Forced Marriage

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

We have a major programme which is accelerating action against child and early forced marriage. We have been leaders in this area and put significant resource into it, and it has been engaging. We need to remind people not about the need for new declarations and new initiatives but of the fact that, 70 years ago, this matter was in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 16.2 states that there must be consent between the spouses. We just need to hold people to what they have already signed up to.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, given that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, said in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that there was not compelling evidence, will he undertake at least to look at the Aurat Foundation’s evidence of 1,000 forced conversions every year and other evidence from Pakistan that suggests that between 20 and 30 women from Hindu backgrounds are forcibly converted every single month? In citing, as he has done, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, will he point Commonwealth countries to Article 18, which states quite emphatically that everyone has the right to believe, not to believe or to change their beliefs and that no one should be forcibly converted?

[Lord Bates]

That is why we are doing so much in this area. We have done work through the Magna Carta Fund at the Foreign Office; we have new work coming on stream now. This is a fundamental area. Why are we doing it? It is simply because inclusive societies tend to be the most peaceful. Societies which empower and protect women tend to be the most prosperous. If you are in development, that is what you want to happen.

Syria

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, who has been a friend for more than 40 years, for securing this timely and important debate today and for the compassionate and consistent way in which he has championed the cause of the Syrian people. It is a privilege to follow so many moving and powerful speeches.

In September 1980, during my first visit to Syria, I met Hafiz al-Assad, the Syrian President from 1971 to 2000, and father of Bashar al-Assad. The meeting took place on the day on which the eight-year Iran-Iraq war began—a forgotten conflict that claimed the lives of more than 1 million people. Since then, through wars and proxy wars from Iraq to Yemen and through the emergence of barbaric militias and violent ideologies, the region has been convulsed and disfigured by an orgy of unspeakable violence, and those responsible have believed that they will never be held to account.

For eight long years now, as we have heard, Syria has been ravaged, with an estimated 500,000 fatalities, of whom 200,000 are thought to be children. In his moving remarks, the right reverend Prelate told us that we should never give up on hope. He is, of course, right. The one thing left in Pandora’s box was hope.

The practical situation on the ground is this. Since 2011, this war has left more than 13 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, 6.5 million internally displaced and another 5 million clinging to life as refugees in camps and countries far away from their homeland, mostly in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. From Aleppo to Damascus, from Eastern Ghouta and Homs to Palmyra, and now in Afrin, we have watched as internal and external forces have reduced homes, hospitals, schools and communities to rubble. In particular, we have seen appalling depredations committed by ISIS and, subsequently, hundreds of Islamic State fighters fleeing Raqqa, once the group’s de facto capital, but their dispersal does not represent defeat for an ideology that continues to preach hatred and to practise genocide.

As Ministers have conceded, in 2013 the United Kingdom lost its ability to shape events, with Iran rapidly filling that void, followed by Russia in 2015. With Turkey’s intervention in 2018 in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, as we heard, a further 98,000 people have been displaced. Last week, Christian Aid, in a report issued to Members of your Lordships’ House said that there have been widespread reports of arbitrary arrests, threats of violence and looting of civilian property by the Free Syrian Army—a group the United Kingdom Government have previously told us that they support.

The consequences for Syria have been lethal for millions of people, not least in the slaughter of the region’s minorities. On Monday, I attended the opening of a poignant exhibition being staged here in Parliament highlighting the genocide against the Yazidis, who have been subjected to nauseating obscenity and barbarism, rape, enslavement and murder. Nearly 10,000 Yazidis are believed to have been killed or captured by ISIS, with more than 3,000 Yazidi girls and women believed to be currently enslaved in Syria. Christians have also experienced a genocide that began with the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century and continues to this day.

The predators change but the existential threat to the minorities has not. The Chaldean Bishop of Aleppo says that two-thirds of Syrian Christians have either been killed or driven away from his country. I serve as a pro bono member of the board of the charity Aid to the Church in Need, and have been deeply moved by the accounts of many who have given evidence to the charity. The suffering that they have experienced was described last night at a Passiontide Wednesday service at St Patrick’s, Soho. One of those who spoke told me the story of a Christian family: a mother and 12 year-old daughter were raped by ISIS militants, leading the father, who was forced to watch, to commit suicide. One refugee described how she witnessed ISIS crucify her husband on the door to their home.

On 23 July 2014, I wrote in an opinion piece in the Times that,

“the world must wake up urgently to the plight of the ancient churches throughout the region who are faced with the threat of mass murder and mass displacement”.

