conflict would be finished in one month or six or seven days. We are now over 1,000 days into this war, and it is still continuing. As I mentioned earlier, we have entered a new phase. That phase is what we can call a drone war.

Now they are using highly sophisticated materials. We need those who are getting, transferring or making this equipment, these drones, to be targeted. They have to be told clearly to stop financing this war. Please stop sending arms to this war. Please stop killing the people of Sudan. We have seen another phenomenon where the arms are in each and every hand. There are hundreds of militias. It is not only these two warring parties now. There are the Islamists on one side, Katbat al-Barā among others, and the whole country has militia-based fighters. Unless we stop the arms entering Sudan, this war will not stop by any means.

The most important thing to mention is that we need to see that the sources of the arms - those who are giving the two warring parties the arms - must be targeted and stopped. The media has spoken about them. This applies to many countries, whether regional or international. The most important thing is that this war will not stop in Sudan. If we allow this war to continue, it will put all of the region under fire. It may put all of Africa under fire. It is high time to stop this war, and to see that there is a real political will to stop this war. As Sudanese human rights defenders, as Sudanese journalists or even as Sudanese people, we feel that there is no real political will from the international community to stop this war, because it is a proxy war.

I thank Mr. Elbagir. I call Mr. Crowley.

To complement something Mr. Elbagir said, the longer any war goes on, the more fragmented it becomes and the more difficult it is to resolve. That is exactly where we are now with Sudan.

Sudan is, or has been, taken hostage in a larger game. We are seeing that the conflict in Sudan is not only Sudan-related; it has drawn in the whole of the Horn of Africa: Yemen, the Middle East and the quad, in particular. They all have their different agendas. We also see that Ethiopia, for instance, has been drawn in. There are training camps in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has border issues with Sudan. Somalia is now in some sort of disagreement with the UAE, because the UAE is sending weapons through Puntland to the RSF. We see that Egypt is supporting Eritrea because it obviously has quarrels against Ethiopia. This is a very entangled and complex system that has been established there in terms of war. It is around the resources that are coming out of Sudan. It is around the port. It is around naval supremacy, if you want. All of this has been confounded, and now the Sudanese population is the collateral damage of those regional and global interests.

On the €5.5 billion, which has started to be approved in the US, when will the Senate and the House of Representatives decide or vote on that? What work has been done with the members of those houses to make sure it gets over the line? Is there a view that the power that President Trump has at the moment is influencing those members?

Those are very good questions. We are still massively dependent on the US. The US is a hugely important donor for the whole sector, in both long-term and humanitarian programming. We need it to play a key role going forward. My understanding is that the vote in the Senate is next week. I do not think it has been confirmed yet. Over the past 12 or 13 months, there has been massive engagement and interaction across the spectrum. The approval of the €50 billion was almost a surprise in the level of support that it got. It was put through with cross-party support. There are two things that worry. First, there is no absolute requirement on the US state department to spend the budget. Second, my understanding is that Marco Rubio has been told he needs to do an evaluation of three countries to demonstrate the efficacy of aid. If he cannot demonstrate that, it brings into question not just this year's funding, but every subsequent year's funding too. Concern is present in the US and is a member of InterAction, which is the big inter-agency network. InterAction is doing huge engagement across the board with everyone it can, and we are supporting that.

I thank the witnesses. My time is up, but they might have an opportunity to come back when someone else is speaking. It would be unfair for me to take extra time. I call Senator O’Loughlin.

I thank our witnesses. They have painted and depicted a very harrowing situation. We might wonder about the futility of words in terms of what we can do. The point is well made in all of the presentations that there is not enough coverage. The world needs to speak more about what is happening in Sudan as the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. I have read the article by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. I thank Concern for sharing it. It is absolutely shocking to see what is happening in El Fasher and everywhere else.

