British Indian Ocean Territory
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Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Baroness, who follows these matters very closely, has raised a number of important issues. I think that one has to reject the talk of manoeuvres to keep Chagossians from their home. Fundamental and very difficult dilemmas must be faced by those who have the responsibility, or who want to take on the responsibility, of deciding how to solve this problem. The matter is before the European Court of Human Rights at the moment, and remains before it, and that is our position. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has said that we continue to examine this policy in detail, and that is what we will do, but the fundamental position that we take was, I think, taken exactly by the previous Administration as well and is based on some very difficult but hard realities about both our needs for defence and the rights of those concerned.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, will my noble friend ask the Americans to agree to the publication of the minutes of the politico-military discussion with US officials in October 2009 in so far as they covered the return of the Chagossians to their outer islands? Does he agree that, despite attempts by the FCO to ventriloquise the Americans into making a statement that even a small number of Man Fridays—as they contemptuously refer to the inhabitants—would jeopardise military operations at the base, the Americans have said nothing official on that subject since President Obama took office?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I do not think that I can comment on the WikiLeak gossip that has circulated around the globe. Much of it is very inaccurate or taken completely out of context, so I would not like to comment further on those matters.
Human Rights
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Lord Avebury
My Lords, in my three minutes’ worth in Tuesday’s debate on Iran I gave notice of two issues for today. The first was the advice given by the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, on how to improve the special procedures system of communication, a matter that I do not think was dealt with by the Conservative Party commission. I mentioned then his proposal for dealing with countries with consistently poor levels of co-operation or meaningful engagement, to which I added an alternative on which I would like an answer from the Minister today.
Mr Alston made five other proposals, including an examination of the effectiveness of the communications system, better integration of the work of the SPs and modernisation of their technology of communication. There is not time to mention them all but they are all worth consideration. Can we urge the Equality and Human Rights Commission to pick them up and, now that Mr Alston has ended his six-year stint as special rapporteur, to put him on a list of potential candidates to carry out the work? How else does my noble friend think that we might go about improving the sclerotic and byzantine edifice of the special procedures?
The second issue that I left for today was that of Iran's minorities. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, concentrated on some aspects of the treatment of minorities. The Kurds have always suffered extreme persecution in Iran, as in other parts of the region. Agents of the regime assassinated their great leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou at a meeting to discuss peace in Vienna in 1988, and then his successor Dr Sadegh Sharafkandi was killed at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in 2001. In September I asked the Minister, Alistair Burt, if he would press the Austrians to release the files on Ghassemlou’s murder, as the Germans did in the case of Sharafkandi. I would be grateful if my noble friend could tell me what progress is being made on that issue.
Regarding the situation of the Kurds, there are 21 Iranian Kurds on death row today, including a woman, Miss Zeinab Jalalian, who was convicted of “mobarabeh”—“enmity against God”. The Kurdish Human Rights Project—I declare an interest as president of that organisation—says that after her arrest in 2008 she was held incommunicado in a Ministry of Detention facility for eight months before being sentenced to death by the Kermanshah Revolutionary Court. During her brief trial, which lasted for only a few minutes, she was barred from access to her lawyer and was told to “shut up” by the sentencing judge after making a plea to say goodbye to her family.
On the Baha’is, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote personally to the Iranian authorities asking for an explanation of the circumstances in which seven members have been held on trumped-up charges from May 2008. They have now been sentenced in totally irregular court proceedings to 10 years’ imprisonment, in effect for being members of the Baha’i faith. I declare an interest as acting chair of the Baha’i All-Party Parliamentary Group.
In another case, of many, three Baha’is have recently begun a fourth year in detention for the “crime” of their participation in an education programme for underprivileged children in Shiraz. They were sentenced despite a report by an inspector of the Office of the Representative of the Supreme Leader that pointed to their innocence. They have been held for three years so far, not in a regular prison but in the holding cells of the Shiraz office of the Ministry of Intelligence where they have no windows, beds or chairs and have only recently been given mattresses. All three have injuries for which they have received inadequate medical attention.
