Protection of Media Freedom

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sugg]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect media freedom around the world.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)]

My Lords, since launching a global media freedom campaign in 2019, the Government have continued to champion media freedom and healthy information ecosystems more broadly. As part of this work, we co-founded the Media Freedom Coalition and helped launch a new global media defence fund. The Minister of State for Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and United Nations reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to media freedom in November at a conference on the safety of journalists to mark the 10th anniversary of the UN plan of action on the safety of journalists.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I acknowledge the work that the Government has been doing on media freedom and I am very grateful for it, but around the world, journalists are detained simply for trying to do their job in an objective way. In Myanmar, for example, journalists have been killed and we have seen a wave of arrests, including of Htet Htet Khine, Sithu Aung Myint and Nyein Nyein Aye. Will the Minister join me in condemning the unjust detention of journalists and tell me what work the Government are doing to help protect media freedom in Myanmar?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. I believe it is still the case today that on average, every five days around the world a journalist is killed for bringing information to the public. With 80 journalists and media workers killed already this year and the number of journalists jailed for their work at an all-time high, this continues to be a real priority for us. The military in Myanmar has arrested over 100 journalists and killed at least three, and many others have been subject to torture, extreme violence and so on. It has also shut down almost all independent media in the country. Of course, we wholeheartedly and completely condemn the military’s behaviour and its suppression of opposition voices, including journalists and civil society activists, since the coup last year. We are providing emergency funding to help journalists and media organisations continue to report what is happening in Myanmar, and we are working with the Media Freedom Coalition and international partners to call out the military suppression of media freedom and the targeting of journalists.

Ethiopia: Peace Process

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

Yes, we are. However, I do not want to deny for a moment that the challenges are immense. We have just seen a very fragile peace agreement being reached; we need to ensure that it is sustained and strengthened, and that those who committed these crimes are held fully to account. As the noble Lord will know, we made an additional commitment of £12.5 million; part of that money will be allocated to national mechanisms in conflict-related areas, where we can help to build national accountability mechanisms and support the training of judges and prosecutors.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend’s comments on the dire humanitarian situation, I say that we believe there to be around 13 million people who now need humanitarian assistance because of the hostilities. Can he update me on any progress that has been made on humanitarian access since the ceasefire?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we are providing additional access. As my noble friend will be aware, in the last 18 months alone, we have allocated nearly £90 million to support efforts, including humanitarian efforts. Existing supply routes continue to operate, but we are working with partners such as UNICEF and, in particular, the WFP. Over the last 18 months, it has provided supplementary feeding, for example, to 115,000 malnourished mothers and children in northern Ethiopia, and to 226,000 people in drought-affected communities in southern Ethiopia. When we see the scale of the humanitarian suffering, however, we see that there is so much still to be done.

Civil Society and Human Rights Defenders

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow up and update the noble Lord on his second point. On his first point, of course, the United Kingdom stands very firm in our defence of freedom of religion or belief around the world. It is important that we remain steadfast in that. As a country, we celebrate the rich diversity of faith or belief. Indeed, our own journey, while it may have been challenging, is testament to this. As we look around the rich tapestry of faith institutions in the United Kingdom today, we have church steeples, cloisters, gurdwaras, synagogues, mosques and temples; that really demonstrates how we celebrate faith. Equally, many are denied their right to faith or belief around the world. That is why we held a conference earlier this year; the noble Lord was directly engaged with that. He also knows of my personal commitment to ensure that this remains a key priority for His Majesty’s Government.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, the work described in the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Collins, is undoubtedly needed. Front Line Defenders identified at least 358 people who were killed in 2021 because of their work defending rights. We have heard that in the Government’s integrated review there is a commitment to work with civil society and human rights defenders as a priority. We have an upcoming review of that; can my noble friend the Minister commit that that will remain a priority?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that it remains a priority. Indeed, very recently after the appointment of the new Government my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, the new Minister for Development, Andrew Mitchell, and I met civil society organisations directly to ensure that each of their priorities was fully understood, both in terms of the work we are doing in defending human rights around the world and equally in terms of understanding their development priorities.

