Burma

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord is right. We have provided about £10 million to ensure that the census is conducted in a technically sound way. We have also helped with the mapping exercise. We have concerns about the census, which is due on 28 March. This Friday will be census night and there will then be a period of 10 days when enumeration will take place. We have concerns because of the 135 officially recognised ethnicities—Rohingya, for example is not included—but we take some comfort from the fact that we have gained agreement from the Burmese Government for independent observers to be mobilised during this process. We hope that the option to self-identify will be used by the Rohingya community to be properly enumerated.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has said that these issues are raised with the Burmese authorities vigorously and frequently and I know that to be the case. I am sure that these efforts are appreciated. To ensure that these issues do not drop between any cracks or rely on a single sentence to capture them, should we not adopt in the quarterly report a traffic light system under which countries that persistently abuse human rights are shown to all of those who read our reports around the world as red, those which are making progress as amber and others as green? As we take comfort in some progress, I sometimes feel that we have lost them on our radar.

[Baroness Warsi]

As the Minister with responsibility for human rights, I constantly keep under review how the quarterly and annual reports on human rights are presented, how we can present them better and how we can better judge countries that are making progress. I am starting to see the first drafts of the human rights reports which will be published later this year. They will include a great deal of detail on Burma, both as a country of concern and in relation to specific human rights abuses.