Genocide Determination Bill [HL]

Baroness Deech Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, this Bill is not the right mechanism that I would wish for the prevention and punishment of genocide.

First, it asks the courts of the UK to do something they are not equipped to do. The most fundamental problem is evidential. Genocide determinations have to be carried out in accordance with international law and in full possession of the facts. The time lag would be self-defeating. The closest thing we have had was the action by David Irving against Penguin Books based on his being called a Holocaust denier. In effect, the famous judgment was whether the Holocaust had taken place or not. From start to finish, the case took three years and seven months.

Secondly, the Bill risks drawing our courts into geopolitical controversies. We know very well that the applicants who will rush forward if this Bill is enacted are less likely to be the Yazidis, the Sudanese and Uyghurs, but more likely to be those who want to continue their campaign against Israel, regardless of the fact that what has happened in Gaza does not meet the definition of genocide. It would be a way of continuing a political and distorted campaign, no doubt funded by Iran.

Thirdly, the Bill cannot do what it means to do. Our courts might make a determination of genocide, but that would have no binding effect on the ICJ or the ICC. Only 75 countries accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ, the UK being the only Security Council member to do so. The Bill would expose the weakness of international law, whether it comes to keeping the peace or preventing genocide, while setting up a scenario involving different definitions of genocide, under which some states would be at risk because they accept international jurisdiction, and others would not be. It is also hard to see how actions by terrorist non-state groups, such as Hamas or Daesh, could be caught.

Successive UK Governments failed to prosecute Nazi war criminals who came to this country under the War Crimes Act 1991. The UK spends much time and money on Holocaust memorialisation and education but did nothing to punish those responsible for it. It let them slip through our fingers.

The Bill before us is retrospective, with no limitation. There could be complaints by New Zealanders, Australians and Americans about the real genocide carried out by white settlers against the indigenous populations of those countries.

What we need are genuine UN peacekeeping forces. They can be used only if the Security Council authorises their use under chapter 7 of the charter, which it never does. The Security Council itself could act, but it is stymied by the veto. It has a doctrine called the responsibility to protect, directed against genocide, but it has failed to achieve it. It did not act in Sudan. It was ineffective in Rwanda and Srebrenica because of the political realities. The action by former Prime Minister Tony Blair in Kosovo was much more effective, even though Kosovo might not technically have qualified as a genocide. NATO intervened. I suggest that action by determined leaders and NATO, which shares our values more than the UN bodies, would be more effective than the handing over of responsibilities to international bodies prescribed by this Bill, well intentioned though it is.