Genocide

Debate between Baroness Goldie and Lord Bishop of Peterborough

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank the noble Lord. He raises an important point and I reiterate that the United Kingdom’s support for international criminal justice is based on the principle that there must be no impunity for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court has been making good progress, as the noble Lord is probably aware, in the prosecution of persons alleged to have committed crimes. Indeed, 2016 was the court’s most productive year for judicial output, with seven convictions in three cases.

In relation to the gathering of evidence from Iraq and Syria, the UK provides financial support to a specialist organisation to conduct investigations in Syria and build prosecution-ready criminal case files against the high-level perpetrators, in accordance with international standards. The noble Lord may be aware that last year the United Kingdom funded a project through our Magna Carta fund to improve the documentation of sexual violence and other gender-based cases in a victim-sensitive way in several areas of Iraq. That has assisted in the development of cases in which so many women from, for example, Christian and Yazidi communities have suffered.

[The Lord Bishop of Peterborough]

My Lords, in 2014 the United Nations commission on human rights abuses in North Korea declared that these were without parallel in the modern world, citing numerous cases of murder, rape and disappearances. Yet nothing has been brought to the international court or to any other regional tribunal. Why is nobody being held accountable?

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his question. North Korea is a secretive regime that is difficult to access in terms of information. In principle, the International Criminal Court could be an appropriate forum to hold North Korea to account for its behaviour, but the International Criminal Court can take action only when a war crime or crime against humanity is suspected to have been committed in or by a country which is party to the Rome statute or when the situation is referred to it by the United Nations Security Council. North Korea is not a party to the Rome statute and, as we have seen with Syria, it can be difficult to achieve such a referral when a country is not a signatory to the ICC. The right reverend Prelate may rest assured that the United Kingdom Government, in conjunction with international partners, remains concerned about activities in North Korea and we shall use all endeavours available to us to continue to register these concerns.