Syria: Idlib Attacks

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I spoke earlier about the importance of using our position at the UN to make progress on this. As I said, there is a meeting today, and we very much hope to see some progress on that. It is important that we work closely with our international partners on this, move as one and gather the evidence. The important thing is to ensure we see a de-escalation in the violence there, but we need to be realistic about what leverage we actually have.

On Turkey and the reports that the noble Baroness mentions, we are of course closely monitoring the situation in north-east Syria. We are concerned about the humanitarian impact of any possible Turkish military action on both the civilian population and, indeed, humanitarian actors. We have made our concerns clear to Turkey on that and remain in close contact with our partners to ensure we have contingency planning in place to protect locally based humanitarian aid workers and civilians and to ensure that all their needs are met if we see any military action.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I add my gratitude to all the NGOs working in these very difficult circumstances—especially Islamic Relief, an organisation that has been there right from the outset of the emerging conflicts. It is doing amazingly outstanding work.

Is the Minister aware that the civilian casualties extend to the huge number of women incarcerated in Syrian prisons? To the best of my knowledge, there were 13,000; there are now at least 8,000. An organisation called Conscience Movement has looked into this and reports that a massive number of women have been raped, tortured and widowed—many of their partners have been killed—so what are our Government doing to ensure that some international representation is made to bring attention to this terrific, ongoing impact on particularly vulnerable women?

[Baroness Sugg]

I join the noble Baroness in praising the work of Islamic Relief. We were delighted recently to aid-match the funding for its Ramadan appeal. It does incredible work, both in Syria and around the world.

I had not seen the figures on women in prisons. Of course, violence against women and girls is abhorrent wherever we see it. One of the important things is to ensure that, when we face humanitarian crises, our response takes that into account from the outset. I recently attended a conference in Oslo to ensure that humanitarian aid properly takes into account how we can help women from the very outset of a crisis.