Minorities in Pakistan are having an extremely hard time also. The Parliamentary Human Rights Group has just published a report on the situation of Ahmadis in Pakistan, which presents a stark picture of the discrimination against that community and the lack of protection from the state against their enemies, the extremist Khatme Nabuwwat, an organisation that openly incites religious hatred, creating an atmosphere that leads to assassination and even to well organised massacres of Ahmadis at Friday prayers in their mosques.
Bodies such as the Sipah-e Sahaba and Lashkar-e Jhangvi are violent anti-Shia organisations that were banned by Musharraf in 2002 but are still freely operating in Pakistan, in spite of their known associations with al-Qaeda. They relentlessly target minorities such as the Hazaras, a small Shia minority in Baluchistan, in killings and suicide bombings. An estimated 400 of the Hazaras have been killed and 1,000 injured in the last few years. Thousands more have abandoned their homes and businesses and sought asylum abroad in places such as Canada and Australia.
In Karachi, too, there is a wave of violence, directed against the Ahmadis, Christians, Shia and the MQM, a political party representing the descendants of those who crossed over from India at the time of partition. Nobody is ever arrested for these crimes. We need to know whether the Government, the European Union, the UN or, better still, all of them, will persuade President Zardari and the federal Government to act firmly on the impunity that has been enjoyed by terrorist groups and their extremist ideological allies.
Iran
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Lord Avebury
My Lords, I hope that next week’s Geneva meeting will cover Iran’s refusal to co-operate with the UN’s official human rights mechanisms and its rejection of the specific recommendations under Iran’s UPR, to which attention was drawn by a consortium of NGOs led by Human Rights Watch, as well as by the UN Secretary-General in his September report to the General Assembly. In turn, it expressed deep concern at,
“serious ongoing and recurring human rights violations”,
including torture, the persecution of human rights defenders,
“pervasive gender inequality and violence against women”,
discrimination against minorities and a dramatic increase in executions. Many were in public, ignoring international standards, still used stoning and suspension strangulation, and included victims under 18. The human rights high commissioner added her voice to the chorus last week, concentrating on the vicious treatment of the human rights defender, Nasrin Sotoudeh, and everyone associated with Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi’s centre for human rights.
The NGO consortium under Human Rights Watch wants the UN’s thematic special procedures, such as the rapporteur on executions, to report periodically to the UN Human Rights Council on matters that fall within its mandate. Iran has escaped detailed scrutiny by the SPs simply by ignoring requests for an invitation. Philip Alston, the retiring executions rapporteur, merely records that a request to visit remains outstanding, without even saying when it was originally made. Again, that has been the practice for all the SPs.
Iran holds the world record, as has been said, for the number of communications on executions. During the year under review, Mr Alston sent 63 letters to Iran, which failed to respond to 37 of them. He suggests that when a country has persistently poor levels of co-operation or engagement with the communications process, the Human Rights Council should demand an explanation. I hope that the Government support that. Otherwise, he suggests, the procedure, despite its significant cost, is not being taken seriously as a means of responding to violations.
I shall return to the other proposals made by the special rapporteur in Thursday’s human rights debate, when I shall also comment on the Secretary-General’s comments on Iran’s treatment of its Baha’i, Sufi, Baluch and Kurdish communities. For today, what ideas do the Government have for improving the means of dealing with the particular case of Iran at the United Nations? Does he agree that at least the rapporteur should produce country reports on the most egregious human rights violators without waiting for an invitation to visit, as has been the practice hereto?
Burma: Elections
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Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Baroness is quite right. This is our policy, as she well knows, having administered it herself. As she also probably realises, the problem is that of gathering the appropriate international consensus. If we rush in too soon and fail to get the consensus, that will merely send a signal to the generals in Burma that the international community cannot do anything. We want to get the timing right, but the policy is exactly as the noble Baroness says. We support the idea of a commission of inquiry and the rapporteur’s proposal, but it may take quite a time to build the broad consensus that is needed to make this a success.