Women, Peace and Security Bill [HL]

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Hodgson for bring the Bill forward and for her tireless work on women, peace and security. I fully support the Bill and I hope that other noble Lords, my noble friend the Minister and the Government do the same.

The Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office should indeed have regard to the UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security when formulating and implementing policy. Since the year 2000 and the adoption of Resolution 1325, the Security Council has encouraged member states to develop national action plans—NAPs—on women, peace and security. To date, 98 countries and territories have done so, although that that is only 50% of UN member states. However, the UK has been one of the leading lights on this. As we have heard, the UK is currently on its fourth NAP and for that, this Government, and indeed their predecessors, deserve some credit—the first was under a Labour Government and this should not be a party-political issue.

My noble friend Lady Hodgson has explained the four pillars of the women, peace and security agenda, all of which are essential to achieve gender equality and the progress we want to see: prevention, participation, protection, and relief and recovery.

I was pleased to see that the UK’s fourth NAP included a commitment to annual reporting to Parliament, which the Bill seeks to put into legislation, and to avoid any deviation from this in the future. The Bill also details the considerations the Secretary of State must have, particularly in regard to whether the UK is participating in multinational organisations such as the United Nations.

The UK generally has a proud record on women’s rights in the UN and other international forums, although that is not always the case. I, along with many other campaigners with women’s rights, was very disappointed to see the concluding statement following the UK-hosted International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief. After garnering multiple national signatories, it was withdrawn and watered down before being reissued.

However, on a more positive note, I was delighted to see just last week that the UK was among the leaders of a landmark statement at the United Nations on sexual and reproductive health and rights. I hope that the UK will continue this leading role in international fora, and the Bill will help ensure that we do. Women and girls should of course be a core part of every FCDO policy, and the Bill would help to ensure that. The Government have stated that the outcomes of the national action plan are designed to be specific, measurable, achievable and relevant, and to represent areas where we would expect to see progress over a five-year period. That is welcome, so let us have an annual check on this progress, as the Bill would ensure.

There have been a fair few changes of Minister in recent days, weeks and months. I am pleased to see the Foreign Secretary remain in his place and to see my noble friend the Minister here today. I wholeheartedly welcome Andrew Mitchell to his new role as Development Minister—he is a true champion of development—and in doing so, I thank Vicky Ford, who in tough times has been a great advocate for development and for the women and girls agenda.

In July 2022, the Government published an annual report on the implementation. Can my noble friend the Minister recommit to those pledges today? Is the plan still to develop and publish the WPS national action plan this year, and will they also publish the long-promised women and girls strategy? Many of us are looking forward to that publication. Will the UK launch new grants to pilot and evaluate pioneering new approaches to prevent sexual and gender-based violence in conflict and crisis over the next five years, building on the global evidence base on what works? Finally, can my noble friend the Minister recommit to restoring funding to women and girls as was committed by the previous Foreign Secretary, both when she was in that role and when she was Prime Minister?

Once again, I thank my noble friend Lady Hodgson for bringing this important Bill forward. I fully support it and, as I said at the beginning, I hope my noble friend the Minister and the Government do the same. I look forward to his response.

Genocide Determination Bill [HL]

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Genocide Determination Bill and thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for bringing it forward and indeed for his continued and tireless work on genocide; as I learned from the House of Lords Library briefing, he has raised it over 300 times in this House.

I was recently in France, where I visited Le Jardin des Rosiers in Paris and saw a memorial to the 101 infants of pre-school age who in the first half of this century lived their too-short lives in the 4th arrondissement. They were arrested by French police of the Vichy regime and handed over to the Nazis for extermination, simply because they were Jewish. The youngest was 27 days old.

We say “Never again”, but in the world we live in today there are recent cases of genocide, in various stages. These cases, along with the tragedy and horror of the Holocaust, need to be kept in mind when we make important decisions on mechanisms that could address them.

In 2014, Daesh perpetrated a litany of crimes against the Yazidis and other religious minorities, sending a clear message that they were not to exist under the Daesh reign in the region.

