Lord Alton of Liverpool
To ask His Majesty’s Government what mechanisms they have in place to evaluate the risk of potential atrocity crimes occurring, including crimes against humanity and genocide; and what measures they take when such risks are identified.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in welcoming all noble Lords who are participating in this Question for Short Debate on preventing mass atrocities, I begin by thanking the Minister for the interest she has shown in the Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes report. I am a member of that group, and I am grateful too for the meeting she had with myself, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and Dr. Ewelina Ochab last week.
I have the honour to chair the Joint Committee on Human Rights and I am patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response. I co-authored a book on our failure to honour the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide, which gives us four obligations: to predict, prevent, protect, and punish. My fundamental complaint, and that of the standing group, is that we do none of these things well. We have no cross-government atrocity prevention strategy, which the Commons International Development Committee has called for.
We live in a world on fire, yet we often seem incapable of making the link between wars in places like Ukraine, Sudan, the Middle East, Burma and elsewhere, with the more than 117 million people forcibly displaced through conflict, violence and persecution, including the 14.3 million people who have been uprooted in Sudan. Those people often end up in small boats, either in the Mediterranean or coming across the English Channel to our shores. We seem incapable of linking the breakdown of international law, conventions and accountability with the emboldening of dictators and autocrats, and what happens when states believe they can get away with war crimes, the seizure of territory, the abduction of civilians, including children, and the bombing of hospitals and schools.
In 1948, foundations were laid for a new world order. The genocide convention and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights were cornerstones, but we would be deceiving ourselves were we to suggest that this progress is not at risk in this world on fire. In 1959, Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations Secretary-General, confidently insisted
“the organization I represent … is based on a philosophy of solidarity”.
Some 80 years after its inaugural session, held just a stone’s throw away from here, Hammarskjöld’s successor says solidarity has been replaced by “powerful forces” that are undermining “global co-operation”.
To challenge this, we should use our place at the Security Council to champion the values of the United Nations charter and the cause of international justice. To do this, we will need to lead by example. We could begin by enacting the all-party amendment currently before the House to the Crime and Policing Bill on universal jurisdiction. We could lead by example by enacting measures to enable the High Court of England and Wales to determine whether a genocide is being committed. I hope the Minister will back these proposals.
Back in 2015, at col. 371, on 19 November, I warned the House of a likely genocide against the Yazidis. In 2019, in northern Iraq, I took first-hand evidence. Notwithstanding that, and 79 Questions and interventions, the Foreign Office declined to act, and it took until 2023 for the FCDO to accept that a genocide had occurred against the Yazidis, and only because a German court concluded that it had—something no British court is empowered to do.
I have repeatedly raised similar threats to Uyghur Muslims, Nigerian Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, North Koreans, Tigrayans, and Burmese Rohingya and Karen. Since the 2017 military coup in Burma, soldiers have butchered men, tortured women, and left over 1 million Rohingya refugees crammed into dilapidated camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar. I saw first-hand in Burma a village that had been torched and heard accounts of mass atrocities. Perhaps the Minister can give us her assessment of the role we are playing at the ICJ in bringing those perpetrators to justice.
Perhaps the Minister will also reflect on where impunity and a lack of justice has led in Sudan, a country which continues to bleed after 1,000 days of war. I first went to Sudan during a civil war which had claimed 2 million lives. After later going to Darfur in 2004, I said, “If this isn’t genocide, what is?” Some 2 million people were displaced and 300,000 people were killed. Omar al-Bashir, the author of these atrocities, although indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, has never been brought to justice.
Early in 2023, there were reports of new outrages, and later of mass graves. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and South Sudan asked me to chair a fresh inquiry. It led to our APPG report, Genocide: All Over Again in Darfur? It described the consequences of impunity and warned of the impending dangers of inaction. Luis Moreno Ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor who indicted al-Bashir, told our inquiry that for as long as al-Bashir and people like him enjoy impunity, others will think they too can get away with genocide. The United Kingdom should now seek his arrest. In 2023, we concluded that, without justice:
“Whatever happens when the violence in Sudan ends, there will be no lasting and credible peace”.
We said that impunity had to end.
In these 1,000 days of war, 150,000 people have died, either caught in the crossfire or from disease or hunger. Millions are displaced. Christian Aid says that 34 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, more than 11 million children face a catastrophic crisis of hunger, and at least 770,000 people are at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition. Last week, there were more deaths and displacements in North Darfur. The International Organization for Migration says that over 8,000 people were displaced from villages in Kernoi locality on Friday alone.