I will ask some questions, following on from those of my colleagues. It is clear that those who are volunteering for the agencies our witnesses represent, and for Front Line Defenders, are in a very difficult situation. Mr. Crowley of Concern mentioned that 44 people have been killed, 19 injured and 17 kidnapped. I have no doubt that other aid agencies have similar-----

That is globally.

That is the total. Okay, thank you. I thought it was just Concern, but that is still very high. What protections are being given, and what more possibly should be given, to staff and local partners given the targeting of NGOs and human rights defenders? That is the first question I will put to any of our witnesses who wish to answer.

I will quickly respond to the previous question on funding before returning to the Senator's question. It is really important that we re-engage with the US around humanitarian funding and access US funding where it is available, but it is not going to be available to many of the areas we are talking about here. It is about recognising that we knew that some US money would come back, but it was going to be very selective in how it is used. The US was a big funder of free and fair media within Sudan. That funding is not coming back. The funding for women's groups and LGBT is not coming back. The same thing applies to anything around accountability and documentation of human rights violations. In the case of the ICC, the US is actually orchestrating a really significant campaign against the ICC and against accountability. I am not even sure we will have an ICC in a couple of years, based on the campaign it is running. While we have to work with the US strategically to access that humanitarian funding, we need other alliances to look at the human rights funding and to bridge that gap, essentially. We need to be very smart and strategic about how we do this. Where there is goodwill and ability, we are utilising it but we also recognise the limitations of that.

Protection is a huge issue. My colleagues will talk more about how the humanitarian sector, which was once considered a safer space to be in, is absolutely no longer safe. Humanitarian workers are coming under attack or under fire and have huge protection needs. With our work in Front Line Defenders, we are also worried about Sudanese workers. It is not just about the workers with the big aid agencies and the numbers we know and can count, which are hugely important, but also about the many individuals who do not have access to those systems.

They are doing local humanitarian work that is not necessarily part of the big humanitarian system but working within communities to bring resources together, to find the families who are most in need and to redistribute their own resources among themselves. Those are the individuals who are facing huge and significant risk as well.

As to what type of protection you can do, there are differences. There is protection that comes from global organisations but a lot of the protection work happens locally. It happens closest to defenders. It is people like Mr. Elbagir and his community who know where the safe house that you move to is, who the person you talk to is and what the best way to communicate on your phone is. There are resources we can bring and certainly our agency is very focused on those but we also have to recognise that protection happens closest to those who are most impacted and they are the ones who understand and know, like Mr. Elbagir, what the best response to that is. Then there are agency responses as well.

Very briefly on the funding situation, the US has made a deal with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, for over €2 billion. The question is can Ireland please use its role on the executive committees of the WFP, UNICEF and also the country-based pool funds through which the €2 billion is going to be channelled to keep an eye on that for accountability and so there is principled allocation. John Ging, for instance, is going to be the senior adviser to Thomas Fletcher, so please press for principled, timely and locally led allocations. It is becoming more and more crucial that whatever aid is received via the US not be politicised, not come with conditions and still be impartially, independently and locally allocated.

The other question was on the safety and security of our local partners. One needs to have the conversations with the local partners. We need to enforce risk-sharing more and more. Donors especially must recognise that there is a huge risk that international organisations, including UN organisations, are putting on the local partners. First, it needs to be recognised. Second, there needs to be a conversation about how to keep the local partners. Sometimes, it is just about some of the equipment. Sometimes, it is just about having systems in place where sensitive documents can be uploaded to the cloud, for instance. Sometimes, it is just about having a contingency plan and relocating staff who are at high risk or evacuating them from an area. It is about making sure that, during those transitional times, salaries are still getting paid. It is just to have this conversation with the partners who are, in this current crisis, bearing more and more of the risk on the ground and being targeted.