But as Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar and Christians fled for their lives, the world chose not to wake up and the genocide continued. A 16 year-old Yazidi girl, Ekhlas, subsequently met parliamentarians, including myself, and described crucifixions, beheadings, systematic rape and mass graves.

Following the failure of your Lordships to pass an amendment laid before the House on 20 April 2016 by myself, my noble friend Lady Cox and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and Lady Nicholson, the House of Commons subsequently unanimously approved a Motion tabled by Fiona Bruce MP describing the existential slaughter of these minorities as a genocide and calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. It is on this question of justice—about which I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, and copied the letter to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, on Tuesday of this week—that I want to concentrate the remainder of my remarks.

In 2016, David Cameron said,

“there is a very strong case here for saying that it is genocide, and I hope that it will be portrayed and spoken of as such”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/6/16; col. 168.]

However, the Foreign Office has declined to do so and refused to act on that vote. This has made us derelict in our obligations under the 1948 convention on genocide, which places on us as a signatory a duty to prevent, to protect and to punish. It is the word genocide that could have changed the fate of the nameless thousands of victims and survivors of mass atrocities in Syria and Iraq.

Gregory Stanton, research professor in genocide studies and prevention at George Mason University, conducted a study on the perception and effects of determining genocidal atrocities using the words of “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide”. The results of the study revealed that:

“It was not until the term ‘genocide’ was applied to the crimes, that force was used to stop them ... When the term ‘genocide’ is used to describe crimes against humanity, use of force is possible. When the crimes are only called ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘crimes against humanity’, it is a sure indicator of lack of political will to take forceful action to stop them”.


“Genocide” is a word that makes so much difference. Only by recognising the mass atrocities committed as genocide will victims be able to receive an adequate level of justice. Furthermore, the recognition of genocide matters for their humanitarian assistance, justice and much more besides. The Minister will be aware of the impact that the current policies have had on issues such as, for example, asylum. Less than 1% of those allowed into the UK under the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme come from the groups that I have described as affected by genocide. Everyone affected by war suffers, but either genocide is a crime above all crimes or it is not. Labelling victims simply as “religious groups” is also, in terms of the implementation of things such as asylum policies, a form of reverse discrimination.

In addition to the failure to determine the ISIS atrocities perpetrated against religious minorities in Syria and Iraq as genocide, the atrocities perpetrated by other actors within the regime also have genocidal traits, such as the use of chemical weapons and the intentional starvation of the population. They are most certainly war crimes and crimes against humanity. But what links all these atrocities is a culture of impunity. Do we have the will or the capacity to hold those responsible to account and to bring them to justice? That is the central question. Genocide is the crime above all crimes, and it must be our starting point in upholding internationally agreed law and in determining our priorities in all areas of public policy.

The case of the ISIS genocide against these minorities is a simple one. Daesh fighters have been systematically perpetrating mass atrocities, including killing members of religious groups such as Yazidis, Christians, Shia Muslims and others, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of these groups, deliberately imposing conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. Intent does not have to be inferred from these atrocities. Daesh has been expressing this genocidal intent through social media and in its recruitment and propaganda newsletters and videos. The crucifixion and death of one young man was boastfully posted on the internet. He was crucified for wearing a cross. From the same town local girls were taken as sex slaves. ISIS returned their body parts to the front door of their parents’ homes with a videotape of them being raped.

The UK Government cannot justify hiding behind the long-standing legacy of genocide denial. Ministers say, “It is clearly a matter for judicial authorities to determine whether a genocide has taken place”, and then fail to put in place a mechanism for doing that. They say, “Perpetrators will pay the price”. They have talked about “the long arm of justice” and give the example of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Bosnian men and youths were massacred. Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2006 and led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, spoke at a colloquium on genocide which I convened in your Lordships’ House last week. As Sir Geoffrey made clear, a trial of genocide is not easy, as is clear from the case of Ratko Mladić which, for reasons I shall give, was a surprising choice for the Government to cite. What options do the Government have in seeking to justify their position for leaving genocidal determination to the international judicial system? There is the International Criminal Court but vetoes and hostility by key members of the Security Council sadly make it unlikely that the ICC would be a realistic mechanism to deal with these events.