It is outrageous that these corrupt, marauding warlords from both sides, enabled by foreign quartermasters, are also preventing humanitarian aid reaching those most in need. We surely need additional targeted sanctions and a review of UK arms sales to countries that are supplying the SAF and the RSF. We need accountability and justice.
I know the Minister and the Foreign Secretary care deeply about this. I agree with them, but was therefore concerned to read reports that, according to a whistle- blower, Foreign Office officials removed warning of a possible genocide in Sudan from the UK risk assessment. Why and how did that happen?
I hope the Minister will talk about the cuts that are reported to be taking place in the unit dealing with atrocity crimes, and I hope she will look at ways in which joint analysis of conflict and stability reports are made available to Parliament. In our report, we called for early and urgent warning systems to equip local organisations to be able to alert communities to potential threats and provide information on safe routes and shelters.
Between 2000 and 2020, at least 37 countries experienced mass atrocities or had concerns that they could take place, with the highest number of armed conflicts since World War II. We must do more, and I hope our debate will help us to do that.
Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, in addition to thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this timely debate, I thank him for all he does in advocating for the rights of those most in need around the world. We are grateful for the challenging and powerful way he has opened this debate.
My focus is on the mechanisms that are in place to assess the threat to life posed by cuts to UK humanitarian aid, and on their compatibility with our obligations under international law. It is a well-established principle contained in the Geneva conventions, most clearly stated in Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, that deliberate deprivation of access to food, medicine and humanitarian aid for a civilian population represents a crime against humanity. But what if this failure to facilitate the humanitarian aid, medicine and food for a starving population was a result of cutting the budgets of emergency aid providers?
Of course, there is absolutely no legal or moral equivalence between the two actions. They different profoundly in terms of intent and jurisdiction, but they differ less in terms of effect. From the perspective of the child in need or the mother who is a refugee, it matters not whether the access to the food and medicine essential to life was denied to them as a result of a warlord with a gun or an official with a pen—the impact for them both is the same.
Tom Fletcher, the outstanding emergency relief co-ordinator at the UN, has warned of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, with 87 million lives at risk this year. That is more than the total deaths in World War II. Who is defending their legal right to life? Who is intervening to stop this hidden atrocity? What happened to the responsibility to protect?
Over the next 18 months, UK aid will be cut by £6.5 billion to £9.2 billion. At a time when the humanitarian need has never been greater this century, our contribution to alleviating that suffering has never been lower this century. UK contributions to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and to the World Food Programme have already been reduced.
An in-depth study published in the Lancet last year forecast 14 million additional deaths by 2030 as a result of the USAID cuts alone, 4.5 million of them young children. Applying that same methodology to the proposed UK aid cuts would mean an additional 3.69 million deaths by 2030, and 1.18 million of those would be children. Who speaks for them? What do Articles 6 and 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child mean for them? What do they do for them?
The Government cannot claim that they are unaware of the effects of these cuts. Their own equality impact assessments of the reductions in ODA, published last year, warned them of the risks to life in cuts to health spending.
On Saturday I had the great privilege of joining more than 2,000 others at Methodist Central Hall to mark the 80th anniversary of the first meeting of the UN General Assembly. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, the Attorney-General, spoke passionately for the Government about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and reminded us that
“every person, by virtue of their humanity, has protected universal rights”.
But rights do not feed the hungry and heal the sick unless we uphold them and apply them as a measure of our actions too.
My request to the Minister this evening is this: before the revised allocations in the aid budget are implemented for the next financial year, will she ask the Attorney-General to review them to ensure that they are fully compatible with our responsibilities to protect those most in need in our world and our obligations under international law, which we have done so much in this country over the past 80 years to shape and uphold? If she does, perhaps we may rediscover the philosophy of human solidarity of which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, reminded us at the beginning of this debate.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate and his deep and long-standing commitment to these issues, which serves as a great example to us all in this House.
In one of my unpaid personal roles I chair USPG, a global Anglican mission agency. We are celebrating our 325th birthday this year. We have been operating for a long time, and we operate across much of the globe. It is in that capacity in particular that I have become aware, through the contact we have with people in various jurisdictions, of places not only where atrocities are regularly committed against religious and ethnic minorities—sometimes Christians, but not exclusively—but where the security or the political situation is edging towards a greater risk of atrocity crimes and crimes against humanity in the future.