Mr. Elbagir mentioned the high-tech warfare we were experiencing now. Almost daily, we are getting notifications from the teams saying there has been another drone hovering around their office. It is about being more prepared for what needs to be done and how we can keep all of them safe. Those conversations need to happen. We have seen in Ukraine that there are apps that can notify you about drones. We do not have that technology in the remotest areas of Sudan so it is really about listening, seeing and being trained on what to do. The risk is so immense these days from high-tech warfare. We are just afraid that, with those new technologies coming in as well as the proxy war that is happening, this is a prototype of a new international war that we will see more and more in future.

I welcome our guests and thank them for shedding light on what is tragically a missed story in contemporary news, with all the other stuff coming. It is a chronicle of horrors nonetheless and this is a very important session. I will ask each question separately, await a response and move through.

In November, the Emirati delegation held meetings with key MEPs to insist that the UAE was playing a constructive role in Sudan. Despite accusations that Abu Dhabi actively backs the Rapid Support Forces, which were referenced earlier and are a notorious militia implicated in ethnic massacres and sexual violence, which was again chronicled earlier, the European Parliament's lawmakers ultimately passed a resolution that decried Sudan's devastating civil war without mentioning the UAE's alleged interference in the conflict. I ask the witnesses to comment on that and then I will move on.

I will try to take it. I thank the Senator for his question. The problem is we all think we know who is doing what in Sudan but there is no evidence. We think Iran is on one side, we think the UAE is on another side and we think China, Russia and Türkiye all have a role in the sale of weapons. This is what people keep saying but there is no evidence of it one way or the other. Without evidence, it is impossible to make a ruling or determination. It is all just our understanding of the situation.

What is Mr. Crowley's sense of it, if he is prepared to say in public?

Weapons are certainly coming from somewhere.

So Mr. Crowley implicitly agrees.

Yes. Just to reinforce the Senator's earlier comment, the RSF is essentially a rebranding of the Janjaweed, which was responsible for atrocities in Darfur in the early 2000s.

I thank Mr. Crowley. That was very adequate.

This has come up in various guises today but I would again like to ask, in the context of overall commitments, what more the witnesses think Ireland could do by way of, say, funding or international protection. What would they realistically put to us for us to put to the Minister as something that could be done by Ireland? This is bearing in mind the entire world agenda and Gaza, which was referenced earlier, etc.

On that piece around what is happening, there was a comment earlier about silencing and that is one of the biggest challenges. When you close down the media, close down journalists and stop human rights defenders inside the country sharing any information or documenting, then it becomes very difficult for us to know what is happening, so the fact we do not know is deliberate. This is not accidental. It is shutting out information and processes in order that you do not know and what happens occurs within a vacuum and a void. It is that important piece around protecting the voices inside who are documenting, protecting those who are speaking out and showing what is happening, as well as protecting investigative journalism.

On the Senator's second question, there is what the Irish Government can do on human rights and protection and then the Irish Government in the broader humanitarian context, though they are certainly linked. Mr. Elbagir may have some thoughts on human rights and protection. He has spoken about how our upcoming EU Presidency brings huge opportunity to put Sudan firmly and clearly on the agenda. I mean the humanitarian crisis there but also the political crisis and the human rights crisis. Especially with protection, there is a massive funding gap that will not be plugged by the US. That is one of the areas where we have a need. The Irish Government has been supportive of working protection for human rights defenders, so continuing that funding support is important. There are very practical things like visas, temporary relocation and the role of embassies in countries like Kenya and Uganda where ambassadors can align with human rights defenders like Mr. Elbagir, meet them publicly and endorse the work they do. That brings layers and layers of protection to those journalists and civil society actors. There are many things that can be done, but maybe my colleagues in the wider humanitarian-----

I thank Ms Moore for that. She anticipated my third question in her response. It was a question on what we could do during our time in the Presidency to highlight the civil war and the crisis and bring onto a European platform what specific initiatives can be taken. Ms Moore has addressed it somewhat but her colleague may wish to elaborate on how Ireland might use the Presidency on this issue.

