Rohingya Refugees

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

First, let me clarify the point I made. Obviously, the ODA budget qualifies to pay for refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Effectively, what happened over previous years was not only that the budget moved from 0.7% to 0.5% but that some of it was taken up, quite rightly, by ODA spending on looking after people from Ukraine and Afghanistan. We can now see that the overseas aid budget being spent overseas is actually increasing. For instance, when it comes to Africa, next year the budget will be almost doubling, to well over £1 billion. On what we want to see with the Rohingya, clearly there is a huge refugee crisis. They are being looked after in Bangladesh. Ideally, when circumstances are right, they will be able to go home. In between now and then, I think we should learn the lesson of the Syrian refugee crisis, where we did a lot to help countries such as Lebanon and particularly Jordan to make sure that people were able to stay there, work there and build livelihoods there, and then, when it is possible, go home.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, looking specifically at the point the right reverend Prelate raised about the plight of the refugees in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, will the Minister look again at what happened only last week, when 5,000 of those refugees were displaced from the shacks and tents in which they had been living as a result of a fire? The Minister invited us to look at the longer term. I reinforce what the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, said about the International Court of Justice, which has imposed interim provisional measures on the Burmese military, with the support of the British Government, which is extremely welcome. Will he raise at the Security Council the failure to implement that and will he have discussions with the National Unity Government about the long-term rights of the Rohingya, the Kachin, the Karen and the other ethnic and religious minorities? That is the fundamental issue: if someone is not an equal citizen in the new Burma that will emerge after the coup, nothing will change.

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

Fundamentally, the noble Lord is completely right about the interim measures which have been set out by the International Court of Justice. It is incumbent on the Government of Myanmar to make sure they are put in place and to abide by them. The noble Lord made the general point that what is required is an inclusive, federal state, where every ethnicity and every nationality can feel it has a part to play in the country and that it will benefit from the country’s resources. Obviously, we have this military Government, with whom we have very limited contact, but for the long-term future of Myanmar, that is the only answer.