Commonwealth

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, in this debate, kindly made possible by the noble Lord, Lord Luce—I join others in thanking him for it—I should like to return briefly to an issue which I raised in a debate that I initiated a year ago. It is an issue that should trouble us profoundly. Allusion has already been made to it by my noble friend Lord Black and the noble Lord, Lord Wills. Millions of our fellow Commonwealth citizens live under laws that brand them as criminals because of their sexual orientation alone. Their offence is the homosexuality with which they are imbued and by which their lives are inevitably shaped. The numbers criminalised in this cruel fashion are very large because so many Commonwealth countries defy the obligations placed on them by international law.

People in Britain rarely guess the proportion that adhere to these obligations correctly. They are reluctant to believe that more than a small minority of Commonwealth states could behave with such inhumanity in the early 21st century, when the need to respect human rights is so widely accepted. The shocking truth is that more than three-quarters of our Commonwealth partners—41 states out of 52—put homosexuals outside the law. In some of them, the punishments that can be imposed are almost unimaginably harsh. Life imprisonment is the penalty in Sierra Leone; in Malaysia, it is 20 years in prison with flogging. One’s heart goes out in particular to the young people, who, as we have heard, are so numerous in today’s Commonwealth.

The number of lives wrecked by these inhumane laws is not to be measured simply by sentences imposed on, or by unchecked persecution endured by, homosexuals. The widespread criminalisation of homosexuality has been a great driving force in the spread of HIV/AIDS, the worst pandemic of our times. A single appalling statistic underlines the extent of the suffering that has been inflicted on so many of our Commonwealth partners as a result. While the Commonwealth accounts for nearly 30% of the world’s population, it also contains more than 60% of the people living with HIV across the globe.

How is a route out of this suffering and oppression to be found? In a number of countries, including Belize, Jamaica and Singapore, brave individuals are challenging the violation of their human rights in the courts. Powerful legal assistance is being provided to them without charge through the International Commission of Jurists, the Human Dignity Trust and the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association. There could be no finer example of a Commonwealth partnership in the cause of human progress. Success in one state could embolden the judges in other jurisdictions because of the similarity of their laws inherited from the British Empire. However, this is the moment when the central institutions of the Commonwealth should assert themselves with vigour and authority.

It is now two years since the report of the Eminent Persons Group recommended that Heads of Government should take steps to encourage the repeal of discriminatory laws. An appropriate form of words was included in the Commonwealth charter, although it contains no specific reference to the decriminalisation of homosexuality. But it has been decided that:

“Member governments have the discretion to identify which, if any, laws are considered discriminatory, and the steps deemed appropriate to address these”.

This is a formula for inaction, and it must be overturned. Do the Government intend to make a statement on homosexual equality before next month’s meeting? Millions of criminalised homosexuals look to the Heads of Government for an unequivocal commitment to their basic human rights, and to the Commonwealth Secretariat for an effective strategy to secure them—a strategy devised in close consultation with LGBT organisations throughout the Commonwealth who are increasingly working together for the common good.