Brexit: UK International Relations

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, I will concentrate on two points: refugees and peacekeeping. I have visited Palestinian refugees from Gaza to Beirut, and others in Iraq and Syria. I congratulate UNRWA, the UN agency, on preventing all major epidemics and on providing schools better than many in poor countries, so that Palestinians have gained good jobs throughout the Middle East. It is now 70 years since the first Arab-Israeli war, and what were once temporary camps have become permanent, squalid townships, while UN members and neighbour states have prevented the return of refugees or their resettlement elsewhere.

It is crucial that this sad history should not be repeated for today’s refugees from Iraq, Syria and some African countries. The emphasis for all, whether in camps or not, should be on acquiring skills in preparation for return to their own countries. We will, however, need solutions in third countries for those who will not go home. The report rightly calls for a global plan, and large and developed states—for example, the United States, Canada and Brazil, along with Australia and New Zealand—will have a vital part to play. We should note that some cities in Syria and Iraq have been so destroyed that a huge input will be needed to make them habitable. I saw this for myself in Homs and Aleppo.

I welcome the new Secretary-General, since he has served as High Commissioner for Refugees. I hope Mr Guterres agrees with the report on the point of redefining who is a refugee. We should perhaps distinguish those with individual personal fears of persecution. There will be other people who have fled because of genuine fears of group violence, war or natural disaster—their plight is real, but different from the more personal kind.

The report shows that UN peacekeeping costs over $8 billion a year, employing 86,000 troops and a total personnel of almost 120,000. We can all agree that it must be possible to get better results from such massive resources. Sexual abuse and exploitation by so-called peacekeepers has been a long-running scandal which cries out for effective reform, given that protecting women and children should be a top priority.

I have two questions for the Government. Will they make the case for enhancing the use of the UN Secretary-General’s good offices, which have already been mentioned, in particular in order to prevent conflicts? Will they insist on Article 99 powers for preventing wars, genocide and refugee flows? Today, many wars involve non-state parties, so I would ask this. What relations does the Secretary-General have with groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the PKK and the free cantons of northern Syria? I believe that they are too important to be ignored.

I trust that leaving the EU will not absorb all our energies. Surely we must try to help the UN to perform more effectively than ever before.