Another mechanism might be something like the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, whose role the Government regularly now cite. But, to be clear, the ICTY was an ad hoc tribunal with a limited jurisdiction. The court was established after a commission of experts, established by the UN Security Council, determined in its interim report that “ethnic cleanings” were perpetrated. This was before it prepared a final report confirming that genocide and other mass atrocities had been perpetrated. This determination of genocide by the commission of experts was the key to establishing the ad hoc tribunal and ensuring that the perpetrators were brought to justice. It was the interim determination by the commission of experts and not the ICTY’s final judgment that was the first and most important step towards justice. This point needs to be fully understood. If there is no special ad hoc tribunal or no existing court capable of making an adjudication, there will be no consideration of the atrocities that would result in a final judgment acceptable to the UK Government.

Secondly, as Gladstone once observed, justice delayed can be justice denied. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, confirmed in a reply to me last week that Mladić was arrested 16 years after he was charged and convicted only in November 2017—two decades after his genocidal atrocities had taken place. If a perpetrator is never charged with genocide, he will not be convicted of genocide, so the UK Government will not gain the final judgment necessary to make a genocidal determination. I have never argued that the UK Government should undertake the role of being a court to make the final determination. But they can make a qualified determination, subject to evidence and final judgment. It is the interim determination of genocide that can trigger further steps, as in case of the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and elsewhere. This is precisely the approach taken by the Dutch Government, now temporary members of the Security Council, and it is in the provisions of my Private Member’s Bill before your Lordships’ House.

Under the genocide convention, the Government have a duty in law to act, and act they must. Syria desperately needs an end to violations against the civilian population, including summary executions, hostage-taking, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and sexual violence. It needs the release of children, women, the elderly and the disabled from detention centres. It needs an end to siege tactics, to ensure that there is immediate and timely access to, and provision of, humanitarian assistance. One day it will need both the right to return and protection. If ever future genocides and crimes against humanity are contemplated, the world needs to see that perpetrators of such crimes will be held to account and that any final settlement will not include amnesties for gross violations of human rights, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. All those who have suffered in Syria’s bloodletting deserve nothing less.

National Debt

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I again refer to the Statement, in which the Chancellor announced that in areas of high demand and low affordability local authorities would be given that additional flexibility, which is welcome.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, while we welcome the reductions in national debt, will the Minister confirm that household debt has been going in the opposite direction and that over the last five years there has been a 7% increase in personal debt to a staggering £1.6 trillion? Given that this is quite an albatross around the necks of many of the poorer families to which the Minister has referred, what are the Government doing to try to reduce the levels of personal debt?

[Lord Bates]

There are two things that we can do. One we have done already: the action that we took on payday loans, placing a cap on the appalling rates of interest that were being charged, was the right thing to do. Extending that to other areas of financial services is also right. But ultimately, the best thing that we can do for people who are struggling with debt is to provide work and opportunities so that they can repay that debt and provide a living and a hope for the future of their families.

Yarl’s Wood: Hunger Strike

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right about victims of sexual abuse being deemed vulnerable adults. Stephen Shaw made recommendations about the treatment of vulnerable adults in detention. As the noble Lord will know, we are working with NGOs on the definition of torture, because the courts challenged us on it, but we are alive to some of the vulnerable people who might be in detention for a number of reasons, including sexual abuse.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, after my noble friend Lord Hylton and I visited Yarl’s Wood, we reported back to your Lordships’ House that we had seen significant progress and improvements there. Does the noble Baroness not agree that there is a danger that that could be jeopardised for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, describes? There are some 400 people there now, some feeling a sense of real desperation. The shadow of fear hangs over them, such as the woman who came here as an 11 year-old girl and is now 35 years of age. After living in this country for 24 years, she has been taken to Yarl’s Wood. Does the noble Baroness not agree that it is worth looking at specific cases, such as of those now on hunger strike? Can she tell the House any more about the health and well-being of those currently on hunger strike and whether they have proper access to legal aid and representation?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right that individual cases should always be treated sensitively. If the noble Lord could outline an individual case for me, I will certainly take it back. The last thing we want for people in detention is for them to be refusing food and fluid. Legal representation is available to people. There are specific rules on how we should treat sensitively those with mental health problems, vulnerable adults and traumatised people in detention.

Refugees: Teaching of English

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to provide additional resources to programmes for the teaching of English to refugees.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the importance of the English language for refugee integration. The Government have provided additional funding of £10 million under the vulnerable persons relocation scheme for more English classes, childcare facilities and local co-ordination of English language provision. English language tuition is also available for refugees under the arrangements for adult learners.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer and for the very helpful meeting she had with me to discuss this. Since that meeting, has she had the chance to reflect on the 60% reduction in ESOL funding since 2010, the desirability of extending the guaranteed eight hours a week of teaching to all refugees, and the role that voluntary projects can play alongside statutory provisions? Is it not the case that language is the most important precondition for full participation in British society, and that if refugees are unable to speak English, it compromises their ability to integrate, with negative social, employment and security implications?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I totally agree with the noble Lord about English language skills being the key to employment, integration and contributing to wider society in general. As I said, we have made more than £10 million available over five years, and local authorities are required to arrange a minimum of eight hours’ formal tuition a week within a month of arrival and for a period of 12 months, or until the individual reaches ESOL entry level 3.

