Combating Atrocity Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide

Baroness Helic Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as per the register. I welcome this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for introducing it and pay tribute to him and to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for giving voice to the survivors of atrocity crimes and pressing successive Governments to act before warning becomes catastrophe.

We cannot speak credibly about preventing genocide while disregarding existing mechanisms for confronting it: the genocide convention, the Rome statute, the international courts and international humanitarian law. Our problem is not the absence of legal frameworks but the absence of political will, moral clarity and preparedness to use what tools we have. As the United Nations Secretary-General recently warned, we are witnessing a dangerous erosion of respect for international law. Whatever view we hold of any individual conflict or of any individual state, the law cannot be selectively applied. Where grave violations occur, accountability must always follow, whoever the perpetrators are.

Genocide does not begin with mass killing, as others have said. It begins with dehumanisation, erosion of legal protections, impunity for attacks on civilians, and the use of sexual violence to terrorise communities, just to mention a few. Our recent history shows that prevention is possible, but only when states are prepared to act. In 1998, in Kosovo, we showed that timely international action saves lives. I am not arguing for military intervention. States have many other tools available to them: sanctions, arms embargoes, travel bans, effective diplomacy and legal action. We just have to be prepared to use them. Yet hesitation remains endemic. Each time the international community decides the moment to act has not yet arrived, the promise of “never again” grows weaker.

Today, warning signs are visible across multiple conflicts. I shall mention just a few. In Sudan, the United Nations and other independent bodies have documented credible allegations of ethnic massacres, widespread atrocities and conflict-related sexual violence. In El Fasher, survivors described armed men asking victims whether they were soldiers or civilians and then killing them regardless of the answer in conduct bearing “the hallmarks of genocide”.

In Gaza, we have watched restrictions on food and medical supplies, large-scale displacement, and credible allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law. The gravity of these concerns has been underscored by international organisations and legal experts, and even in some situations by members of the Israel Defence Forces. One soldier recently recalled that the word “civilian” was scarcely mentioned during operations. Others described practices that, if verified, entirely disregard the laws of armed conflict, including the alleged use of captured Palestinians as so-called “mosquitoes” in place of sniffer dogs to trigger booby traps.

In Xinjiang, systematic repression of Uyghurs continues, as well as of Protestants and other Christian groups, including pervasive surveillance, coercive social control, and restrictions on cultural and religious life.

More broadly, the latest report of the United Nations Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence records a dramatic increase in such crimes in countries like Russia, but also in democracies like Israel, which shows the moral collapse that is happening in that country. Conflict-related sexual violence is not incidental; it is deployed deliberately to force displacement and destroy the fabric of communities. The United Kingdom once led international efforts to confront these crimes through the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative. Our leadership must not be allowed to diminish; recently, it seems to have done so. I fully note and welcome the latest initiative by the Foreign Office on countering violence against women and girls, but we have to do more about this.

I put several questions to the Minister. First, what further steps will the Government take to strengthen the United Kingdom’s capacity to identify and respond to genocide and atrocity crimes at an early stage? I hope that parliamentary time will be made available for the noble Lord’s Private Member’s Bill, which I hope to support. Secondly, has the time come to update our policy on universal jurisdiction to ensure that the United Kingdom does not become a safe haven for individuals implicated in genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious international crimes, as others have pointed out? Thirdly, can the noble Lord say what exact mechanisms are used by the Government to ensure that the warnings from international investigators, courts and monitoring bodies trigger preventive action rather than retrospective expressions of concern?

Finally, will the Government reaffirm the United Kingdom’s commitment to preventing conflict-related sexual violence through its sustained support for documentation, accountability and international co-ordination? I hope that the Prime Minister will appoint a new special envoy on this issue, as this position has remained vacant since November last year, while the crimes have been increasing—and not because they have decreased or because we are in a better place. We are in a much worse place than we were last year.

The question is not whether we possess the legal instruments to confront and prevent genocide and crimes against humanity—we do; the question is whether we possess the resolve to use them in a timely way. Too often, the international community acts only after the worst has happened, and so do we. Prevention requires vigilance, consistency and the courage to uphold our principles.

In conclusion, I hope that your Lordships will not mind me reminding the House of the late Sir Alex Younger, whose distinguished public service reflected a profound understanding that national security and democratic values cannot be separated. As he put it:

“If we undermine the values we defend, even in the name of defending them, then we have lost”.


That warning reaches far beyond the world of intelligence and security; it applies with equal force to our response to war crimes. The credibility of international law rests not on the principles we proclaim in comfortable times but on our willingness to uphold them when doing so is hard.