Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this debate because it gives me a chance to mention proposals for conflict prevention in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and to explain a new vision for the Mediterranean region. All three will, I trust, help to forestall conflict and acute suffering.

I know from my own family experience how deeply divided society in Northern Ireland still is. There are visible signs of this in most towns and cities. Power-sharing institutions struggle to work smoothly. For these reasons there is a proposal for a professionally assisted conflict analysis process to sit alongside political negotiations, or perhaps to follow them. It would examine causes rather than symptoms of division. The process could go on to look at the needs of the segments of society, including their identity needs and shared needs. This concept has been put to the Secretary of State and to the First Ministers, but so far without response.

In Bosnia, the proposal is to form a wide coalition to foster a national dialogue on the country’s future. This might be facilitated by an independent third party called the Soul of Europe. This English charity, in which I declare an interest as patron, has already helped Bosnia over the rebuilding of a world-famous Ottoman mosque and a war memorial in the former Omarska concentration camp. A very committed Bosnian has stated:

“We need help, but in a way that enables our citizens to be heard”.

He went on:

“The people of this country really want to move towards the European Union”.

This aim may be frustrated by the present dysfunctional constitution—no doubt, the only one that could be agreed at the Dayton conference in 1995. The layers of government and bureaucracy now hold up economic development and the common good. A national dialogue would, I hope, point the way ahead while respecting all minority voices. Civil society is demanding change. As the Bishop of Banja Luka has said, people want a new way of organising the state. The external costs of a national dialogue would be of the order of £30,000 for one year. That is a tiny sum compared with the cost of flood defences or the cost of a possible renewed conflict of a violent nature. I mentioned this proposal in your Lordships’ House on 21 October at cols. 612-13 of the Official Report.

I turn now to the Mediterranean. On the north side, there is high unemployment, from Portugal across to Greece, especially among young people. The same is true on the south side, from Morocco to Syria and Iraq. Refugees and migrant workers from the Sahel and the Horn of Africa make the situation even worse. We have seen how thousands lose their lives trying to cross the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea. Surely we need a new deal for the region, one that would cope with the bulging young generations in north Africa and the Middle East. These are the people who lack jobs, careers and the prospect of being able to marry. In frustration, they may well become jihadis. I am told that 3,000 have already left Tunisia in order to fight.

The Barcelona Convention of 1995 tried to think constructively. It led to the Mediterranean action plan, which produced agreements on sea pollution, protecting the coast and exploring the continental shelf. This was all useful intergovernmental work, but I doubt that it fired the public imagination to any degree or created many jobs. I argue now that there is much more to be done by Governments to prevent human trafficking and loss of life. More still is needed by way of public/private partnership and investment, for example, in solar technology. Every city from Casablanca to Karachi should have its own Turquoise Mountain Foundation. That is a project initiated in Kabul by the honourable Member for Penrith and The Border. It has provided work skills for the young and helped to revive traditional crafts. I have seen projects in the Gulf emirates on information technology and social sustainability. These should be replicated much more widely. Oil and gas profits from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia could flow through their sovereign wealth funds into massive projects to widen the Suez Canal, for example, or to create a new regional hub in Gaza. The last could include an electricity generating ship, which has already been offered by Turkey, a Mulberry-type harbour and the desalination of water.

I call for moral imagination and political will. There should be fewer Shards of Glass and Cheesegraters in London and more investment north and south of the Mediterranean. Real human needs would thus be met, conflicts would be prevented and peace would have a better chance. People-to-people links should also be set up through sport, which has been mentioned, and exchanges of all kinds.

Will Her Majesty's Government be bold and take the initiative once more in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and the whole Mediterranean region? Will they explain the benefits of such far-sighted moves to our EU partners? Arabia, India, China and the United States also have interests in the kind of stability on which I hope we can all agree.