I will try to respond to that. The EU Presidency is definitely a very opportune moment to press for keeping eyes on Sudan, for greater sanctions and extension of the EU sanctions, for participating in and taking the lead at the upcoming senior officials meeting, SOM, in Brussels and the recommendations that will come from that, and to be very clear on the atrocities and call them out. Ireland has always been very vocal about human rights violations and really keeping Sudan on the agenda rather than silencing it.

We should also have the entire EU behind the support of the work of the international independent fact-finding mission on Sudan, making sure it is resourced and that the mandate includes the whole of Sudan, and making sure the ICC is addressed over and over again because we need accountability.

On the UAE, if I may add to this, it is interesting to hear its funding in the Global Humanitarian Overview is €550 million to support its international and moral responsibility to Sudan and to stabilise peace in that country. Given the interests of the UAE in terms of gold, oil and port access, this has a very bitter taste to it. The politicisation of humanitarian assistance, the strings attached to it, where the money comes from and how it is being allocated remain crucial issues.

We have finished the first round of questions but we only have a short time remaining, so we do not have time for a second round. I propose that, if people want to ask one question, we will be able to get that done within the time.

I find the meeting very engaging and informative. If we should ever put a name on it, it should be the unsilencing of Sudan. I want to get down to brass tacks and there are two issues that we should be discussing. There is the war and how we can get a long-term solution and there is future funding as regards the three key issues of humanitarian work, the human rights side and politics. These are the three key issues involved. I will give time for an answer on this. I really appreciate the presentations today.

Before I finish what I say, I want to assure the committee that this is not only a humanitarian crisis, but also a human rights crisis. It needs political will from the international community. It needs direct intervention, and more of it, to protect human rights defenders, civilians, journalists and medical staff. It needs the mandate of the ICC, which should not only be for Darfur but should be extended to all of Sudan.

When Ireland has the EU Presidency, we need it to push politically and put pressure on the various players so that we see full accountability. That is very important because this is a deep-rooted conflict. As I have said from the beginning, we have had many wars in Sudan - in 1955, 1971, the 1980s and the 2020s. What have always been missing from the peace agreements are accountability and no impunity. This is very important. The ICC has proved it could do great work in Sudan. When it enters, the case of Sudan things will be better. We need accountability. We need the protection of civilians, human rights defenders and journalists because they are the messengers who are making recommendations and telling the stories. Those who are betraying human rights must be made accountable.

We also need dialogue between the various Sudanese players but it should be a genuine dialogue. It should not be a tit for tat or giving the two perpetrators a chance to come back to political life. Really, this war must be ended. If we want it to be the last war in Sudan, we should think of it from a human rights perspective. This will lead to accountability, no impunity and justice.

The ICC is an important institution but we have seen it come under attack, and the US has sanctioned key members of the ICC. We need to talk about how the EU can protect the ICC as an institution. This is more of a statement but I want to touch on the point that the EU and its member states have an obligation to support human rights defenders through the EU human rights defenders guidelines. Perhaps there is also a possibility that we could write to the Department and ask for this to be an issue it can platform during Ireland's Presidency of the EU. The framework for protecting human rights defenders already exists. All of our delegations and embassies around the world, and all of the EU delegations around the world, have an obligation to provide this support.

Do the witnesses think there is a pathway, and would it be helpful, to have a UN protection mission such as UNMISS, the UN protection mission in South Sudan? This has had its own challenges but at least such a mission could have protection of civilian camps in the short-term to provide physical protection for people at risk of genocide. Given the challenges that we have sometimes seen with these missions, is it a pathway the witnesses would want to see? Is there any political pathway for achieving this at the UN?