Lord Avebury
Should we not make it crystal clear to the Government of Myanmar that, if Aung San Suu Kyi is released on Saturday, that will be grossly insufficient to meet the many criticisms in the special rapporteur’s report, which is now before the General Assembly? Have the Government pressed for a UN-led dialogue on all the recommendations in that report, including for a commission of inquiry, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness? Is it in the EU recommendations to the General Assembly for discussion in December?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble friend is right: merely releasing Aung San Suu Kyi from her detention is only part of the story and certainly not a full response. There is a need for far greater pressure on Burma to begin to return itself to democracy. The EU has a tough sanctions policy, as my noble friend knows. We all have an agreed EU position on Burma, which the British Government are entirely consistent with and support. As to the policy at the UN, the position is as I described to the noble Baroness. It is a question of building the consensus and getting the timing right so that we and our EU colleagues can press ahead successfully and get full support for a commission of inquiry. It is no good if we rush in and find that we cannot get adequate support for it.
Piracy: Operation Atalanta (EUC Report)
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Lord Avebury
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, has quoted the Select Committee which makes it clear that without addressing the root causes of the problem in Somalia, we shall not deal with piracy. A precondition for dealing with the root causes must be a functioning and stable central Government.
I congratulate and send best wishes to the new Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmajo, whose appointment by the president was confirmed by the parliament on November 1. He is a member of the Marehan subclan of the Darod clan, which has produced many notable Somalis. He is reported to be experienced in conflict resolution and has offered to begin peace talks with the rebels, in whose leadership the Marehan are well represented, but he has warned the rebels that if they reject this offer, he will drive them out. Judging from the threat last week by one al-Shabaab commander Fuad Shongole that Kampala and Bujumbura will suffer fresh attacks if they do not withdraw their troops from Somalia—the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to the Somali bomb attack in Kampala that cost 70 lives—the dominant view in al-Shabaab must be against any form of compromise. However, in the past few weeks, AMISOM has been gaining ground in Mogadishu and now claims to control half the city. The international community must give Prime Minister Farmajo and AMISOM its full support so that if talks begin, either with al-Shabaab or with individual commanders who peel off, the Prime Minister negotiates from a position of strength. If negotiations prove to be impossible, it will be even more important that the TFG is strengthened and stabilised.
I warmly congratulate the Select Committee of my noble friend Lord Teverson on what must be seen as a practical contribution towards solving this other huge problem that is weighing down the in-tray of the new Prime Minister—that of piracy based on Somali territory. There may or may not be a link, as has been suggested, between the pirates and al-Shabaab, and perhaps my noble friend can tell us whether there is any international investigation of what happens to the large sums paid by ship owners, such as the $12.3 million paid this week to release two vessels and their crews. In spite of the increasing effectiveness of the EU’s naval operation, which has escorted 73 WFP-chartered vessels safely into Mogadishu and has successfully disrupted more than 60 attacks on other vessels, the overall record for the first nine months of 2010 is slightly worse than for the equivalent period in 2009, in terms of the number of ships hijacked. It has also been mentioned that the pirates are adopting new tactics, such as the posting of hostages on their attack vessels, which was reported yesterday when pirates tried for the first time to hijack an EU-escorted AMISOM supply ship. The Spanish escort ship was unable to open fire on the pirates for fear of killing the hostages, and the rules of engagement need to be considered if they do not include an effective response to this tactic.
The Select Committee and the UN Secretary-General in his report of 27 October to the Security Council also agree that much more needs to be done and that the root causes of conflict and instability in Somalia need to be addressed if piracy is to be eliminated. It will be very interesting to hear from the Minister what specific ideas we have for ramping up the pressure on the pirates and for liberating the hostages without having to pay out millions of dollars in ransom, as we are doing now.
Meanwhile, the Select Committee makes several proposals which are not in the Secretary-General’s report. Do the Government normally draw the Secretary-General’s attention to the recommendations of our Select Committees that touch on matters that are before the Security Council? In his report, the Secretary-General appeals to,
“all ships traversing the high seas off the coast of Somalia to follow IMO recommendations and industry-developed best management practices, which have proved to significantly reduce the risk of being hijacked”
The Select Committee goes further, urging,
“that the terms and conditions of insurance effectively reflect the need to discourage shipping companies from failing to follow recognised best practice”.
