Overseas Development Assistance: Gender-based Violence
Baroness Helic Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, fighting sexual and gender-based violence remains the most chronically underfunded sector in the humanitarian appeals of the United Nations. What consideration has been given to allocating a specific minimum percentage of the DfID budget to fighting sexual and gender-based violence not only during emergencies but as part of the regular allocation of funds?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, DfID does not currently favour earmarking specific overseas development aid as that limits its flexibility to respond to unseen priorities, a case in point being our Covid-19 response. However, I agree with my noble friend that there is more the UK can do to prevent all forms of violence against women and girls. That is why we have made the largest single investment in preventing violence against women and girls of any bilateral donor, through our new What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls Programme.
Global Gender Equality
Baroness Helic Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as per the register. I start by congratulating my noble friend the Minister on her appointment and wishing her every success in all the work ahead of her. I know that, armed with her commitment, she will make a difference. I also thank her predecessor, my noble friend Lord Bates, for his dedication to improving the lives of those who do not have the fortune to live in a safe, secure and democratic country.
This is a crucially important debate. I can hardly remember a time when there has been such a sustained disregard for human rights, particularly women’s rights. It is concerning that some of those attacks are arising in not just the usual suspects of authoritarian countries but Europe and the United States. I am sure my noble friend shares my dismay at seeing the United States contribute directly to a weakening of language on sexual and reproductive health rights in a number of UN bodies, including the recent UN Security Council resolution championed by Germany on sexual violence in conflict.
As my noble friend said, we are witnessing a global rollback of women’s rights, and gender equality is facing uncertain times. The United Kingdom’s leadership on women’s rights, women, peace and security, and sexual violence in conflict is more important than ever. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the staff of the Department for International Development for their contribution to development and the rights of women worldwide. It is yet another reminder of how fortunate we are in this country to have the Civil Service that we do.
Equality and rights for women begin at home. Sheer logic dictates that we cannot speak up effectively for women in countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran or Saudi Arabia if our own house is not in order. I therefore hope that my noble friend can give us some assurance that the Istanbul convention will soon be ratified and fully integrated into our law. The convention is the most comprehensive legal framework that exists to address violence against women and girls, including domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, FGM, honour violence and forced marriage. I think noble Lords on all sides would agree that our ratification is well overdue.
I welcome the work that has been done at the Department for International Development, the achievements that have been made in meeting the SDGs and the Government’s strategic vison for gender equality. I also recognise that the Independent Commission for Aid Impact recently concluded that violence against women and girls is,
“competing with a broader range of priorities”,
than before, and that DfID’s work has been “moving slowly”. I will therefore focus my remarks on two areas where I believe that the United Kingdom can show significant leadership that would help to accelerate progress and to set an example to other countries. Both relate to the international review conference on sexual violence in conflict, which the Government are hosting in November as part of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative. The conference is a unique opportunity to reboot the UK’s leadership on the PSVI, and on the women, peace and security agenda as a whole.
Daesh’s use of rape and sexual slavery as a genocidal strategy towards the Yazidi people, and the brutal sexual violence carried out in Syria, Iraq, Burma and most recently Sudan, to take just a few examples, demonstrate that the case for action is even more urgent today than in 2012 when the PSVI began. It also shows that impunity for the use of rape as a weapon of war and terror is still the norm. My first proposal therefore concerns the urgent need to strengthen the international community’s ability to hold perpetrators of war-zone rape to account. Part of the current problem is the willingness of some Security Council members to shield perpetrators of mass rape and other war crimes, as Russia and China have done in the case of Syria and Myanmar, through the use, or threat of use, of their Security Council veto. This creates the risk of significant delay in holding alleged war criminals to account.
The other significant obstacle is a lack of reliable evidence of sexual crimes that can stand up in court, which has contributed to the difficulty of ensuring successful prosecutions for the use of rape as a weapon of war. A further problem has emerged, as in the case of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, which is the proliferation of informal efforts to gather evidence of rape and related crimes. This has led to reported instances of survivors being interviewed multiple times—on some occasions 25 times—and evidence being damaged in a legal sense.