I am happy to give answering this a go and will just say "No". I understand exactly where Senator Stephenson is coming from. If we look at South Sudan, which is the obvious comparison, the process of setting up the protection of civilian camps was in agreement with the Government. The Sudanese Government controls so little land, and the territories on which the atrocities are happening are outside of its control, that I find it difficult to imagine any country volunteering its soldiers or being able to get any meaningful access. What is important about the ICC is that it has come out and said there are war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed in relation to El Fasher. Building on the example of the ICC cases in relation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it has said the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is occurring. It is documenting it but I fully agree with the comments made by our colleagues from Front Line Defenders that the ICC mandate needs to expand beyond Darfur.

Similar to what Mr. Crowley has just said, I do not think this would work. The African Union will again put Sudan on its agenda in February at the Peace and Security Council but we have received indications from the Secretary General who says the conditions for a UN or UN-EU hybrid protection force does not exist. The Sudanese military-led Government completely rejects this and says the recommendations are in flagrant violation of sovereignty. We have discussed multiple times over the past two or three years such a deployment but it does not seem very likely.

Civil society in Sudan has been so extraordinary. I spoke about achieving the peaceful overthrow of a dictator and the work Sudanese civil society did to try to bring Sudan to a point of civilian-led government. Lessons need to be learned on how we can support this future for Sudan, and on how Europe and the European Union could do better at supporting this type of civilian-led component. One of the strands is learning from what were terrible mistakes in providing military support to Sudan rather than the civilian support that was needed.

I ask the witnesses to comment on humanitarian work and international law being among the strands during the Irish Presidency.

These need to be strengthened in their application and supported by those who are trying to hold it to account on the ground. There is also the question of how Europe can learn from the failures to step up as it should have for the Sudanese civilian population in the past and move forward.

Are those some of the key strands there? Will the witnesses comment on the question of strengthening an arms embargo too? We know some of the weapons originate in European factories. Will they comment on the arms embargo piece and what we could do more to ensure that we try to block the flow of arms that keep this horrendous violence going?

I thank the Senator. Who would like to take that?

I have two quick points and then Mr. Elbagir can come in. First, on the EU guidelines, we know what needs to be done for human rights defender protection. We have extensive documents around all the different things that diplomats and embassies, that is, governments, can do. It is not that we do not have the answers; what we are lacking is political will. We have seen pull-back in the last couple of years, post Covid generally, and also now in this context of huge conflict globally. We have seen governments, embassies, officials and diplomats are less and less willing to take political stances to stand with defenders to take the actions that are needed. For me, with the EU Presidency and Ireland stepping into that space, there is a real opportunity to show leadership to define that.

There is a real opportunity for a campaign on the ICC. The existence of the ICC is at threat here, essentially and the EU has not yet, at a co-ordinated group-----

Used the blocking mechanism.

-----come out together strongly and supported the ICC. Maybe Mr. Elbagir has some other thoughts.

Would Mr. Elbagir like to come in for 30 seconds?

I would like to say keep eyes on Sudan. Monitor the human rights situation in Sudan. Support and protect the human rights defenders, journalists and the media professionals in Sudan. We really hail what Ireland is doing and we are looking forward to more support and more help.

The senior officials' meeting, which is coming up in Brussels, might be a very good opportunity to strengthen the participation of civil society organisations, particularly women-led organisations, for them to influence early enough any kind of agenda that will be discussed in Brussels, to have meaningful participation and to be actually in the room when these things are going to be discussed. This is something that organisations, INGOs in Sudan, can probably facilitate the embassies in the regions to give that a little push to make sure that civil society, including women-led organisations, are actually a part of those discussions.

That is in line with Resolution 1325 also and with Ireland’s record on the Security Council resolution.

I thank the witnesses for their earlier answers. The people watching this, insofar as we have whatever level of audience live or later on Oireachtas TV, will be interested in two things. One is how to stop the violence, and we have touched on various things, and the second is on the aid access, that is, where are the obstacles and what can be done by the Irish Government and the EU to get the aid in. I know the quantum of aid needs to increase in real terms but can the witnesses elaborate on what are the blockages to access? That is not so much for the audience here but people watching this. It is something that will interest them greatly.