In 2016, over a million Rohingyas were forced to flee their homes. The Burmese military, the Tatmadaw, resorted to mass killings, torture, rape—including gang rape—and sexual violence, and much more, and I heard those stories first-hand when I visited Cox’s Bazar.

In 2018, we started hearing stories from Xinjiang, China, of thousands of Uighurs and other Turkic minorities being stripped of their religious identity, subjected to horrific abuse and sent to labour camps.

Just in the last year, we have seen some evidence of genocidal atrocities in the Tigrayan region. Among other horrors, we have seen women being violently raped and mutilated before being told that “A Tigrayan womb should never give birth.”

In 2022, we again have to consider the issue of genocide, whether it is the serious risk of genocide or elements of the legal definition, in Ukraine or in Afghanistan against the Hazara community, as we heard from the noble Lord. These cases are indeed current and contemporary.

The fact that in the last eight years alone we have been discussing so many cases of genocide does not mean that we are being too liberal with the word. It means that our inaction to address the early warning signs and risk factors of genocide, and then full-blown genocide, emboldens the perpetrators. This inaction sends the message that people can get away with it—a message that is the opposite of “Never again”.

Several decades after accepting the obligations to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, as identified in the UN genocide convention, we have not done enough to ensure that these obligations are implemented. I know that the Government are fully committed to these obligations, but this commitment must be followed by actions. The Government’s long-standing policy is that genocide is left to international judicial systems; I articulated that policy from the Dispatch Box when I was an FCDO Minister. However, I was uncomfortable with that policy at the time, and no longer believe it to be correct. We are not seeing it working, because the UK does not have any formal mechanism that allows for the consideration and recognition of mass atrocities that meet the threshold of genocide.

His Majesty’s Government place immense confidence in the international judicial bodies to respond to genocide, despite seeing slow—or a lack of—action in them, and despite the Government being the duty bearers under the genocide convention rather than international judicial systems. We still do not have a determination from an international judicial body for any of the atrocities that I have mentioned as genocide. After everything that we know about these atrocities, including by way of the incredibly brave testimonies of survivors, some of which we heard about from the noble Lord, Lord Alton —survivors such as Nadia Murad, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a woman that I know my noble friend the Minister has great admiration for—how can we continue to justify the long-standing policy that ultimately prevents the community having their pain and suffering recognised for what it is?

This is a difficult and complex issue, but that must not mean that we do nothing. The circular failure of the Government’s long-standing policy on genocide must be addressed once and for all. The Genocide Determination Bill does this: it provides a mechanism for genocide determination or serious risk of genocide, in line with the ICJ interpretation of the duty to prevent genocide. It also requires His Majesty’s Government to act and proposes steps to be taken, including engaging the ICC, the ICJ or relevant UN bodies. These are steps that the Government do not currently use.

That memorial in Les Jardin des Rosiers contained this message:

“Passer-by, read their names. Your memory is their only tombstone … Let us never forget them.”


We must never forget them or any other victim of genocide. We say, “Never again”, but to mean it, we must have a comprehensive reform of the UK’s genocide strategy. I support the Bill as the first step towards that.

Horn of Africa: Famine

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, I would love to be able to answer that question, but I cannot. The Treasury set a test, with which the House is familiar, and it will be the Treasury that decides when we have met that test. My hope, like that of everyone here, is that we pass that test sooner rather than later and that we resume our 0.7% commitment.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, the UK aid budget is under additional pressure after the cut from 0.7%, as the Government may be planning to charge an estimated £3 billion of domestic refugee costs to ODA, which would amount to about 25% of what we would normally spend overseas. I am sure we are all in favour of supporting Ukrainian refugees in this country, but I hope that this will not be done at the expense of children and their families who are in so much need in the Horn of Africa. Can my noble friend confirm the domestic refugee cost for this year and tell me how it will be funded?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is right. The Government’s response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the wider ODA pressures, including the ODA-eligible expenditure incurred through the Afghan resettlement programme and the UK support to people fleeing Ukraine, has put unexpected and significant pressure on the ODA budget. The Foreign Office and the Treasury are in discussion as to how much of that funding should be categorised as ODA and how much should not. Of course, the hope has to be that there is as little impact as possible on the broader ODA budget, and that is certainly the Foreign Office’s position.