To address these issues, I endorse a proposal from my noble friend Lord Hague and the special envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie, that the UK champions the creation of a permanent international investigatory body on sexual and gender-based violence. This would have the mandate and resources to gather and preserve evidence and prepare case files for international or national prosecutions so that, whenever an ICC referral, ad hoc tribunal or local prosecution can take place, the evidence is ready.
Those who commission, condone and carry out sexual violence as a strategy of war rely on the assumption that they will get away with these crimes—that their victims will be too intimidated and ashamed to speak, that the evidence will be lost, and that they can sit out the international community, which lacks the will to hold perpetrators of this horrendous crime to account. A permanent investigatory body is an essential part of beginning to shatter each of these assumptions and to start to end impunity for conflict-related sexual violence. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can give her support to this objective.
This is a prime example of where prevention and deterrence are infinitely preferable to dealing with the consequences of a crime, not only for the lives of the survivors, but for all our efforts in the sphere of international development, which are significantly undermined by sexual and gender-based violence. I hope the Government will use the opportunity presented by the November conference to announce their commitment to seeking the creation of this body, along with a group of like-minded countries.
Secondly, as my noble friend the Minister will know, gender-based violence is a persistently underfunded aspect of international humanitarian relief and development programmes. Gender-based violence, already widespread in times of peace, is exacerbated during conflict and other humanitarian crises and continues to be one of the most pervasive human rights violations. Evidence suggests that approximately one in five displaced or refugee women is subjected to sexual violence. Girls under the age of 18 in particular, but also boys in this group, often make up the majority of survivors. Yet sexual and gender-based violence is not prioritised by donors, and funding is often inadequate to the scale of the problem.
Allocations for sexual gender-based violence funding were just 0.12% of total humanitarian funding from 2016 to 2018. That is $51.7 million, from a total of $41.5 billion. Research by the International Rescue Committee suggests that, for the same period, two-thirds of funding requests for gender-based violence in emergencies were not met, leaving a gap of over $100 million. The UN’s last report on conflict-related sexual violence identified 19 countries where verifiable incidents of sexual violence took place, and specifically highlighted the funding problem.
The shortfalls in funding have an impact on the ground for survivors. For example, the 2016 UN humanitarian response plan noted that 28,000 reports of sexual violence had been officially recorded in the Central African Republic, and requested $28 million for gender-based violence programs. In response, only $1 million was committed by donors, according to the International Rescue Committee. The same goes for the situation in Lebanon and the DRC. The international community needs to close this funding gap, strengthen protection measures and increase access to life-saving services, including sexual and reproductive health services.
The UK could set a lead by dedicating a fixed or minimum percentage of its aid budget to fighting sexual and gender-based violence. I hope that the International Development Secretary uses the opportunity of the November PSVI summit to announce that the UK will devote at least 1% of its budget to addressing this. The UK has an opportunity to lead the way and set a global standard that other international donors could then follow. It would demonstrate long-term commitment, and help improve transparency on UK spending to support women and girls—which has been publicly stated as a top policy commitment for the Government. It would allow NGOs and civil society organisations to plan and deliver effective long-term support to communities and survivors of sexual violence, and, by ensuring continuity of funding, it would help to bridge the divide between humanitarian, development and peacebuilding efforts.
This could be a signature moment for UK leadership, which has already led the way internationally on PSVI, girls’ education, family planning and FGM. It would be a natural next step for our country to take, to defend and support women and girls who have been the victims of sexual and gender-based violence in the world’s poorest and most fragile countries.
Violence against women is a major barrier to achieving gender equality. It is rooted in discrimination and harmful social norms and stereotypes. Far too often, our response focusses on help for survivors after the event. However, we know that the best way to end violence against women and girls is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Therefore, I hope that the Government will consider these two proposals, alongside the many other actions that they are taking. We have an opportunity to send a signal to the rest of the world that the UK will not only defend progress made on women’s rights in previous decades but also show the leadership and political will needed to help achieve new progress in the years to come.
