Sexual Violence in Conflict (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Sexual Violence in Conflict Committee (Session 2015–16, HL Paper 123).

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, my first and most pleasant duty is to thank the committee for its amazing work. This is a report of substance and with considerable recommendations in it. We have already had the Government’s response, for which we thank the Minister. In my remarks I will also comment on potential next steps, but first I thank the committee and say what a pleasure it was to work with each and every one of them. I am grateful for that opportunity, and for the large number of the committee members able to be in their seats this evening.

Of course, the report came about because of the hard work of our clerks as well. I thank seriously and significantly Aaron Speer, Cathryn Auplish and Thomas Cheminais for their enormous diligence and exceptional hard work. They were supported by Professor Chinkin, who is the director of the Centre for Women Peace and Security at the London School of Economics, as well as being emeritus professor of international law at that university, and by Owen Williams, who deals with House of Lords media and supported us with the launch of the committee’s work, the launch of our report, and on this debate. We thank you all. We believe our work shows our gratitude for everything you have done.

Our topic, the prevention of sexual violence in conflict, was exceedingly familiar to us through its identification by the former Foreign Secretary, my noble friend Lord Hague of Richmond, who placed PSVI as a new pillar of UK foreign policy, in which he was supported by my noble friend Lady Helic. I pay warm tribute to them both. Without that clear leadership, Britain would have had no capacity to focus internationally on this most important topic. Their Lordships drew in Angelina Jolie Pitt, the famous actress and UNHCR ambassador. DfID came in strongly under the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, to whom we are most grateful, with the important departmental policy on women and girls. A key focus of the committee was on men and boys—this is a crime against the whole human family, not just against one aspect of it.

Magnificent Foreign and Commonwealth Office work brought us the global conference on PSVI in London in June 2014. I was glad to be present; I did not make a contribution. It was a magnificent conference. It led directly to the selection of the topic as a suitable one for an ad hoc Select Committee. We on the committee began our work in mid-summer of 2015—we are debating our findings now—and we have not stopped: we have set up an all-party parliamentary group to continue this vital work.

However, your Lordships may be aware that while those lofty aspirations were being discussed, refined and honed, and support sought and gathered by national leaders and the United Nations, ISIL/Daesh was planting its evil flag in both Syria and Iraq. While we were discussing at the far end of London these great ideals, on the ground a new round of sexual violence in conflict was taking place.

The importance of this topic can be given to us only by the victims themselves. I quote: “How could you do this to me? I am young enough to be your granddaughter”. Another victim related the following exchange: “‘Are you scared?’ I said yes. He laughed and said it wasn’t his problem. He burnt me then with cigarettes on my shoulder, my stomach and my legs. I didn’t even have the strength to speak after that”. Another girl said, “A man came in and said he wanted to marry me. But I told him I wouldn’t marry him even if he killed me. Then he raped me. He was 60 years old. I was just 15. They raped girls as young as 12. They kept a room full of girls younger than 11 with underdeveloped breasts and they felt them every few days to see whether their chests were developed enough to make it worth while raping them”. Another victim said, “One of my friends killed herself. She went to the bathroom and slit her wrists. Then they started raping us. We were screaming and crying. When I saw they were raping girls every day, I decided to try to kill myself as well. I didn’t succeed. They brought me back to the room, still alive, and as my punishment they locked me for 12 hours in the room with six armed guards who raped me in every orifice of my body right throughout that time. I was in agony. I bled so much”.

That is why we gave such incredible attention to this most miserable of topics. I met those three Yazidi girls who gave us their stories in Baghdad in April 2015. They begged me to have their voices heard. Where better could I take them than our committee? With FCO backing and Home Office support, I brought them to London and to the committee. I pay tribute here to the Prevent programme, whose advice, guidance and help were magnificent. They made a small film of the girls, covering their faces. That went round every single British school. We visited Birmingham and the “Trojan horse” schools and had a massive impact on those young people. I chair the AMAR Foundation, which provided medical cover and administrative support, but the British Government were amazing.