The single most important thing to allow aid to get in is for the conflict to stop.

It is no more complex than that, is it?

And to really pressure the Quad to come to a political solution. That requires the US to be on board and requires engagement with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt just to stop the arms from coming into Sudan and arming the different groups. Aid access varies across Sudan but it is about making sure, with a lot of lobbying, advocacy and engagement in humanitarian diplomacy, to really allow for humanitarian access and minimising those different fragmented registration processes and bureaucratic procedures that we have.

To add, there is a hugely important role for Irish NGOs and Irish Aid NGOs to play within this supported by the Irish Government. As Ms Herzbruch spoke about earlier, those aid agencies work with local civil society in Sudan - they are working with Mr. Elbagir and all his communities on that as well – so when we consider access, we are also considering what are the needs of Sudanese civil society themselves who are the ones who make this happen and who distribute and enable. It is about really understanding their needs and the risks they are taking to try to do this.

Thank you.

I know we are stuck for time. As the Chair was out and did not get his main questions in, he can take the time if he wishes.

I will ask a very quick question on refugees and the surrounding countries. In the Concern report, there was a lot of talk around Chad and South Sudan. Obviously, there are other countries there such as the Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia and even Libya. How are these countries coping? Are they supportive? Obviously, some might be more supportive than others with regard to refugees. How are they coping? How are they being supported? Are they purely dependent on aid? Are they funding some of this themselves? In general, what is their stance on it? The witnesses might talk about the refugee aspect particularly with regard to neighbouring countries.

I will come in very quickly and then hand over to Ms Herzbruch. You would almost need to take it on a case-by-case basis and look at each individual country. Egypt would be seen as being more pro-Sudanese government and more welcoming of refugees who are supportive of the government at the early stage. That did mean that people trying to move to the north were being targeted and attacked. I do not think that welcoming embrace has been sustained. None of the countries in the region either particularly wants or can well afford to absorb large numbers of refugees; certainly not Sudan and certainly not Chad, which are the two in which we have our largest emergency responses or refugee responses. They are really stuck and they do not have the resources to meet the level of needs that is being imposed upon them.

There is probably not much to add to that. All those neighbouring countries have their own humanitarian crisis of their own and needing to deal with this additional workload just stretches a lot of the resources and capacity on the ground both from the communities that need to host incoming refugees as well as from NGOs and local partners who need to deal with this. Trócaire works in South Sudan on a cross-border programme but we are seeing, because of the very dire situation in South Sudan – politically, economically but also humanitarian – that Sudanese are returning. Even South Sudanese are crossing the border because there seems to be a bit more of a stable environment. The situation is dire. All of the surrounding countries are really suffering. This is a really unsustainable situation and will cause conflict in the long run.

I thank the witnesses. We are coming to the end. This was probably discussed while I was away and I do not want anyone to come back on this but I was very taken by the earlier contributions on just how hard it was for children. It seems to be historically one of the worst environments for children that I have heard witness statements from. It is pretty unspeakable what they have to go through.

On what we can commit to, we can use our Parliament here and we have colleagues in different parliaments – in the European Parliament - but we also attend different international conferences and there are other issues which we try to keep on the agenda as much as we can as ordinary parliamentarians here. There are regularly questions on this in the Dáil Chamber. We will do our best to keep momentum behind it.

I noted Mr. Elbagir’s comments on the lack of reporting, about journalists being silenced, targeted, killed, subject to unfair trials and disappearances. It is the worst front-line stuff journalists have to experience.

Without them we are clearly completely lost as to what is going on.

With those few brief, useless comments made, the witnesses' evidence has been heard, it has not fallen on deaf ears and we will do our best here to keep this going. I wish you and your organisations the very best in the work you do. To Mr. Elbagir, Ms Herzbruch, Ms Moore and Mr. Crowley, thank you for being our witnesses today and giving us so much useful information about a pretty torrid situation.