Victims of Domestic Violence and Abuse
Baroness Helic Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to noble Lords for their many eloquent and informed speeches, and to our Prime Minister for her leadership on this issue. I thank the many organisations and individuals who have campaigned for changes to our laws and worked with survivors for decades. In particular, I take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lady Newlove for all her work over the last seven years.
I grew up in a supportive and loving family environment. The one thing that my father expected from me, apart from hard work, was always to respect my mother in the way he did. In my professional life, I have worked for seven years on the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, a campaign to end the use of rape as a weapon of war. Early on in this quest, a woman who worked with victims of domestic violence in London came to see me. She asked why I was spending so much time on violence against women abroad when women at home, here in the United Kingdom, were suffering. My answer at the time was that, to my knowledge, we had a system to look after and support survivors while women in war-torn countries had nothing—no protection, no recognition, no funding and no justice. But her question stayed with me and I have often thought about her. I have concluded that I was wrong and that we have to do both. We must confront abuse at home and use our influence abroad to try to address mass atrocities; to do one without the other is illogical.
It is truly appalling that in the 21st century, the most dangerous place for a woman is her home. According to the UN study of gender-related killing, more than half of all female murder victims in 2017, globally, were killed by an intimate partner or family member. Women are far more likely than men to die at the hands of someone they know, and someone whom they think loves them. I acknowledge that many men and boys are victims too, and I acknowledge the men who work steadfastly on these issues, including in our police forces, NGOs, government departments and Parliament. None the less, domestic violence disproportionately affects women. It is an injustice compounded by inequality.
It is deeply troubling to me that the Office for National Statistics reports that there has been little change in the prevalence of domestic abuse in the United Kingdom. As others have pointed out, an estimated 2 million adults experienced domestic abuse in our own country during 2017-18. Most of these cases still do not come to the attention of police or result in a conviction. This requires deep scrutiny and national soul-searching. The total economic and social cost of domestic abuse is greater than the total estimated economic and social cost of crime, according to the Home Office, even without taking into account the costs associated with financial and economic abuse, for which there is little data, and costs relating to children and the wider family. This is truly a social and public health emergency.
In addition to urgent questions regarding medical support, social services and housing, I believe there is a huge cultural taboo and stigma contributing to it still being an underreported and invisible crime—a crime behind a curtain. Women who try to report abuse are often described as crazy and emotional. They often face pressures from family and friends to keep silent, or to minimise what has happened to them. There is a stereotype that a strong woman cannot be a victim of domestic violence, or has somehow provoked her partner’s behaviour. Mothers are often labelled as angry or vindictive when they try to shelter their children from the effects of continuing trauma after they leave. We have a long way to go to understand the dimensions of this crime and stop failing survivors, either through our legal and health systems or our social attitudes.
I strongly welcome the Government’s intention to enshrine in law the definition of domestic abuse, including controlling, coercive and manipulative non-physical abuse. Other countries could learn from this example. I also welcome plans to establish a domestic abuse commissioner, to create new domestic violence protection notices and orders, and to prohibit the cross-examination of victims by their abusers in the family courts. However, we must not forget children. Children are not the property of their parents and we need to pay far greater attention to their trauma and needs. No one has a right to damage or traumatise them and destroy their lives, their parents included. I hope that the Government heed the call from the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to recognise this explicitly in the legislation and to develop a specific strategy for their protection and support. I hope the Minister tells the House what plans there are to introduce paid leave for victims of domestic violence, and improve training and education of GPs and obstetricians in the UK, in this area.
I worked for many years with my noble friend Lord Hague of Richmond. It made a deep impression on me that he, who served as Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, regards the passage of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 as the proudest moment of his career, given its transformative impact on laws and attitudes. We can take inspiration from this, and work hard to ensure a real and transformative change that can eventually root out this disease of domestic violence from our society. I hope that the domestic abuse Bill is one day an Act that we are all proud of too.
International Women’s Day
Baroness Helic Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. It is an honour to speak in the debate today. First, I pay tribute to our Prime Minister and to the Minister and her team here for their commitment to women’s rights and gender equality. I welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the victims of gender-based violence are supported, that the perpetrators are brought to justice, and that everything possible is done to prevent these crimes happening in the first place.