I am going to avoid the word genocide, because I am cautious about where I use it. If we use it too widely, we devalue a very powerful word that we must save for situations that are absolutely clear.
Clearly, sometimes there are atrocities committed in Britain. In my time as its bishop, Manchester has suffered both the arena attack of 2017 and the murderous assault at Heaton Park synagogue just a few months ago. But my remarks are about the wider global context. They are about places where the situation descends into a context where atrocities become systemic, and we are very much not that.
The one thing I have learned is that there can be so many different reasons why this happens. Some are cases of weak government—think of the eastern DRC, where Christian civilians are targeted by armed extremists, some of them affiliated with ISIS. There are attacks on churches, massacres during worship and killings of whole villages. The DRC is an example of a long-standing weak state. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned Darfur. I will not repeat his comments, but that is a similar example.
For these places, where the problem is the weakness of the governmental institutions, what can the UK Government do? Can we still use soft power as we often have so well in the past to support the establishment of better governmental institutions? How can we help regimes manage their countries better? Sometimes, that is by taking a long view. We have educated many future leaders. They have not all turned out to be good ones, but at least some have. What is it today?
It is not always about weak and ineffective government. Sometimes, atrocities happen where the Government themselves are behind them. Earlier this evening I was at a meeting on the estate discussing Iran. There are lots of Iranian refugees in my diocese. There are several Farsi-speaking clergy and several Farsi worshipping congregations. Perhaps Iran—along with Myanmar, which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, spoke about so eloquently—represents what happens when long-standing authoritarian Governments begin to face serious challenge.
One particularly distressing development in Iran is the increased use of maiming rather than killing. Not only does that reduce the fatality figures that inevitably dominate the news cycle but it can be politically expedient. As we have seen in the past in parts of Africa and elsewhere, if you kill someone, you make their family your enemy. If you maim someone, you make their family their carers.
How can the UK Government better support those at risk from the most oppressive regimes? We have debated refugee status so many times in this House— I will not go there tonight—but what can we do to support those at risk from the most oppressive regimes, particularly when those regimes are beginning to collapse?
We need to be alert to a lot of places where perhaps there are not a lot of atrocities committed at the moment but there is great potential in the future. I worry greatly about the situation in India—the increasing violence and the way in which the current regime in India does little to restrict that violence and its more extreme adherents and followers. The situation there has deteriorated dramatically over the last 10 years. Christians, Muslims and other minority groups are often picked on and treated in the most appalling manner. I will not go into a great list. That is an example where I fear that one of the problems we face is that our own commercial interests can trump challenging atrocities.
I remember an OQ that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked about a year ago, and I came in behind him. It was about West Papua, and we were told, “Indonesia is an important trading partner; we can’t get too cross with it”. I am old enough to remember the ethical foreign policy of the incoming Blair Government in 1997. That did not last very long, did it? Are we now in an era when UK commercial interest trumps—and the pun is intended—any matters of morality? That was the principle that justified the worst excesses of our own colonial history in centuries past. Does it have to be how we choose to exercise our foreign policy in 2026?
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on introducing this debate. I am incredibly grateful to him for all he does to ensure that human rights are never forgotten in this House. This is an important topic to address, now more than ever. I declare my interest as co-chair of the Women, Peace and Security APPG and a member of the steering board of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, and I set up and chair the Afghan Women’s Support Forum.
The Red Cross reports that the global situation of armed conflict has deteriorated into a world succumbing to war, characterised by more than 130 active conflicts, more than double the number of conflicts 15 years ago. Wars are increasingly protracted, complex and deadly, with 204 million people now living in areas controlled or contested by armed groups. The ICRC warns that the rules of war are being ignored, with civilians bearing the brunt of attacks and women disproportionately affected. It was Major-General Patrick Cammaert who said:
“It is now more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern wars”.
This was brought home to me when I visited Iraq last year. I had the privilege of visiting Lalish, the most sacred temple of the Yazidis. In 2014, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to, ISIL attacked the Yazidi people at Sinjar, destroying their 400,000-strong community, killing many and taking around 6,000 women and girls captive to be used as sex slaves. The UK recognised this as a genocide, and today, nearly 11 years on, a third of the women and girls are still missing.