Should it not be provided that the insurance industry grants cover to ship owners only on condition that they adhere to best practice? It would be useful to know whether the UN has discussed this with the IMO and, if so, what its reaction was.
The second major difference between the two reports is the absence of any mention by the Secretary-General of the capability shortfalls discussed by the Select Committee and referred to by several of your Lordships this afternoon. There is a shortage of tankers that are needed to increase the proportion of time spent at sea by operational vessels; there is a shortage of seaborne medical capacity; and there is a shortage of maritime patrol aircraft to carry out the essential task of surveillance. Ideally, as the Select Committee says, we would be deploying UAVs, as several of your Lordships have said, but EU air forces do not have any, as far as I am aware, and it is going to be several years before the UK and France jointly develop reconnaissance and attack systems—a matter which has been discussed in the papers recently, under the heading of a possible agreement between Dassault and BAE to develop these vehicles.
It was announced a year ago by the Americans that they were operating unarmed Reaper MQ-9 UAVs experimentally in an anti-piracy reconnaissance role from the Seychelles under an agreement with the Government of the Seychelles. Could the Minister say whether this operation continues; whether the intelligence that it provides is shared with NAVFOR; and whether there are any plans to extend the agreement to allow ultimately for the use of armed UAVs, as in Afghanistan? And, if so, what protection would there be for the hostages? That is not an ingredient in the problem in Afghanistan, but it certainly would be if UAVs were to deploy armed attacks on pirate vessels.
There is no mention of the use of geostationary satellites for surveillance, although there are plenty of references to the technology on the web. It should be feasible to identify the large mother boats, referred to by my noble friend Lord Teverson as being introduced now by the pirates, towing several attack skiffs, allowing them to carry out attacks far off the coast of Somalia—they say up to 1,300 nautical miles—and against ever larger freighters. Have the EU, NATO or the US-led combined maritime forces considered satellite observation to pick up suspected pirate operations? What conclusions have they reached?
There are also pirates, as have been mentioned, off the coast of west Africa, where there are easy targets on oil rigs, as we saw only yesterday when five crew members were kidnapped from a rig operated by a British company, Afren. It would be wise to look ahead even if for any reason the technology cannot be employed today.
The Select Committee says that in-theatre co-ordination is working well between the three multilateral operations and the eight individual states that have what the Secretary-General describes as,
“varying degrees of coordination with the coalition forces”.
He concludes that,
“there is a need to expand and formalize the mechanism whereby information obtained by military assets at sea is effectively collected and made readily available to various law-enforcement and judicial bodies”.
The IMO and Interpol are developing guidance on the collection of evidence following acts of piracy. In the mean time, there must be a temporary solution. Perhaps the IMO would be an appropriate custodian of the evidence until an authority is established for that purpose.
Finally, I ask my noble friend whether a bolder policy than the one we are adopting should not be considered. If the AU were to increase the strength of AMISOM to the point where not only could it clear the pirates out of Mogadishu, as it bids well to do at the moment, but could reoccupy the coast as far as the border with Puntland on behalf of the TFG, the pirates' bases along that stretch would be eliminated and the new Government of Prime Minister Farmajo would receive a tremendous boost. Uganda has argued at the UN that AMISOM should have 20,000 troops on the ground and that the Security Council should provide sustained and predictable financial and logistical support for it, instead of the present system of voluntary contributions. It says that piracy would be effectively dealt with by addressing the situation in Somalia itself. This may be a unique moment for putting both the pirates and al-Shabaab on the back foot.