I also particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling domestic violence and the introduction of the Domestic Violence Bill. I am sure that every one of us here either knows or is aware of someone who has been a victim of domestic violence. We are all aware of the tendency to avoid talking about this behaviour, even when we see it and recognise it. We have to break that taboo and stigma in order to support families who endure this despicable, shameful and pathetic behaviour in all its manifestations, and strengthen our laws and institutions accordingly.
Our willingness to confront entrenched gender violence and harassment in our own society should be matched by an equal determination to defend the rights of the most vulnerable women in the world. Indeed, the test of our commitment to women’s rights is how we behave as a country in the most challenging situations. I will raise three issues in that regard.
Two months ago, the United States envoy for the Afghan conflict, Zalmay Khalilzad, announced that a framework for a peace agreement had been agreed with the Taliban. The US would withdraw its troops and, in return, the Taliban would undertake to prevent Afghanistan being used by terrorists for attacks on other countries. There are many unanswered questions, and great concern that the women of Afghanistan are once again in the sights of the Taliban. The negotiator for the Taliban has said explicitly that the Taliban rejects the constitution of Afghanistan which enshrines the principle of equal rights for men and women and Afghan women’s right to education, political participation and economic opportunity. Our Government have welcomed the “progress” made by the US special representative, but I hope that this support is not unqualified.
Afghan women’s groups from across the 34 provinces have recently come together to issue a declaration stating:
“We, Afghan women, request the Government negotiating team to fully defend our rightful and legitimate demands ... at every stage of the peace process, and prevent any type of compromise that undermines the achievements of women”.
They go on to say that they expect the international community to,
“firmly adhere to their commitments to protecting democratic, civil and human rights”,
in Afghanistan. I look to the Minster to give assurances that our Government will listen to Afghan women, that we will uphold their right to be formally involved in negotiations, in keeping with UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and that we will not support any peace agreement that does not protect their hard-won rights and freedoms.
My second point relates to our ally in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, which announced this week that 10 women’s rights activists who were detained last year, and reportedly tortured, will be put on trial for “undermining the state’s security”. Our Foreign Secretary has hailed Britain’s “strategic partnership” with Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the Minister could ask the Foreign Secretary to urge our “strategic partner” to release these women activists rather than put them through a show trial. What does it say about a country when it fears journalists and women, and what does it say about us if we place our strategic partnership with any country above such vital, non-negotiable principles of human rights?
Finally, I welcome the Government’s commitment to hosting a review conference in November this year on the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Ahmad on his personal leadership and commitment to this. I also welcome the news that Her Royal Highness the Countess of Wessex is to support the initiative. I hope that the Government will soon set out ambitious goals for that conference.
As the Minister will be aware, sexual and gender-based violence is endemic in situations of conflict, disaster and human displacement, yet programmes for countering it are routinely underfunded and insufficiently prioritised in humanitarian responses. I therefore renew my call on the UK Government to commit to dedicating a fixed minimum proportion of the international development budget to this purpose. I believe that this would make a huge difference, particularly if other countries could be persuaded to do the same.
Let me finish by expressing my respect for our female parliamentarians, from all parties, who have suffered vicious online abuse, including sexist and anti-Semitic hatred. I applaud their courage. We need more outspoken and principled women in public life.
Burma: Rohingya
Baroness Helic Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Baroness Helic
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they have taken to support the Rohingya refugees currently displaced in Bangladesh.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as per the Register of Lords’ Interests.
More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees are sheltering in desperate conditions in Bangladesh. The numbers arriving since 25 August this year and the speed of their displacement are greater than the flow of refugees at the height of the Syria conflict. It is the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis.
We know that people only flee in such a manner—on foot, without food, injured, carrying their babies and braving landmines or the sea—because they are running for their lives. In this case, they are fleeing the reported razing of nearly 300 villages, the brutal execution of civilians and the rape of women and girls, all within an atmosphere of widespread public hatred towards a persecuted minority and, sadly, a muted response from Aung San Suu Kyi.