There are so many other examples, as we have already heard, some of which have already been raised: gender apartheid in Afghanistan, child hostages and the use of rape in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Ethiopia, Haiti, DRC, Nigeria, Myanmar, the Uyghurs in China—all heartbreaking stories.
States have a legal obligation to prevent atrocities, and there are a number of international protection mechanisms in place. However, despite their powerful wording, these mechanisms are globally weak, and often there is a lack of political will with hard-worked-for commitments not integrated into policy or programmes. There is a glaring gap globally between the obligations under the Geneva conventions and action.
I understand that the UK maintains it has tools available to prevent atrocity crimes abroad, including early warning mechanisms, the use of diplomacy to de-escalate and development to address root causes. However, the Trump Administration have slashed overseas development aid. Why have the UK and others followed suit at this critical time, often removing life-saving help from the poorest countries? Most importantly, we should be investing more into conflict prevention so that atrocities are never committed. This would save not only lives but billions of pounds by averting the massive costs of war and fostering stable societies with economic growth and improved livelihoods. Studies show that every £1 invested could save as much as £100.
However, the report by Mercy Corps and Saferworld last year revealed a sharp decline in in the UK’s investment in peacebuilding, violence prevention and conflict resolution in recent years—an area in which it was once a leader. In conflict resolution, it is proven that including women in peace processes is crucial for durable peace, yet women remain significantly under- represented as negotiators, mediators and signatories despite efforts to increase their roles in peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The UK has just withdrawn funding for the Women Mediators across the Commonwealth network.
Too often, these crimes are committed with impunity for the perpetrators. In talking to survivors of atrocities, most will say that they want justice, yet the mechanisms for this are ineffectual, and, often, the nations where the crime is committed have no institutions or appetite to address this. How can the ICJ, the ICC and universal jurisdiction become more effective? We must not fall into the trap of mistaking process for progress, status for impact or rhetoric for action. Clearly, we need to try to ensure peace at all costs, yet the UK appears to be cutting its contribution to conflict prevention and resolution and international development at this critical time. Most importantly, we need to stand up to those who wish to ignore and undermine existing international mechanisms and instead help to strengthen them and make them more effective. I leave you with the words of Ernest Hemingway, who said:
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime”.
Lord Rook (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate, and, as others have said, for his timeless commitment to these issues. I direct noble Lords to my interest as a partner of the Good Faith Partnership and as one of the founders of the UK Freedom of Religion or Belief Forum. At the outset, I also want to thank the Minister, my noble friend Lady Chapman, for her leadership on these issues. I met the noble Baroness earlier today and I am hugely grateful to her and her team for their sustained efforts to reduce conflict and promote peace in some of the most challenging contexts around our world.
It is now almost seven years since the FCDO published the Bishop of Truro review, commissioned by the then Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. That report, led by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, now the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, Philip Mounstephen, assessed both the scale of persecution faced by Christians globally and the adequacy of our foreign policy response. Government accepted all 22 recommendations, and an independent review in 2022 welcomed further progress while also identifying the need to strengthen protections for vulnerable communities. Further progress has been made under the current Government, and, in particular, I commend the work of my honourable friend David Smith MP in the other place as the UK’s Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief. I also want to welcome the FCDO’s strategy for FoRB. Its willingness to identify countries of concern and prioritise specific contexts signals a welcome move towards a more proactive approach, an approach that has already been affirmed on multiple occasions by noble Lords in this debate.
By implementing the Truro recommendations, His Majesty’s Government can go a considerable way in dealing with the issues at stake in this discussion. More often than not, FoRB violations are a symptom of wider sociopolitical problems and instability. Left untreated, these issues all too easily escalate, resulting in wider harms and the potential for greater atrocities. Furthermore, the systems required for early interventions in relation to FoRB violations will increase and accelerate our ability to prevent further atrocities. As with the other 21 recommendations, His Majesty’s Government accepted recommendation 7 of the Truro review in full. There have been valuable developments since. These include the creation of the Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation and the Mass Atrocity Prevention Hub, and the development of early warning tools such as the Countries at Risk of Instability process and Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability assessments.
In terms similar to those used by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, earlier, the UN Secretary-General has warned that the world is witnessing the highest number of conflicts since the end of the Second World War, with rising identity-based violence and serious violations of international human rights ever more prevalent. In such a fragile global order, readiness to act is essential. My question is therefore focused and simple. How is recommendation 7 of the Truro review being refreshed in practice? What further steps does the Minister believe are now needed to ensure that early warning consistently leads to early action, particularly where religious persecution significantly heightens the risk of future atrocities?