India: Commonwealth Games
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Lord Howell of Guildford
I am not sure I can say what has followed as a result of intervention by Her Majesty's Government, but one has to bear in mind that India is a sovereign, great and respected nation. Indeed, as I said just now, it is a world power. We must leave it to the Indian authorities to recognise pressures from outside, which certainly include pressures from us, and to respond accordingly. Generally, our high commissioner is in constant contact on these matters. The concerns of this House and the other place are constantly placed before our Indian friends, but in the end, we are friends, not lecturers, and we must have a good relationship with this great nation that is emerging as a major force in the world.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, now that the diversion of these funds from the special Scheduled Caste Sub Plan to the infrastructure of the Commonwealth Games has been acknowledged, will my noble friend ask New Delhi what is its response to the demands by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights including, particularly, the demand for an audit of the funds diverted by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, we will certainly ask for that information to be put forward. I possibly did not fully answer my noble friend Lord Grenfell who implied that India was perhaps not the best place to hold the Commonwealth Games. The Government would disagree with him about that. There were some undoubted hiccups, but in the end the Commonwealth Games went ahead very successfully, helped cement relationships and carried forward the value of the Commonwealth network, which is the one of the most powerful platforms of the 21st century for the entire globe.
Bahrain
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Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, I accept that. It is, in a way, ironic that of the two Gulf states that are making most progress on democratic and parliamentary reform—Kuwait and Bahrain—Bahrain should come in for the criticism. Nevertheless, my noble friend is absolutely right to be concerned about the allegations. Torture is unacceptable to us wherever it occurs in the world; and where it occurs among our friends, the very fact that we have friendship and a good relationship enables us to take the matter up in a very frank and effective way. But the noble Baroness is quite right in this regard.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, we are very grateful to the Foreign Secretary for making a telephone call to the Crown Prince about the detention and torture of a British citizen who is among the dozens who have been detained for political reasons. Will the Foreign Secretary make another telephone call to ask the Bahraini ruling family if they will grant permission to the families of the detainees to visit them without having 10 security men standing in the background, and allow their lawyers to visit without being observed? Finally, will the Foreign Secretary ask the ruling family to invite the UN rapporteurs on torture and arbitrary detention to pay a visit to Bahrain to investigate the circumstances?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble friend is talking about a particular case and it is quite difficult to talk about the details of an individual case where permission has not been given by the individual for it to be discussed. However, if, as I suspect, he is referring to the case of Mr Al-Hisabi, who has been detained and about whom a lot of allegations have been made, this matter was indeed raised at very high levels—whether by telephone or face to face. Consular access has been offered to the individual because he has dual nationality. In the future, there could be further consular access. I am advised that there will be no problem at all about further access and about the issue that my noble friend raised on the position of the families and their support.
As to visits from outside bodies to examine the situation, I agree that this is possibly a worthwhile idea. I am advised that the Bahraini authorities would not be averse to the right kind of inspection or visit from outside authorities to monitor the truth of the allegations—some of which may have a basis and some of which may be false—and to present the Bahraini authorities’ case, which is that there is no real evidence of torture.
Chagos Archipelago
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Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, under the previous Government, of which the noble Baroness was a distinguished member, there were some difficulties about the consultation continuing. It began, but then problems arose on the Mauritian side. We remain happy to talk to the Mauritian Government at any time about the marine protected area, but if it takes us into the broader issue, on which the noble Baroness touched in the second part of her question, of the Chagossians’ right of return, all I can tell her at this stage is that the new Government are looking at the whole pattern of issues raised by the British Indian Ocean Territory's situation. I will certainly communicate with her and your Lordships as soon as possible on that issue, but I cannot say more today.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, bearing in mind that a total ban on fishing under the MPA would end the careers of Mauritian and Chagossian fishermen, and the amount of money that the Minister mentioned, which would contribute to the use of the BIOT fisheries range protection vessel, will the Government refrain from taking any decision on the MPA until Parliament has had the opportunity to debate the situation after the European Court’s decision on Chagossian rights of return, expected before the Summer Recess? Secondly, can we invite the US to undertake a joint review of the pollution created by the US nuclear base on Diego Garcia, including the deployment of the nuclear submarine tender USS “Emory S Land”, which is alleged to have contaminated the sea around its former base in Sardinia?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Parliament is free to debate the MPA, which is a very important proposal, development and plan, at any time it wishes. The intention to go ahead with the MPA is in place. However, on the broader issues of the hearing in the European Court of Human Rights and the nature of operations in the Diego Garcia base, the Government are, as I said, looking at all aspects raised by the British Indian Ocean Territory’s problems, and I will communicate with the House when views have been reached. I cannot go further than that today.
