Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): What development support he is providing to Burma. [92784]

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): My right hon. Friend is the first UK Minister to have visited Burma for a very long time. Will he please take this opportunity to update the House on the outcome of that visit, particularly on his discussions with Aung San Suu Kyi?

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): I spent time with Oxfam in Ethiopia during the famine of 1984. It is difficult to describe the horror of famine—its scale, one’s helplessness, the Martian-headed skeletons of marasmus, the swollen bellies of kwashiorkor, and the glassy eyes of children one knows, notwithstanding all efforts, will be dead by tomorrow. Then and now, these famines of biblical proportions kill fellow human beings slowly, painfully, and desperately. It is the death of their humanity and a collective test of ours.

On the 4th and 5th August 2011, I took part in a workshop in Chiang Mai, organised by the Burma Women’s League and VSO. Please click on the link to access a copy of the notes provided following the workshop: Workshop on Women Political Leaders.

Tony Baldry: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much and what proportion of its funding for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures his Department has provided to smallholder farmers in the latest period for which figures are available. [65886]

Tony Baldry: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development whether he has considered the merits of measures to build long-term resilience into the national agricultural systems of the countries of the horn of Africa. [65887]

MP for North Oxfordshire, Tony Baldry, this week took part in one of the largest ever lobbies of Parliament, when more than 1,000 campaigners from across England and Wales descended on Westminster to argue the case for action on global poverty.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): As always, it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) who, over the years, has contributed insightfully to debates about international development.

My age is such that when I went to school, quite a lot of the atlas was still coloured pink. The Sudan was interesting because it was hatched pink and green to reflect the condominium of Egypt and the United Kingdom over it in the years immediately prior to its independence. The de jure Sudan was left as an uncomfortable nation, with a north that was basically Arab and Muslim, and a south that was essentially African and Christian. The two have effectively been in conflict pretty much ever since.

Tony Baldry is a regular supporter of the Loomba Foundation, a charity which was set up to care for widows around the world.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): I commend the fact that the UK Government are in the vanguard of funding the relief effort for Liberia and Ivory Coast, but is it not important that we encourage the African Union not just to engage to try to find a peaceful solution to disputes such as the one in Côte d’Ivoire, but to develop the logistical capacity to do more in these humanitarian situations in the future? It is fine for the G7 countries to fund the effort, but there needs to be more capacity within Africa to sort out the challenges that Africa faces.