Syria: Refugees

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right; this is a priority. There are good campaigns on this: Education Cannot Wait and No Child Left Behind. These initiatives are very important and we fully support them. Our efforts in Lebanon have provided education places for some 300,000 Syrian children and for about the same number in Jordan. The noble Lord is absolutely right that these protracted crises disrupt the future generation on which any peace will be built.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the ethnic and religious minorities in Syria who have been hunted down in a campaign of genocide are now caught in a vicious circle after not daring, as the noble Baroness said, to enter the camps because their lives will be at risk there too, and then they are excluded from the vulnerable persons resettlement programme. I welcome what the Minister has told the House, but how does he respond to official figures that show that in the third quarter of last year fewer than 1% of Syrian refugees resettled under that programme came from those hunted minorities—just 13 out of 1,583 refugees accepted in the UK—despite the fact that those minority groups made up some 10% of the Syrian population before the war began in 2011?

[Lord Bates]

Part of this is about collecting the data— that is very important—and the other part is to be very clear about what is going on. The special rapporteur on minorities in Iraq reported to the UN General Assembly:

“Overwhelming evidence supports claims of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide that must be fully investigated and appropriately addressed by the Government and the international community”.


That is why we support the investigation of Daesh crimes and the collection of evidence as requested by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2379 in September.

Budget: Reduction of Waste

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

These are great and innovative ideas and things that ought to be looked at. We have some very strict targets for increasing the recycling of paper products and we are on our way to meeting them by 2020. It means that everyone has to play their part, including the House magazine.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, has the Minister had a chance to study reports from the Institute of Engineering and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which state that between 6% and 10% of greenhouse gases are produced by food waste, that around 100 million tonnes of food was dumped in Europe in the course of the last year alone and that, worldwide, if the food that is being wasted were available to eat, it would feed 1 billion people who are estimated to be without food or hungry today?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. Of course, as part of our clean growth strategy, we have an ambition to reduce the level of food waste by half by 2030. The Courtauld initiative is also aiming to reduce food waste between 2015 and 2025. It is also part of the ambition of sustainable development goal 12. So all the strategy, all the rules and all the ambition are there—we just need to see the action.

Rohingya: Refugees

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That work is going on: the International Organization for Migration and the UNHCR are working there, and we are co-ordinating with all the organisations. We have committed £47 million and should take pride in the UK being by far the largest bilateral donor, with $63 million pledged. Next is the United States, with $38 million, then Sweden, with $23 million. We are proud of that, but it is not just about the money; it is also about driving the political and international pressure.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, on bringing people to justice, in addition to the security that is required, does the noble Lord accept that the root cause of this was the denial of citizenship to the Rohingya people? Will he say what discussions we have had with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the Government in Burma to that effect, and whether we will impose sanctions on members of the military who have been responsible for these depredations?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord’s point on the loss of citizenship is absolutely at the core of this. One of the recommendations made by Kofi Annan’s Rakhine advisory commission is that the 1982 law, which stripped them of their citizenship and underlies this ongoing injustice, needs to be tackled. We recognise that that is an important part of it and we want to see that situation resolved, along with the others.

Yemen

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I am happy to do that, and to pay tribute to the work of the Disasters Emergency Committee in raising such an amazing sum from the generosity of the British people in response to this humanitarian crisis. The support that we have been operating on the ground has been provided to UNICEF to address malnutrition. Oxfam, Save the Children, ACTED and CARE are also based there to tackle food insecurity. The Yemeni Humanitarian Pooled Fund is operating there, as is the World Food Programme and the UNHCR. It is worth reminding ourselves of the number of humanitarian workers who have lost their lives in serving their fellow citizens. Yemen is one of the most dangerous places for them to operate in, but people are putting their lives on the line to save their fellow human beings. That should give us some hope if it can be extended to the warring parties.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, amid the horrors in the Yemen—or we think of the unfolding and continuing tragedy of the Rohingya being displaced in Burma, or the mass displacement of millions of people in Sudan and various places around the world where extraordinary conflict leads to a vast amount of human suffering—where are international agencies such as the United Nations in trying to broker some kind of peace? The Minister referred earlier to discussions in the Security Council, but what is the Secretary-General doing and what role are we playing there in trying to find long-term solutions to this kind of conflict? Otherwise, all we do is end up firefighting.