Latin America
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Lord Avebury
My Lords, I join others who have expressed thanks to the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for once again leading us in a debate on Latin America, a subject which has been seriously neglected over the past few years. I also join those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on a notable and informed maiden speech. I look forward very much to hearing him again.
The noble Lord mentioned the huge economies having to be made in British embassies, a subject taken up also by the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper. The previous Government’s FCO change programme was said to be focused on the modest ambition of changing the world, but, to do that, the aim was to have more of its resources abroad. Latin American countries suffered a round of cuts several years ago, when we closed the embassies in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. How does the current number of staff in the region as a whole compare with that in, let us say, 1997, when the previous Government came into office? When President Zelaya of Honduras was ousted in a coup a year ago, the Foreign Office Minister, Chris Bryant, had to issue statements through our embassy in Costa Rica, which must have lessened their impact in the country where the coup occurred. Does the Minister have an opinion on the reinstatement of Honduras as a member of the OAS, which was proposed by Hillary Clinton at its meeting a fortnight ago? We cannot have as direct a knowledge of the events in Honduras as we would have had if an embassy had been there.
Our ability to monitor drug trafficking through central America, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, must also be impaired by the reduction of our presence. Only last week, members of a gang who had been convicted in Bogota were reported to have been smuggling 30 tonnes of cocaine a month through Honduras and Costa Rica. But when my honourable friend Jeremy Browne was asked last week about staff levels at embassies for the three years 2010-13, he said that we would have to wait until the Comprehensive Spending Review, which is not expected until six months after the start of the period to which it relates. Surely we are entitled to know whether budgets for embassy staff in the region are, at worst, going to be maintained at their present levels. I hope that the Minister will comment on that in his winding-up.
When Chris Bryant visited Colombia last September, he spoke about the harm being done to the people by cocaine production, with 8,000 hectares of rainforest destroyed in the previous year, the widespread threat of kidnapping by the drug gangs, and innocent members of the public being maimed or killed by landmines. He pointed to the success of Colombia’s shared responsibility scheme—to which the UK is a substantial contributor—in helping to reduce coca cultivation in Colombia and to increase by 25 per cent the wholesale price of cocaine in the EU. Why are not more European states, and the EU itself, supporting that scheme?
In Peru, it is a different story, with the UNODC reporting, as has been mentioned already, that production of coca and cocaine are on the rise. The Government have made some effort to eradicate the business to keep in Washington’s good books, but the main areas of production are in remote valleys on the eastern side of the Andes, in some of which the writ of state institutions and the rule of law do not operate. In those areas, Sendero Luminoso calls the shots, in spite of recent successes against individual SL leaders. There is also some collaboration between SL and the Colombian terrorist organisation FARC, according to the Brazilian federal police. Would not Peru benefit from an international effort such as the shared responsibility scheme, and are there not any Andean regional measures to combat the narcotics industry that could be usefully supported?
As the FCO’s Annual Report on Human Rights says in a chapter on Colombia,
“the activities of illegal armed groups and drug traffickers continue to have a severely negative impact”.
But this is equally true for other countries of the region. Colombia at least invites the UN Special Procedures to visit and reports quarterly on what is being done to comply with the recommendations of the UN’s recent universal periodic review of Colombia. Here again, a wider regional approach would be welcome. Colombia is the only country in Latin America covered in the FCO’s human rights report. The reader might be unaware that the human rights problems cited—vulnerability of human rights defenders and civil society groups; impunity; internal displacement; and extrajudicial killings—are common also to Peru, for instance.