The Truro review gave us a framework. The Government’s FoRB strategy gives us renewed momentum. The task now is to ensure that recommendation 7 is fully realised so that our commitment to prevention is not only principled and aspirational but operational and effective.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this important debate. Truly, he is the greatest parliamentary champion for human rights that this country has had since William Wilberforce. If you want to know just how good he is, he is the only Member of Parliament sanctioned by China, Iran and North Korea. That, to me, puts him on the side of the angels.
Tonight, I want to focus on a group no one cares much about: the genocide of Christians worldwide. The UK and the West rightly reacted strongly over the murder of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995, but since then we have had 8,000 Christians killed every two years—4,000 a year for the last 30 years. That is 120,000 worldwide, with at least 50,000 of them massacred in Nigeria alone.
Persecution of Christians takes many forms: targeted killings, kidnappings, forced displacement, arson and attacks on churches, legal discrimination, imprisonment, and social exclusion. The organisation Open Doors reports more than 365 million Christians facing high to extreme persecution. Persecution is concentrated in several regions and countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is identified as the most violent region for Christians, with extremist religious groups and weak governance driving attacks. Countries repeatedly ranked highest for severity include Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan.
What do these countries have in common? The killing there is done by Islamic extremist Governments or out-of-control Islamic factions dedicated to killing Christians. Islamic extremists are killing Christians at the rate of one Srebrenica every two years. The killing ranges from individual murders and targeted assassinations to mass attacks on communities and churches.
What does the UK do about it? The short answer is absolutely nothing under all Governments for the last 30 to 40 years. Theoretically, the United Kingdom evaluates atrocity risks through something called the Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability, the JACS, which the Government say is a—wait for it—strategic, cross-government assessment used by the UK Government to understand the causes, the actors, and the drivers of conflict in a specific country so as to inform effective policy and drive action, which is early warnings, diplomatic pressure, sanctions and development aid restrictions.
The JACS are not published, and everyone knows that they are useless and never implemented. The Commons International Development Committee has long called for improvements, but they were rejected by the last Government, and this one have said they will not implement them either. The JACs are a big joke, but not for the tens of thousands of murdered Christians or the hundreds of thousands driven from their homes. We do not need early warnings to understand the causes, the actors or the drivers of genocide; we just need to do something about it when we see it under our noses all around the world. How much more understanding of Muslim genocide of Christians in Nigeria, Eritrea, Sudan or Somalia do we need before cutting off aid to the countries doing it or doing nothing about it?
Last year, we gave £201 million to Afghanistan, £143 million to Somalia, £142 million to Yemen, £108 million to Nigeria, and £133 million to Pakistan, which, like Nigeria, is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, spending $1 billion on nuclear weapons and $9 billion on defence. UK taxpayers fund that country, which specialises in bombing churches to kill Christians. On Afghanistan, we say that it is focusing on vulnerable women and girls, food security, health, and education. Really? The Taliban have banned girls from education after primary school, restricted their access to healthcare and restricted where they can work, causing poverty.
In September, Germany, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands announced legal action before the International Court of Justice against Afghanistan’s violence against women. Can the Minister tell me whether the UK will join these countries in legal action against the Taliban, or will we just carry on giving them the money? Afghanistan is a thoroughly evil regime which despises everything we believe in, and we just keep pouring in money in the naive belief that we are making a difference and helping women and girls.
If we want to help stop the killing of Christians, let us stop funding the countries that are doing it.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this debate, and I too pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his team for their tireless work that focuses on atrocity prevention and human rights.
The question before us is practical and legal. How do the Government assess the risk of genocide and mass atrocities, and what do they do when the risk is evident? Article 1 of the genocide prevention convention is explicit. We undertake
“to prevent and to punish”
genocide. That is a binding obligation which we have signed up to.
History shows that genocide is rarely sudden. It does not start with a mass grave, a massacre or a rape camp. It is preceded by recognisable patterns: dehumanising language, othering, scapegoating of minorities, pressure on independent media and civil society, corruption and state capture, and security forces or militias acting without constraint. Those are the conditions in which atrocity crimes become possible. We have seen this sequence too often, in Rwanda, Darfur, Srebrenica, in the persecution of Yazidis, Christians, as my noble friend said, and the Rohingya—now before the International Court of Justice, alongside allegations related to persecution of Uyghurs—and in Ukraine and Gaza. The common thread is not lack of warning, but delay and the failure of resolve and political will while action was still possible.
