"simple Truth Appeal" For Kurdish Refugees

EDM number 116 in 1991-92, proposed by Doug Hoyle on 07/11/1991.

That this House is appalled and distressed to learn, according to the fullscale advertisement in The Guardian newspaper of 2nd November, that most of the ú57 million raised worldwide by `The Simple Truth Appeal' to help the Kurds has not reached them, and one million Kurds in the mountains on either side of the Iran-Iraq border are facing immediate starvation due to Saddam Hussein blocking delivery of essential food, medicines, clothes, fuel and electricity supplies and deliberately disrupting the administration of Kurdistan; notes that Kurdish people have no clear drinking water, are suffering widespread malnutrition and Kurdish children are still dying of dysentery and other diseases; calls upon Jeffrey Archer, who worked hard to make this appeal a success, to follow up his public statements of 5th November and to take immediate action to discover and publicly account for what has happened to this money by making public how much of the ú57 million has actually been spent on Kurdish refugees to date, what proportion of the ú57 million has been spent on non-Kurds, and to report the degree to which he is satisfied that all the ú57 million has been spent effectively on humanitarian relief efforts; and requests that, following his recent public commitment, he makes a visit within the month to Kurdistan to discuss how best the money and aid can be got to the starving people.

This motion has been signed by a total of 63 MPs, 1 of these signatures have been withdrawn.