Genocide Determination Bill [HL]

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his dogged determination to ensure that the UK’s signature to the 1948 genocide convention has real meaning. I commend him on his thorough introduction to the debate. I also thank the authors of the Library briefing on the Bill, which I found extremely helpful. This is a vital Bill and the proposals within it will, if accepted by the Government, help make the world a better place by giving us here in the UK a mechanism to call out the risk of a genocide, an ongoing genocide or a genocide that has already taken place.

The evidential bar to bring a case to the High Courts of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the Court of Session in Scotland, will be suitably high. Not least, there is a requirement that a committee of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords produce a report based on both written and oral evidence. Only if that report flashes a red light will it go to the Secretary of State for his response. It is only after the Secretary of State has responded that an application can be made to the High Courts and the Court of Session for a predetermination, with the criteria for the admissibility of the application set by the Secretary of State. I think I have understood that right, but I am sure that noble Lords, particularly the Minister, will put me right if I have not. It is clear that the Government will be in the driving seat.

Our current reliance on the international courts to determine first whether a genocide has taken or is taking place, or that there is a serious risk of one taking place, has subjugated our duty to prevent and punish genocide to the sidelines, leaving us with years of inaction while perpetrators go free. The Bill will give us a means to save at least some lives, by instigating earlier action then might otherwise be the case. One of the gravest horrors of genocide is that victims are dehumanised and subjected to cruel and unusual treatment. If the Bill can prevent one such death, it will have done its job.

I conclude by saying a few words about the origin of the word “genocide”. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer, heard Winston Churchill speak about the horrors of World War Two. Churchill said this:

“whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands—literally scores of thousands—of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German Police-troops. We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

Lemkin, who lost much of his family in the Holocaust, understood the vital necessity of naming this heinous crime if future atrocities were to be prevented. Genocide, a combination of the Greek word “genus”, meaning “race” or “tribe”, and “-cide” from the Latin meaning “killing”, was the term he came up with, which he defined as

“the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.”

In 1948, the newly formed United Nations used this word in its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, commonly known as the genocide convention. It was a treaty intended to prevent any future genocides. However, although ratified by 152 nations, it has not prevented the attempted destruction of people for the sole reason that they belong to a particular nation or group. Recent examples abound: the Tutsis in Rwanda, Darfur, the Muslims in Bosnia, Daesh atrocities against Yazidis and Christians, Bangladeshis in the former East Pakistan, and now the undoubted atrocities against the Uighur Muslims. As we have heard, that is the tip of the iceberg. I point out, with a nod of approval to the previous Bill that we debated, that women and girls bear the brunt of this violence.

The convention on genocide on its own is patently not working; we need something else. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has worked tirelessly to present us with a credible preliminary step to determine what constitutes a genocide, as well as with a referral mechanism to the international courts. It will also help to fulfil our legal obligation to the responsibility-to-protect principle. We should welcome it.