Others have already addressed many contexts in which genocide has happened or is happening. I will focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thirty years after the genocide that was committed in Srebrenica, the risk of relapse must be treated seriously. A recent policy briefing on Bosnia produced by the Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes—here I declare an interest as one of the members of its advisory board—identified familiar risks: the hollowing of state institutions, normalised hate speech, genocide denial, the celebration of convicted war criminals, corruption and parallel security structures. These are not isolated incidents.
The evidence is clear. Senior political figures in the Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska—ethno-nationalists aligned with the Kremlin—have denied genocide and publicly honoured convicted war criminals, including Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić. In this climate, all the non-Serbs are again spoken of not as equal citizens but as a threat—a threat that needs to be dealt with.
I welcome the Government’s stated support for Bosnia’s sovereignty and the Dayton settlement, and their stated commitment to EUFOR Althea, but the central question is whether this deters those prepared to push the boundaries. Deterrence is not achieved by statements. It exists only when spoilers calculate that consequences will follow from their actions.
With this in mind, I will ask several questions. Recently, the United States has regrettably lifted sanctions on the very people who are looking to destabilise the country, denying genocide and seeking separatist actions. Will the Government state unequivocally that the United Kingdom will not follow suit?
On enforcement, what concrete steps are being taken to prevent sanctions evasion through proxies, front companies and permissive jurisdictions? What further actions will be taken against those who finance and facilitate destabilisation? Additionally, I hope that the review of the foreign influence registration scheme and lobbying rules will look into paid political influence activity carried out in the United Kingdom on behalf of foreign authorities and organisations whose senior leadership is subject to UK sanctions.
On EUFOR, annual renewals at the UN Security Council create a cliff edge and an invitation to brinkmanship. Will the Government press for a more resilient mandate, including longer authorisation, so that the stability of Bosnia is not exposed to predictable yearly risks?
There is also a practical signal available right now. Would the Government consider the deployment of a small UK specialist training contingent to Bosnia, with a readiness to bolster troop strength if required? In parallel, will they also work with supportive states on co-ordinated sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, to secure compliance with international law of those bent on destabilisation?
Atrocity prevention depends on timely decisions, credible consequences and consistent enforcement. I believe that Bosnia is a country where deterrence can still work and where acting now can prevent not only instability but the crimes that so often follow it.
Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this timely debate and thank all noble Lords who have spoken in it. The contributions have been extremely thoughtful, especially from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, who reminds us that these things do not always happen on the other side of the world; they are closer to home and more prevalent.
We cannot continue to think of atrocity crimes—genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing —as rare events. They are increasingly at the heart of today’s most difficult foreign policy crises, from Sudan to Myanmar, and from Gaza to Ukraine. Identity-based violence has become a weapon of choice for authoritarians and extremists, yet our systems for understanding and preventing such crimes have not kept pace.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s recent report on Sudan made the situation painfully clear. It revealed that, despite clear warnings, the Government have
“opted to take the least ambitious approach to the prevention of atrocities”.
That should trouble us all. When a system fails to generate bold, timely policy options, Ministers are left unable to act with the agency such crises demand. So I ask the Minister: what lessons have been taken from Sudan and how can the Government’s approach change to ensure that early risk analysis now triggers early preventive action?
This matters all the more now, as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s internal restructuring appears to be placing the very capability to evaluate atrocity risks at risk itself. This is not simply a reshuffling of desks; it has real implications for our ability to detect, analyse and respond to mass violence. Can the Minister show the House that atrocity prevention expertise will be safeguarded and not decreased in this process?
Finally, the whistleblower’s account that references to a possible “genocide” in Sudan were removed from internal risk assessments should prompt the most serious reflection. If officials feel unable to use the very term that describes the gravest of crimes, when the evidence points clearly in that direction, then we must confront why crucial analysis is not guiding timely action. Does the Minister agree that one of the lessons to learn from Sudan must be to strengthen the channels of honesty and accountability?