I was born in a country where, in the course of one weekend and under the noses of the UN peacekeepers, 8,500 men and boys were slaughtered in Srebrenica in 1995. The term “ethnic cleansing” was born in Bosnia to describe policies designed to purge a land of part of its population through murder, expulsion and rape, fuelled by an ideology of ethnic superiority and segregation. The failure to prevent ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia led to one of the most intense periods of soul-searching in the history of the United Nations and to one paramount conclusion. The report commissioned by the then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, stated:
“The cardinal lesson of Srebrenica is that the deliberate and systematic attempt to terrorize, expel or murder an entire people must be met decisively with all necessary means”.
It is hard to argue that what has been happening in Myanmar for some time is anything other than that—a deliberate and systematic attempt to terrorize and expel an entire people—and as such, it demands a decisive international response. The basic needs, protection and right of return of the Rohingya refugees should of course be at the centre of that response.
Bangladesh has shown great generosity and I welcome our Government’s announcement of £47 million in humanitarian aid. I note, however, that the amount pledged in Geneva fell considerably short of the total requested by the UN. Will the Government urge other countries to do more, given that, for instance, less than one quarter of the sites hosting refugees in Bangladesh have access to clean water?
The reality is that humanitarian aid is essentially there to lessen the human suffering, but it cannot solve the crisis. The conflict in Syria is a sad example: the international community has spent more than $28 billion in aid so far, but 11 million Syrians are still displaced from their homes.
The Rohingya crisis is a man-made disaster which demands a political solution in Burma itself. I am therefore asking the Government about their policy in four areas. First, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has described the violence as,
“a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
The UN Secretary-General agrees with him, and so does our Foreign Secretary. If it is textbook ethnic cleansing, then it is, by definition, a textbook situation in which the UN Security Council should act to insist on full humanitarian access, on the right of refugees to return, on their human rights as citizens of Burma, and to open the way for sanctions if the Government and military do not comply.
I welcome reports that the UK and France have put forward a draft resolution. Can the Minister say what he expects, and when he expects it to be put to a vote? Can he confirm whether the UK is seeking a resolution under Chapter VII or Chapter VI of the UN charter?
Secondly, there are reports of large numbers of survivors of sexual violence among the refugee population. According to MSF, of those who have come to its clinic for treatment relating to rape,
“about 50% are aged 18 or under, including one girl who was nine years old and several others under the age of 10”.
The UK’s preventing sexual violence initiative was set up in 2012 for exactly this kind of situation—to prevent the use of rape as a weapon and tactic of war. It includes a team of more than 60 people, such as police and forensic experts, who can be deployed to help gather evidence of crimes and give support to survivors. Have any of the experts been deployed in Bangladesh? If not, will the Government undertake to send a team as a matter of urgency? Will they also urge the UN Secretary-General to deploy the UN team that exists for the same purpose? Can the Minister also say what action the UK is proposing internationally to ensure accountability for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity?
Thirdly, we all recognise the stranglehold that the military exerts on politics in Burma, their prime responsibility for what is happening and the multiple ethnic conflicts facing that country. However, it is shocking to hear statements such as that of Minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement, suggesting that,
“Muslim people killed their own Muslim people”,
in Rakhine state and that there is “no case” of the military killing civilians. I welcome our Government’s decision to suspend training for the Burmese army and the EU-wide suspension of visas for senior officers. Does the Minister agree that there is a compelling cases for asset freezes against the military leadership?
Given that it appears that there is some level of political-military collusion in the so-called “clearance operations”, will the Government consider whether measures may be needed if members of the Myanmar Government or government officials make statements inciting hatred against the Rohingya population or block the return of refugees? Will the Government be prepared to make the case for this at EU level?
Fourthly, recent reports suggest that the Rohingya militants responsible for attacks in Rakhine state receive funding from groups in Saudi Arabia. Do the Government share this assessment and if so, what actions will be taken to raise this with the Saudi Government?