International Development Strategy: Volunteering

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the importance of volunteering is embedded and well understood in the FCDO. That has not changed; it is reflected in everything coming out of it. Specific decisions on funding are yet to be made but, adding to what I said on the previous question, we are committed to and are already establishing new centres of expertise, building on existing platforms for shared learning and with volunteering at their heart. We are doing this across the board.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, when I visited Nepal a few years ago as DfID Minister, I met participants in the VSO-supported Sisters for Sisters programme, which mentors older girls and supported nearly 10,000 girls to stay in school. As with many voluntary programmes, women and girls really see the benefits, as both volunteers and the beneficiaries. Will voluntary work be included in the upcoming women and girls strategy? Acknowledging the current circumstances, can my noble friend tell me when this will be published, as many of us eagerly await it?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her persistence on this issue generally. There is a clear commitment in the IDS to providing women and girls around the world with the freedom and opportunity they need to succeed. It is there in black and white and highlighted within the strategy. We intend to restore the funding that was reduced previously to help unlock their potential, educate girls, support their empowerment and protect them against violence. A major part of that focus will be volunteering, which has always played an incredibly powerful role in this area. I am afraid I cannot give her more details at this point; I wish that I could.

Tigray

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness that the challenge is immense across Ethiopia. In particular, 9 million people in northern Ethiopia are in need of life-saving aid due to the conflict and nearly 30 million people require life-saving humanitarian aid throughout Ethiopia in 2022. The UK has been working with our UN partners. We were involved with the very first set of convoys that went in to provide humanitarian relief and continue to do so. We have been lobbying the Ethiopian Government to restore access to cash banking and communications, and since November 2020, the UK has provided more than £86 million to support vulnerable crisis-affected communities across Ethiopia, reaching communities in the Tigray, Afar, Amhara, Oromia and Somali regions.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, around 26,000 women and girls need services following conflict-related sexual violence. This violence has led to babies being born and their mothers ostracised. Can my noble friend provide an update following the deployment of the UK’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative team and say when its report will become available?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend will be aware, CRSV remains a key priority for the UK Government. The Foreign Secretary has made sexual violence in conflict one of her top priorities. In northern Ethiopia, the UK has provided £4 million of support to survivors of sexual violence. My noble friend is correct that we have deployed experts; we are working with UNICEF and the UNHCR to ensure that full support can be provided to survivors. I will be pleased to provide a briefing to my noble friend on the detail of our support and the focus we hope to bring at the PSVI conference in November.

International Development Strategy

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

In relation to the women and girls spending commitment that my noble friend the Minister just highlighted, can he confirm that that restoration of funding will happen in this financial year, and by how much the funding will be increased?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The Foreign Secretary confirmed recently that the FCDO will spend £745 million on bilateral women and girls programmes this financial year. This will restore bilateral spending to 2020-21 levels. As I said earlier, the new approach will be set out in full in the UK’s 2022 women and girls strategy.

Russia and Ukraine: Settlement

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to the impending food crisis and the 20 million tonnes of grain that are being held hostage by Russia in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Rudenko offered yesterday to provide a corridor for vessels carrying food to leave Ukraine, but only if some sanctions are lifted. What is the Government’s position on this?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that food security is very much at the forefront of not just our thinking but our policy. Over the next three years, we will direct more than £3 billion of support to the most vulnerable countries, particularly in Africa. Yesterday, in engaging with G7 partners, Foreign Minister Kuleba said, I believe, that this agricultural crisis will not be for just one cycle but will be repeated.

There is grain in Ukraine currently. The issue is that Odessa and the Black Sea are blocked and mined. This requires Russia not just to show full co-operation but to pull back. It could demine certain parts where the Ukrainians themselves have provided mines—they know where they are—as part of the support. Equally, however, what guarantees do we have once we get into the Black Sea? That is where Crimea comes in. The Black Sea allows Russia to embargo any ship going through. Of course, mines remain a constant challenge.