We heard in the committee from other victims, too. A very brave young woman from Uganda, who had been kidnapped and kept in the bush, told us her story. She had been there for years. When she came out, she told us all about victims not being accepted again into their families, which gave us a lot to think about. Three members of your Lordships’ committee visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We met there other victims. I recall a girl on a hospital bed who had just arrived—there were only two hospitals in DRC that she could go to; it had taken her two weeks to arrive with her mother. She was 14 and speechless. She had been raped by a gang who were supposedly peacekeepers. She needed surgery. The doctor, who had trained in Glasgow, told me that when these girls are pregnant, their wombs will burst, because they are not just raped by other bodies but raped with bits of armaments, wood and nails, so inside their bodies are destroyed. The same goes on for men and boys as well. Physical health and mental trauma are necessary to address.

Our investigations opened a Pandora’s box of horrors—Dürer’s descent into hell was as nothing to what we heard. Our committee took oral and written evidence from many people; many sessions went on. We understand that we steadily compiled the largest single body of work on PSVI to have been collected. We hope that it will help the various universities, which are showing enormous interest in this work. I was given the opportunity by the committee to go to the recent World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May this year, exactly a year after the committee started its work. Keen interest was shown there, too.

This is an important topic, and our overwhelming view as we compiled our report was that the British Government were right to highlight this crime against humanity; that it was a crime that has been in the shadows but one of massive proportions; and that the British Government should not give up and that what they have started they must carry on. We also concluded that this needed a whole-society approach; it cannot be done by government alone. That is because this crime against humanity is no single episode, nor does it cease when the rapist leaves. The destruction of the victim’s personality has been achieved; their core strengths have been demolished; their belief in their own integrity has gone; their trust in others has disappeared. Like torture victims, they are supplicants pleading for life and safety. In that condition, they become victims again. Many go into camps; they become trafficked, forcibly married or squatters. They live from hand to mouth. Frequently, they are not accepted by their families or their villages. Sometimes, we heard that their physical condition is so appalling that the stench is too great for others to go near them. A whole-healing approach is needed, for body, mind and spirit, for individuals, families, communities and regions.

I pay warm tribute to the Minister, who has travelled and spoken tirelessly in affected countries—country after country. Only two weeks ago, she pleaded the case for PSVI in the United Nations. I give tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby who joined me at an important four-day conference that we held in Windsor Castle with LDS Charities and the AMAR Foundation, with the backing of Westminster Abbey and Cumberland Lodge. We focused on religious persecution as a driver for forced migration, which must also be taken into account and not just looked at from a humanitarian aspect. That is because most people want to go home and to have a safe future. Very often, religion is used as a cover for theft of property and lives. We have to address these things as well as the humanitarian angle on its own.

Sexual violence in conflict is a moral issue. It destroys the family, which is the basic unit of society. Its impact on the development of peace and security is appalling, and the attacks on the right to worship make it a political as well as a religious issue. It is undoubtedly a legal issue. I believe, as does I think the committee, that if we are the largest aid donor in the world and as the banner-bearer of human rights everywhere with our Modern Slavery Act, Bribery Act and our strong justice and rule of law, it is a British issue. As we reconfigure our international relationships today, we will be even better placed to be the lodestar for the world.

The special rapporteur for the departing Secretary-General for the United Nations is Zainab Bangura. She comments on PSVI that this violence,

“casts a long shadow over our collective humanity”.

We in the UK can lift that shadow. To do so, we now need a robust strategic interdepartmental plan supported and implemented by all aspects of British society, with full transparency and common sharing of achievements—a plan and outcomes. That is the way in which the suffering of millions of victims over the years that we have heard and found out about can be not assuaged because it happened but prevented in future. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

I thank the Minister immensely for her rich and robust reply, which has given us much to work on in partnership. Across your Lordships’ House this evening, there has been a complete singularity of purpose. Therefore, in partnership we can do a whole lot more. The noble Lord, Lord Hague of Richmond, started off by saying, “Let’s do something”. Now, let us do something more—that is the next step. I thank the Minister and everyone who has spoken. I look forward to the next round. We have an APPG meeting next Wednesday, where we will launch a campaign.

Motion agreed.