My hope after the war in Bosnia was that technology would make atrocities like Srebrenica impossible because people and leaders would see, and act. That hope was sadly misplaced. There seems to be a widening gap between what we stand for as democracies and how we react collectively to crises—from Syria to Sudan, from Burma to Yemen. On our watch, we are permitting the rapid erosion of fundamental laws and standards designed to protect civilian life against, for instance, the use of chemical weapons, barrel bombs, the bombing of schools and hospitals, and, now, ethnic cleansing. It comes at a time when international institutions themselves are under huge pressure from the threat of mass withdrawals from the International Criminal Court, for example, and to cut UN funding.
I hope that our response to the Rohingya crisis can mark a turning point, not a further erosion of our collective will. I hope too that the Government will make every diplomatic effort in the coming months to defend the rights of the Rohingya people and, in doing so, defend international peace and security and our own interests and moral authority as a country and as a society.
Middle East and North Africa
Baroness Helic Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, the Syrian humanitarian crisis and the international response are moving at an incredible pace. Only last week, Germany had something of an open-door policy towards refugees, yet this week Schengen has been suspended there and in Austria. Hungary and, tonight, Slovenia have closed their borders. Now new routes are already opening up as refugees and migrants try to circumvent barriers in their path. I hope the Minister will be able to update the House on what the European Union has done so far to help the Balkan countries cope with what could be the new reality there.
There is an urgent need for the international community to get ahead of the crisis on all fronts, rather than repeatedly playing catch-up. In that regard I will make three brief points. First, we must assume that we have not yet seen the worst of the crisis. Food rations for refugees have been cut dramatically. According to the World Food Programme, a Syrian refugee receives $13 per month—that is, 50 cents a day—to eat and survive on. The UN has warned that a further 1 million Syrians could soon be displaced by violence. Winter is coming, inevitably producing further human suffering. The massive shortfall in aid risks a crisis of even greater proportions, as people leave both Syria and regional camps in search of safety. After four years in which the gap between the aid that is needed and that which is provided has grown, surely the time has come to name and shame the countries that are not pulling their weight—unlike Britain.
Secondly, this crisis will not be resolved by mass resettlement. Neither we nor Europe as a whole can receive all the Syrian people who seek security. Even if we were to empty Syria entirely, the threat to the region and to our own security would not go away. The only way to end the human suffering and protect our own security is by taking the diplomatic route, possibly without preconditions, and by being prepared to back that diplomacy with the threat of hard power if necessary. When a policy pursued is not working—and I would argue that the current policy is not—we should have the courage to admit that, examine the reasons for its failure and come up with a better one. British diplomacy excels in putting forward workable solutions to complex crises in conflict. We saw it in the Balkans only 20 years ago, in our lifetime. Therefore, I hope that at the UN General Assembly next week in New York, we will see Britain actively and visibly putting forward new proposals with our allies for how to achieve a negotiated solution and a political settlement that brings stability and security, justice and accountability. There is a great need for that visible leadership and diplomatic momentum. Therefore, I hope that the United Kingdom will advocate and secure a visit by the United Nations Security Council to the region to see the humanitarian impact of the crisis and begin to build diplomatic consensus as an important practical and symbolic gesture. It is astonishing that, after more than four years of conflict, the UN Security Council, the very body that bears the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, has not done that yet.
Thirdly, we will need as much leadership and political will as we can muster in the coming months, and Parliament has a crucial role to play. Two years ago, there was a vote in the other place on limited and proportionate military action to save lives by deterring further use of chemical weapons in Syria. The coalition Government were defeated. At the time, the so-called ISIS was in its infancy; today it is believed to hold sway over half of Syria’s land mass and is drawing recruits from across the region, from Europe and as far away as Australia. At the time, there were around 1.7 million refugees; today, there are more than 4 million. Then there were 4 million internally displaced persons; today, there are more than 7 million. Who can argue that things are not getting worse and worse by the day? I hope that those who voted against the Motion will ask themselves whether a critically important opportunity to change the course of the conflict was lost. I sincerely hope that, if there is another vote to take strong but necessary action, for the sake of international peace and security and our own common humanity they will not say no again. To stop the Syria free fall, we shall need more than our humanity—we shall need leadership and a plan. Today the world is in desperate need of both.