International Criminal Court

Baroness Cox Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I do not dispute anything that the noble Baroness has said, with her acute understanding of the situation there. However, the realities are these: Zimbabwe is not a party to the Rome statute and to get an ICC charge against Mr Mugabe would require a UN Security Council resolution. That means getting past all five of the permanent members. We know what the view of some of the permanent members is: they should not take such action. Until we can get past this problem of the permanent five, and particularly the reluctance of China and Russia, to name two, to see these matters taken up by the UN and remitted to the ICC for charges, these people who have committed most unsavoury acts—the noble Baroness mentioned Mr Mugabe as one—are outside the reach of the ICC.

[Baroness Cox]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that not only is President al-Bashir indicted by the ICC but he actually deposed the elected governor of Southern Kordofan, replacing him with Ahmad Harun, who is also indicted by the ICC and has since been carrying out systematic slaughter and aerial bombardment of his people, leading to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people? What reassurance can Her Majesty’s Government give to the victims of those policies? I have spoken to people in the refugee camps and—I am afraid this sounds harsh—many have said to me, “Why does Britain not intervene? Our suffering is far worse than that of Libya. Does Britain really only do business with Khartoum and those indicted by the ICC?”. That is the feeling among many people in Sudan.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

With respect to the noble Baroness, that is unfair because she knows better than most of us that the real problem is access. We cannot get access to these very ugly and difficult areas to establish what is happening. She quite rightly mentions that the governor of Southern Kordofan and one other are already indicted by the ICC and need to face justice. The UN has ruled through the Security Council that they should be referred to the ICC, which has issued warrants against them. The question is: how can they be secured and brought to justice in The Hague? That remains a continuous battle. As for the general proposition that we speak only to Khartoum or Djuba, that is not to understand the enormous amount of work we are doing at every level with the international agencies to bring some hope to this very unpleasant and ugly situation.