Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Convention on Genocide

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to be called, Ms McDonagh. I believe this is the first time that I have served under your chairship; I hope it will not be the last. I am also very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) and the hon. Members for Henley (John Howell) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale and the hon. Member for Strangford spoke with great knowledge and passion, and I am grateful to them. I also want to put on record my best wishes to the hon. Member for Henley for a speedy and full recovery. Before I start, I would also like to thank in particular Kate Ferguson of Protection Approaches, who works with Members across the House. She is a real source of huge support on how we can use our tools more strategically to prevent atrocities.

The 75th anniversaries of the universal declaration on human rights and the genocide convention are this weekend, and I want to start by noting what an achievement they were. The world came together after the devastation of the second world war and the utter unprecedented horror of the holocaust, and committed to action. I know we all believe that working together internationally against genocide and human rights abuses is no less essential today.

As we have heard, right now in Sudan there are massive numbers of people under threat. The past weeks and months have brought more and more evidence of mass killings, rapes and the systematic forced displacement of civilians. The evidence is particularly strong that the Masalit communities are repeatedly—repeatedly—targeted for atrocities. Right now, El Fasher in North Darfur is in desperate peril. Civilians in Khartoum continue to be killed and denied humanitarian access, and the violence is spreading.

I truly welcome the United States’ determination of war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and in particular the recognition that arms and funding to the military faction fuels the horror, not matter what the source. I believe the US determination builds on work in this House and in Government, where we have worked together to shine just a fraction of the light that Sudan’s crisis requires. As we warned before the summer, permanent partition or even state collapse in Sudan is an increasingly serious risk. The scale of atrocities that could result, in addition to the many already committed, is simply enormous.

Despite the severity of the humanitarian crisis, the UK, as the UN Security Council penholder on Sudan, is now presiding over the closure of the UN’s Sudan mission. So far, the international community has not had enough co-ordination and commitment for the mediation in Saudi Arabia or the African Union’s leadership to have an impact. The situation is utterly bleak. It is joined, as we know, by the sheer horror in Gaza that we see day after day on our screens, where children are being killed in their thousands as their homes are bombed; where civilians are being kettled into so-called safe zones that are anything but; and where the siege continues and humanitarian access is denied despite the tireless efforts of colleagues.

[Ian Paisley in the Chair]

However, we cannot just sit here and wring our hands. I believe that we cannot be content with symbolic acts of condemnation, and we cannot let petty political divisions take hold—not when it comes to Sudan, Myanmar or Gaza. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted from what we can actually do, because, as the raw ongoing experiences of Sudan teach us, the way in which we work against atrocities and support universal human rights needs to adapt. Let us face it: we live in a more polarised world than in recent decades, and it is far more complex and fragmented than in the 1950s. The relationships that we need to navigate are much larger in number and massively diverse in nature. Misinformation and hate speech spread at a speed and scale that we have never seen before. That means that we must approach these questions from a place of humility and respect, recognising that we are not always the best people to lead; that we do not always have the answer; and that trust is hard-won and easily lost. We must recognise that our international reputation has been damaged over recent years and look to renew it.

Sadly, many of the tools of the multilateral system, such as Security Council resolutions and UN sanctions, simply are not as accessible as they once were. To be frank, as we know, that is sometimes because Russia sees chaos, destruction and division as being in its interest. However, in other cases it is much more complicated than that.

[Jim Shannon]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady. I recall that this morning I got a message—actually, a video —on my phone. The message was clear: 120,000 Christians in Artsakh—I hope that is pronounced correctly—in Armenia are under threat. They have no gas, water or electricity; they have no hope, and they are being butchered by an Islamic regime sponsored by Russia. I will make a plea for them, if the Minister is listening. That is another example of genocide against my brothers and sisters.

[Ms Brown]

Certainly. I hear the hon. Gentleman’s plea, and I am sure that the Minister will be able to respond to that with knowledge and compassion. I argue that the causes I spoke about earlier, and which we have all spoken about today, make the challenges of this agenda so much more challenging, not less—and more necessary.

It is now more important to support accountability through the International Criminal Court, including in conflicts we see on our screens day in, day out in Ukraine, Palestine and Israel. It is more important to work with civil society and protect human rights defenders and journalists. Most importantly, in a world that seems ever more dangerous, the prevention duty in the genocide convention is more relevant, not less. If we are smart and strategic, we can do a lot to work against the perpetrators, enablers and drivers of atrocities. The UK has powerful strengths that we can deploy, including our still-expansive diplomatic network and national expertise in legal and financial services.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale and for Putney (Fleur Anderson) have said, we need to raise the alarm early, based on more extensive mapping and monitoring of atrocity risks and stronger links to civil society organisations. We need to work with our partners to bring together information about the networks that fuel atrocities, rapidly build awareness of patterns of rising violence and share evidence of responsibility. We then need to be proactive by using that greater understanding of those driving the violence to press armed groups towards de-escalation and mediation and to cut off external backers’ money to perpetrators.

We need to empower our excellent in-country diplomats to support the community-level leaders and human rights defenders who can make the difference when it matters most to prevent an escalating crisis. That is so rarely about big, flashy money; it is about rapid, quiet support for those who can calm tensions, provide credible alternative narratives in place of incitement and, if the worst comes to the worst, document the violence so that perpetrators can be held to account. It surely goes without saying that preventing a crisis avoids the vastly bigger costs of humanitarian aid, forced migration, emergency evacuations of UK nationals and the loss of development opportunities, which are shattered for years to come. And it saves lives.

What I am saying is that we need a prevention-first approach. The White Paper makes genuine, welcome progress on that, but we now need consistent leadership to turn words into reality over the coming years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale said, there are serious concerns about Rwanda—internally in terms of human rights and externally via the evidence of atrocities by the March 23 Movement in the DRC. That has been raised in FCDO, in addition to being raised multiple times by colleagues on both sides of the House. I gently say that it may damage our relationships with many partners if there is a suspicion that a narrow migration partnership, which the Opposition do not support, might be getting in the way of consistent UK support for human rights and atrocity prevention.

But it is not all bleakness and horror. If we work together and are strategic, we can help to slow the increasing violence across the world. To give just one example, there is hope that the draft convention on prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity will continue to make progress with UK support. Perhaps—just perhaps—the convention might add strength where some argue that existing international laws fall short. Perhaps there will be more legal and diplomatic clarity in future about the intentional denial of access to food, water or medicine in internal conflict. Sadly, that has been evidenced in recent years in Ethiopia and now in Sudan.

We need to consistently support progress where we can. A safer world, where rights are protected for all, is a world with far fewer people in desperate need of humanitarian aid. It is a world where the politics of division and hatred is harder for malign actors to exploit, and it is a world with more opportunities and security for the UK—a world where we do not scrabble from crisis to crisis, but where our long-term international partnerships can flourish for mutual benefit. Surely we want to live in a world where the high ideals of 75 years ago are truly honoured and implemented, and surely that is worth fighting for, with strategic thinking and with passion.