Reconciliation: Role of British Foreign, Defence and International Development Policy

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to add my thanks to the most reverend Primate for calling this timely debate. While the debate is focused on foreign, defence and international development policy, I cannot help but think that it is timely for our domestic political relationships as well. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the most reverend Primate in the field of reconciliation and his commitment to it as one of his three key priorities as archbishop. His focus on it as a discipline has the potential to restore it to our national foreign-policy skill base, and in doing so he has brought the wealth of both his international and domestic experience to addressing this issue.

Reconciliation is generally understood to be the establishment of friendly relations. It sounds so easy, but when we look at how long-term and entrenched some of the conflicts around the world are, and the absolute destruction and devastation that they have visited on individuals, communities and nations, it is self-evident that the journey to a place of re-established friendly relations can be taken only through a gateway of genuine and painstaking reconciliation, forged on the pathway of truth, justice and costly forgiveness—step by step, one life at a time.

Earlier this year I had the privilege of visiting the genocide museum in Rwanda. It tells the story of how the genocide was systematically created and how reconciliation was painstakingly forged over a 10-year period. If ever there was a warning not to walk the path of identity politics, it is Rwanda. But the hope and reconciliation that has been established step by step, one story at a time and one commemoration at a time, is remarkable and deeply moving. This meaningful reconciliation in a post-conflict environment required a bottom-up approach that focused on the past trauma of individuals and communities so as not to pass on intergenerational anger and cause violent recurrences. But there was also a role for an approach to reconciliation that was high profile and situated at the national level. It involved mechanisms that attempted to create reconciliation by bringing atrocities to public awareness through truth telling, confession, apology and making recommendations regarding the prevention of further abuses.

Why is it so necessary to include the skill of reconciliation in our foreign, defence and international development policy? Surely peacemaking is sufficient. Reconciliation is hugely important if we want to see a permanent closure to conflict. If we want to see a permanent end to conflict in regions of the world where there have been repeated bouts of violence followed by peace followed by repeated violence, the reconciliation process is crucial. Almost two-thirds of all armed conflicts that ended in the early 2000s had relapsed within five years. This shows the importance of viewing long-term peacebuilding and reconciliation as the fundamental foundation of enabling a country to move on from the destructive impact of conflict and actually heal.

Reconciliation is also crucial as a foundation stone for real international development. The 2018 Legatum Prosperity Index, in which I declare an interest, clearly illustrates that while global prosperity is rising, the gap between those nations at the top and those at the bottom of the index is widening. As many parts of the world become more prosperous, others fall behind. This is primarily being driven by deteriorating safety and security, which have continued to decline across the globe, falling in five out of seven regions. For example, over the last 10 years the number of deaths caused directly by war has increased by 60% and deaths from terrorism have quadrupled. The World Bank estimates that, by 2030, nearly half of all people in extreme poverty will be living in conflict-affected areas.

We know that a platform of stability, safety and security is the foundation of successful nation building and the essential precondition of prosperity. It is key that the UK, in our international development work and foreign policy, plays a role in ending conflict and supports the transition to rebuilding a nation if we are to see the people we are investing in through our international development programmes flourish on a long-term basis. Rarely has there been a more important time for us to develop in our foreign policy and international development work the skills of not just peacemaking but reconciliation, in order to bring about permanent peaceful settlements and create a firm foundation for the development of fragile nations. I welcome the approach of understanding that the aim is not just to end conflict and create a physically safer environment but to go further and see reconciliation as a key part of enabling a country to rebuild and bring to an end to the cycle of peace, violence, peace, violence.

The UK already has a strong record to build on. Our Government’s commitment to nurturing peace and stability is well known: it features in the national security strategy, the Foreign Office’s priorities and the UK aid strategy. The National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 included a commitment to spend at least 50% of DfID’s budget in “fragile states and regions”. The Government’s cross-departmental Stabilisation Unit plays an important role in ending conflict, and its priorities increasingly include reconciliation work. The nature of reconciliation means that it is most effective when it is driven and supported from within a country—but that does not mean that Britain cannot play an important role in aiding the creation and sustaining of effective reconciliation. By keeping reconciliation at the heart of British foreign, defence and international development policy, we have a strong role to play.

The co-ordination of the Stabilisation Unit across departments is a welcome example of collaboration, but we should routinely seek to include explicit peacebuilding and reconciliation goals in policy dialogue at all levels. I support the proposed creation of a reconciliation unit in government. We should look for further opportunities to weave reconciliation and peacebuilding goals into diplomatic, trade, aid and national security strategies where they relate to conflict, post-conflict or conflict-prevention settings. We need to ensure that key decision-makers across all levels of government fully understand what reconciliation as a permanent peacebuilding tool can achieve, as well as the long-term, incremental nature of reconciliation.

If reconciliation is generally understood to be the re-establishment of friendly relations, the journey to a place of re-established friendly relationships can be taken only through a gateway of genuine, painstaking reconciliation forged on a pathway of truth, justice and costly forgiveness. We have made a start on this journey. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s plans of how we can further intertwine this essential work with UK foreign policy. When we have done that, we can apply those skills to our own political setting, remembering above all else our humanity.