[Lord Bates]

Yes, I am afraid that we are still in the territory of firefighting. These movements place great strain on neighbouring countries. As we have seen in the case of South Sudan, they can also lead to the spreading of conflict. Instability can be seen also in Syria and elsewhere in the region. The only solution lies in the international institutions and the parties to the conflict coming together with a united resolve to deal with this. I think that we can take some pride in the fact that the British taxpayer, through UK aid, is at the forefront of that international humanitarian effort.

Burma: Rohingya

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, in welcoming the powerful and eloquent introduction to our debate of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and thank her for that. I am vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Burma, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, is chairman.

Two months ago, the Rakhine advisory commission established by Aung San Suu Kyi, and chaired by the former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, published a report that offered a way out of this morass. However, within hours of its publication, a small militant group attacked police posts, precipitating a grossly disproportionate response by the Tatmadaw, the Burmese army, leading to this current crisis.

In condemning the initial attacks, we should concur with the United Nations and be equally clear that the Burmese army’s response to those attacks amounts to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. As one journalist put it, the Burmese army,

“wants to destroy an ethnicity, not end an insurgency”.

When more than 600,000 Rohingya—over half the population—have fled to Bangladesh, and harrowing accounts of the most extreme barbaric human rights violations are consistently repeated by survivors, it is impossible to reach any other conclusion. Of course, this is not by any means the first violence endured by the Rohingya: they have faced severe persecution for decades and, since 2006, I have repeatedly raised it in your Lordships’ House.

In 2013, I cited the Human Rights Watch report that stated,

“what is happening to the Rohingya people”,

is, in its words, “genocide”.

In 2015, I told your Lordships that,

“one in five Rohingya has now fled since 2011”.—[Official Report, 18/6/15; col. 1240.]

A year ago, the former President of East Timor, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate José Ramos-Horta, together with the human rights activist, Benedict Rogers, wrote:

“A human tragedy approaching ethnic cleansing is unfolding in Burma, and the world is chillingly silent ... If we fail to act, Rohingyas may starve to death if they aren’t killed by bullets first”.


As the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, reminded us, so often we say “never again”, only to watch it happen all over again, from Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, Darfur to the genocide—it was named as such by the House of Commons—of Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in Syria and Iraq.

I hope that the noble Lord will tell us what action Her Majesty’s Government are taking now to address the immediate humanitarian crisis, described by the UN Secretary-General as “catastrophic”, to address impunity and to gain urgent unhindered access for international aid organisations and human rights monitors. Does he agree that although much international criticism has focused on Aung San Suu Kyi—undoubtedly, she should have done more—she does not control the army? The person with the power to order the troops to stop the carnage is the commander-in-chief, General Min Aung Hlaing. If the violence is to end, the decision to immediately cease their operations in Rakhine state lies squarely with him. Have Her Majesty’s Government told General Min that, in the light of all the evidence available, we will make a referral to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity to be laid against him and those who have perpetrated these crimes?

What are we doing to promote the citizenship rights of Rohingyas and to facilitate their safe return to their villages in due course to rebuild their homes and their livelihoods, and to implement the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, and of course in due course to promote a reconciliation process? Will we work for a global arms embargo of the kind that the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, mentioned? Will we work at the Security Council for targeted sanctions on military-owned enterprises? On what basis will we introduce a resolution before the United Nations Security Council to address this crisis?

Lastly, I urge the Minister to hold regular meetings with groups in London with expertise in Burma—most particularly Burma Campaign UK, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as representatives of the exiled Rohingya community—to discuss the crisis and to encourage clear statements about the rights of minorities from Daw Suu, especially during the visit of Pope Francis when he visits Burma next month.

Having travelled to Burma four years ago and met Daw Suu—on the day after I visited a village where Muslims had been driven out during an arson attack—and having addressed civil society activists in Rangoon and hosted in this place Burma’s courageous Cardinal Bo, an outspoken voice for the Rohingyas and other minorities, I had hoped that Burma was on a path of progress. Yet I cannot ignore the truth that the country now faces the worst human rights crisis in many years, not only for the Rohingyas but for the Kachin, Shan and others. In responding to this emergency, we must not neglect Burma’s other tragedies that continue to unfold. This catastrophe requires specific and urgent action. Like all other noble Lords, I look forward to the Minister’s response.