Genocide Determination Bill [HL]

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to salute and thank my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for allowing us to consider this Bill. The noble Lord has spent a decade fighting for the Bill and far longer refusing to let the House look away from the Yazidis of Sinjar, from Tigray or from Darfur. While sometimes I do not agree with some of his analysis, I have long admired his consistent courage and persistence. He has taught us that recognition without consequences and action is a dangerous inertia. That lesson challenges us to examine atrocities regardless of where they are happening when we find it too difficult to name the many counts of barbaric inhumanity that we are witnessing.

Genocide does not hide; it broadcasts itself in the desecration of Sudan, the mass graves of El Fasher, the Rohingyas of Myanmar, the famine and mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the murderous cleansing of the West Bank and Lebanon. The human cry for survival has so often been unheeded in this Chamber and the other place, so I am very grateful to the noble Lord.

We cannot say we did not know, for it lays dormant in our conscience and in the discretion of our will to protect some and not others. We have selectively chosen to voice atrocities but be silent on others as innocent families and communities remain buried under rubble and are dying today while we deliberate. Which human beings deserve our attention politically and financially, and for whom do we choose to prevent access to food, electricity and water? If the Bill were supported and passed, it could indisputably compel our Government to meet their obligations under the UN genocide convention. However, would what I have described meet the test of any Government for reference to the courts for a preliminary determination on genocide? Sadly, we have seen that that has not been the case.

I am therefore concerned about the context in which our Government would refer matters to a preliminary determination, given the political distinction that they have already applied to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, for example. For decades, our Government have hidden behind the sentiment of leaving it to the courts rather than it being a treaty obligation—a neglectful policy repeated so often that it has become a shield for looking the other way, not mandating any obligatory action and by default guaranteeing that no mechanism exists to fulfil their obligation. The Bill would end that evasion. It would avoid politicians and officials and empower the victims and survivors and the organisations representing them before an independent court, encouraging victim-centred justice.

The Bill does not stop at recognition. Clause 3 would compel the Secretary of State to refer any determination to the ICC, the ICJ and the Security Council, turning a finding into a legal duty, thus taking a step towards meeting our obligations under the genocide convention the moment a serious risk was known and identified, not years after the graves were counted.

On the eve of my 28th year in this House, I wish to stay hopeful that truths will weigh heavier in our deliberation, forcing us to act over the thunderous noise of those who have ignored public calls to stop genocide, confident that there will be no consequences for them. It is an honour to support this Bill in the hope that it will secure lasting and meaningful justice.