Watching and documenting atrocities is not enough. Prevention demands more than observation; it requires analysis to drive decisive action, backed by systems and structures strong enough to ensure accountability. Without such commitments, our ability to protect vulnerable populations and uphold our moral responsibilities will always fall short.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on securing this timely debate. In our increasingly unstable world, the incidence of atrocities has grown in recent years, as mentioned by all noble Lords. The noble Lord has long been an effective champion for the victims of crimes against humanity and genocide. In particular, he has consistently stood up for the Uyghurs, who have suffered so much at the hands of the Chinese Government.
The regimes and organisations that commit atrocities invariably seek to hide their crimes through information blackouts and suppression of freedom of speech. Photographic evidence is particularly powerful, and that is why those who perpetrate these crimes seek to suppress images. The importance of image-based evidence was demonstrated in the case of the massacres in Sudan, where the evidence could be seen from space using satellite imaging.
None of us will forget the harrowing images we have seen from Ukraine; and in Iran, despite the regime’s internet blackout, the evidence of murder of protesters is irrefutable. On the situation in Iran, as highlighted by the right reverend Prelate, the Times reported this weekend that as many as 16,500 protesters may have been killed by the Iranian regime. Has the Minister been able to verify any of these reports, and what steps are Ministers taking in response to them?
The systematic mass murder of civilians on this scale must be met with the harshest condemnation. We have debated the plight of the Uyghurs on many previous occasions. Can the Minister please set out what work the Government are doing to verify and monitor reports of abuses by the Chinese Government? When was the last time Ministers in her department raised this issue, and their concerns, with the Chinese Government?
The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, is completely right to have triggered this important debate. We do need to monitor risks and rapidly developing situations where atrocity crimes are likely. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, I begin as everybody else has done, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. I know he does not need this, but I will just say how much I respect and value his contributions in this House generally; tonight we heard a particularly powerful speech from him.
By contributing in this way, the noble Lord manages to keep raising the issues of atrocity prevention, genocide determination, and the atrocities that too often we see happening around the world. He brings them to us and makes sure that they are never, ever to be ignored, and that we cannot turn away. I really do thank him for doing that. I did not know he had written a book; I will find myself a copy and make sure that I read it.
I am very grateful for the discussions we have had, not just tonight but in recent months, particularly on Sudan but on many other areas as well. This has to be among the most sobering and serious of subjects that we discuss in this House: the very worst of atrocities that humans commit against each other. I thank everyone for their contributions, although I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that I do not think everybody sees things in exactly the same way when it comes to the role our ODA programmes play; we can come on to that.
I have to begin, as the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, did, with an alarming acknowledgement that across the globe, conflict is reaching record levels, and with it so too is abhorrent violence. The noble Earl asked me if I can verify reports of the numbers coming from Iran. I am afraid I cannot do that this evening, but I am sure that we will be bringing information to the House as soon as possible, as he would want us to do.
I think people across the country are completely horrified at the accounts we are starting to hear from Iran, as well as from Sudan, certainly Gaza, from Ukraine for sure, and the from eastern DRC. We can all list these dreadful contexts. The regularity with which we are hearing such stories can leave the public, as well as us in this House, at a loss as to what we can do. Therefore, it is with a great deal of humility that I set out the UK Government’s position on this. I have met the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, to discuss the specific issue of genocide determination and universal jurisdiction. The situation I am going to lay out is the situation as it is today. That does not mean that there cannot be movement in the future. We take on board the challenge that comes on this critical issue—this is not something that can never change.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, last week, we had a discussion on aid programmes and the decision to cut our official development assistance, which we did because we wanted to spend more on hard power. That was a conscious choice we felt that we needed to make in the context that we find ourselves in. The events of recent days may lead some people to think that that was the right decision. I point out that most ODA spend is not the humanitarian assistance that he may remember as a Minister and which he described this evening. The vast majority of the humanitarian work that we do is done through multilaterals. We are the largest contributor to Gavi and we are a considerable contributor to the Global Fund and to the World Bank’s IDA programme. We are the biggest contributor to the African Development Fund, which is an African-led organisation. It leverages in far more than any programme or ODA budget that we would ever have been able to provide for Africa. We are dramatically changing how we do this. Perhaps I could organise a briefing for the noble Lord to explain this in more depth. Exchanges like this are helpful but I doubt that I would ever be able to persuade him through this mechanism, so a more detailed conversation might be worthwhile.