The FCO report mentions the UN rapporteur’s commendation of all the initiatives taken by Colombia on the health and education of indigenous people, but also the massacres of the Awa people in February and August 2009. Also in Peru, 33 people were killed in the Bagua incident in June 2009; the leader of the indigenous people fled to Nicaragua, where he was granted asylum, after being accused of responsibility for the clash. The special rapporteur visited Peru after the event and made a number of recommendations, including the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to clarify the events of 5 June and the following days. Could Mr Anaya be asked to review the progress made in complying with his recommendations, 12 months on? As a signatory of ILO Convention 169 and a supporter of the UN Declaration On The Rights Of Indigenous People, enacting the ley de consulta and agreeing a process of implementation with representatives of indigenous people would go a long way toward fulfilling those obligations.
The ley de consulta does not give indigenous peoples the right of veto over exploitation of natural resources on their lands, but the ILO has asked Peru to suspend both exploitation and exploration affecting peoples covered by the convention until their participation in consultation on the processes is ensured, in accordance with Articles 6, 7 and 15 of the convention. Yet the state oil and gas agency, Perupetro, is going ahead with the auction of 25 new blocks, making only one that overlaps with a reserve for uncontacted tribes off-limits. Representatives of Perupetro were in London recently looking for bids, contrary to the advice of the national organisation representing indigenous people, AIDESEP, which called the bid process,
“a new provocation against indigenous peoples”.
It is also a breach of chapter V of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which says that enterprises should,
“engage in adequate and timely communication and consultation with the communities directly affected by the environmental, health and safety policies of the enterprise”.
In their response to the JCHR report Any of Our Business on 10 February this year, the Government said that they continued to encourage the wider use of tools such as the OECD guidelines, so I would be grateful if the Minister could say what advice they have given or would give to companies thinking of bidding in this auction, and whether they will encourage other member states of the OECD to follow their example.
There could be one other way to leverage our efforts on human rights in both Peru and Colombia. If the draft EU trade agreement with those two countries is what is called a “mixed” agreement and not purely commercial, it would have to include a human rights clause. The noble Lords, Lord Grenfell and Lord Hunt of Wirral, both asked for assurances on this matter when the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, asked a Question about the agreement in January. Can my noble friend assure us that this Government will insist that the agreement contains clauses on both human rights and environmental protection?
Finally, Peru’s national human rights plan comes to the end of its five-year mandate this coming December and the president of the national council on human rights, CNDH, has asked the international community for assistance in carrying out an evaluation of the initiative. In the meanwhile, the Ministry of Economy and Finance has announced a cut of 70 per cent in the CNDH budget. I would be grateful if the Government could consider this with our EU partners, with a view to making up the deficiency. There are hundreds of cases of human rights abuse arising from the internal armed conflicts between 1980 and 2000, and there continue to be hundreds of cases still of social conflict—no fewer than 255 being reported by the ombudsman in May alone. Peru can ill afford to cut back on human rights, and I hope that it will be one of our concerns, and that of the European Union, to raise that higher in our priorities.
Immigration: Deportation of Iraqis
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Lord Howell of Guildford
Of course we appreciate the very difficult history of Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, but it is the judgment of the agency and of the independent courts that, at this time, the signs are that Kurdistan is coming together more, that it is a less unstable country, that there is evidence of growth, peace and development and that it is safe to return people who no longer need our protection and should not have been here in the first place.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister has mentioned Kurdistan twice. Am I correct in saying that of the 42 people on the recent flight which has been the subject of adverse publicity, 36 were Kurds, and the reason why they were sent back to Pakistan was the temporary suspension of flights to Erbil by the Kurdish regional authorities? Will my noble friend ask the Foreign Office to make inquiries as to why the KRG suspended deportations to Erbil, and will he attempt to get the resumption of those flights, as otherwise people of Kurdish origin will find themselves stranded in Baghdad and unable to get home?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble friend is absolutely right: normally, the majority of Kurds would have gone straight to Erbil. We have already asked why those flights were suspended and how they can be resumed at an early stage. In the mean time, the deportees were going through Baghdad and then on to Erbil. That is why some of them were delayed. It appears that although they were given money, they said that they did not have the resources to pay for the further flight. My noble friend is absolutely right: it is to Kurdistan that the majority were destined.