Combating Atrocity Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it is pleasure to speak immediately after the right reverend Prelate, and to share these Benches’ support for his call to reinstate the 0.7% for overseas aid as soon possible. If the Minister is able to give any insight into that, that would be very welcome, because, as the right reverend Prelate has just said, words are never enough. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, about the dangers of democratic backsliding and other phenomena. So there is a range of issues that we need to think about this afternoon at the end of a very powerful debate.

As always, I pay tribute to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Alton. We have already heard that the noble Lord, Lord Rook, aspires to be like the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He also wants to be, perhaps, a deputy Bishop and did the work of presenting the words of the former Bishop of Truro and his report very effectively. As many noble Lords will realise, one of the things to which you would have to aspire, to be like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is to be utterly persistent and to ensure that, whenever there is a scintilla of hope that somebody might be willing to speak in a debate, you will keep coming and saying, “Could you just do this?” The noble Lord is so passionate about the causes that matter.

The causes on which he speaks, including bringing us today’s debate and introducing another Private Member’s Bill, are always of the most profound importance: literally, matters of life and death. They are issues on which we find it very easy to agree that there is a need to speak. Across the Chamber, we may find many points of convergence, but so often there is one person or one group of people who seems to find it so very difficult to support what the noble Lord and other noble Lords have said in the debate. I am hoping today that I might be proved wrong, and that the Government Benches might be willing to say, “You’re right. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has brought such a compelling case and his Private Member’s Bill is so important that we are going to give it a fair wind”.

We have heard this afternoon about the difficulty that we, and the other place, have faced over the years when suggesting that a case may be one of genocide. The response from the Government Front Bench is always, “A very difficult case—we agree there’s a problem, but we can’t name it as a genocide. That is for the courts to decide”. The response of the courts is, “We can’t determine a genocide, because we need some legal basis on which to do that, beyond the general international law norms”. I very much hope that the Minister might be able to suggest that he can be a little more open, and that the Government might welcome a very useful Private Member’s Bill that is on its way.

“Never again” were the words with which I planned to open my speech. My noble friend Lord Hussain did so in his speech, because they were the words that were proclaimed immediately after World War II and after the Holocaust. When we had the convention on genocide, its words had the important contribution of Raphael Lemkin, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, earlier, and there was the work of Hersch Lauterpacht on crimes against humanity. It was “never again”, and yet, 80 years on, we see so frequently cases that are clearly atrocity crimes.

I am very mindful of the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. He said that we need to be careful about calling too many things genocide; perhaps we use that word too casually. But it is important for us to find a way, as a country, and to be able to be reassured that the Government are mindful of all their duties under the convention on genocide. It is not simply about naming a genocide or just about punishing one, if a court is eventually able to agree that one has been perpetrated. It is also, as we have heard this afternoon, about preventing genocide.

That might sound a very large demand, and it is. I am very grateful for a briefing that I was sent by Ewelina Ochab, who has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in which there is a reminder that in 2007, in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v Serbia and Montenegro, the judgment stated that the duty to prevent genocide is to be triggered when the state

“learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed”.

Even in the 1930s, if the word genocide had existed, people would have been able to see that there was a genocide of the Jewish people—and that was in the days before mass media and mass, instantaneous communication.

We now have many more opportunities to be aware of potential atrocities, crimes against humanity and genocide. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm this afternoon whether he feels that the Government have all the tools they need to be aware of genocides that may be being perpetrated, or where there is a serious risk of genocide, because that is clearly a duty for this Government and for our country. From the first speech by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, onwards, we have heard references to a whole series of cases where there are clearly crimes of atrocity. Whether or not they are genocides, there are crimes that need to be investigated and explored: in Sudan; with the Uyghurs in China; the case of the Rohingya; and the situation in the Middle East, where there are allegations that clearly need to be looked into. If there is nothing to see then no crime will be found, but there is at least a duty to explore cases where perhaps there may be genocide or crimes against humanity.

One case I would like to touch on before I conclude is Afghanistan. Just under five years ago, NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan. We had played a crucial role there. When we left, we left behind many vulnerable people: women and girls, who have been mentioned, and members of the judiciary, for whom the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, did fantastic work. But the end of May marked 1,717 days since restraints on women’s education began, and over 500 days since women have no longer been able to train as midwives in Afghanistan. On 14 May this year, the Taliban had a decree on the principles of separation between spouses; this legalises child marriage and establishes different standards of consent for girls and boys who are minors. Under the decree, a minor girl’s silence is treated as consent to marriage, whereas a boy at least has explicitly to accept or reject such marriage. There is also a decree that can essentially take away the property of Afghans who are currently out of the country. Why might they be out of the country? It is precisely because they have fled for their lives from the Taliban. As a country, we still owe a duty to many Afghan refugees and to those still in Afghanistan. What is His Majesty’s Government doing to support them?