Identifying the risks of atrocities early, as the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and others have said, is essential to prevention. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester raised the importance of working on democratic structures and strengthening civil society organisations. I absolutely agree with him on that. Respectfully, I disagree slightly, in that he said that we privilege our economic connections ahead of all other considerations. I do not think that is true. The sanctions that we implement and the positions that we have taken around Ukraine very much do not bear that out. However, I take the point he makes in the spirit that he makes it.
The UK monitors risks around the world. We assess a range of factors, including ongoing armed conflict, a history of unaddressed human rights violations, and, as the right reverend Prelate said, inadequate state structures. Too often, it is states that are responsible for atrocities, but sometimes it is armed groups, such as in Haiti, which was mentioned, and Sudan and Colombia. We fund work with an exceptional organisation, Geneva Call, which attempts to work with these groups. We focus on countries and regions where the risks are most concerning and where the warning signs of imminent violence are strongest. We target UK action where we can help prevent horrific atrocities, including genocide and crimes against humanity, working alongside civil society, academic experts, bilateral partners and multilateral organisations.
I completely share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, about the persecution of Christians. However, I assure him that we do not give money to the Taliban. We fund some programming in Afghanistan. It is incredibly limited, because it is a difficult place to operate, but it is humanitarian work around finding ways to fund and make possible the education of girls. We do that with partners on the ground and through the World Service, which has done some amazing, inspiring work that enables that to be possible. Noble Lords should not think that just because money is being spent in a particular geography that it is given to the Government of that country. That is very often not the case.
There are a number of tools that we use. At the forefront are our joined-up assessments of conflict and stability across countries and regions. That is a process that we updated in 2024. Noble Lords have expressed a desire to have those assessments shared with Parliament. We can all appreciate why that might not always be what happens, but I commit to taking that back and re-challenging ourselves on whether we can hold up that decision. I think that is a fair question to ask the Government.
The approach that we have draws together a vast pool of insight and expertise to identify the actors and drivers of conflict and guide our interventions to promote stability, security and peace in the long term. We have our global network of embassies. They play an important role in many aspects of this. An example I would use is our team in Kyiv, supported by specialist technical advisers and analysts.
The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, explained really well the work that is done to help identify and assess risk and then support efforts to keep civilians safe amid ongoing attacks on civilians. She explained how this could have been done in Rwanda. I visited the genocide museum in Rwanda recently, and I recognise what she was saying. Because of time, if she does not mind, I will write to her on the specific issues around Bosnia, partly because I do not know off the top of my head the answers to all her questions, but they are issues that need to be responded to.
It is important that as a founding member and chair of the conference of participants of the register of damage, we hold Russia accountable for its crimes in Ukraine and work alongside fellow signatories to the convention to establish an international claims commission. We worked with the US and the EU to establish the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, co-ordinating support for the office of the prosecutor-general of Ukraine, and we back efforts—I know the House is concerned about this—to identify the tens of thousands of boys and girls snatched from their families, deported and indoctrinated by Russia in a revolting attempt to erase the future of an entire nation, and help to bring them home, with over £2.8 million committed to that important work. I know that colleagues across both Houses are helping to do all we can to raise awareness of this.
We are strengthening our own systems. On the issue of FCDO 2030, several noble Lords asked about the staffing reductions at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I support the process being undertaken because the truth is that, compared with 10 years ago, even taking into account the merger of the two departments, there are 30% more people working there than before. We really have to challenge ourselves about whether that is the most efficient and dynamic way to run that organisation. We will be making changes, but I can commit to noble Lords that on the assertion that there will be less emphasis, skill and resource put into the work on atrocity prevention, conflict prevention and related issues, the hub is being taken into a wider team—so, in fact, there will be more people working on this important issue.
In response to questions from the noble Lord, Lord Rook, about the review—he specifically asked about recommendation 7—we will continue to develop our capacity to respond to atrocity risks, drawing on expertise across government and beyond, including from civil society, academia, co-operation with bilateral partners and multilateral organisations. We remain committed to this, and we will continue to do the work that is needed. Through the FCDO’s transformation plan between now and 2030, we will be updating how we work because we have to be more agile and more focused on impact.
Finally, I want to just underline the Government’s commitment to this. We will be strengthening our ability to identify risks at the earliest stage possible, deploying our global network of diplomatic and technical expertise and supporting efforts to save lives, uphold international law and break the cycle of violence that drives displacement and instability in the long term. The UK has an important role to play. We will continue to work alongside our international partners because we must do all we can to prevent atrocities wherever we can.