Lord Chidgey
Main Page: Lord Chidgey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Africa: Post-conflict Stabilisation
Lord Chidgey Excerpts
Lord Chidgey
To call attention to developments in regional post-conflict stabilisation in eastern and central Africa; and to move for papers.
Lord Chidgey
My Lords, this debate on post-conflict stabilisation in Africa is surely timely when, with a change of Government, the United Kingdom’s foreign and international development policies, particularly in Africa, are under scrutiny and reappraisal. The appalling scale of violence and human rights violations that occurred, and in some areas continues, in the Great Lakes region is well documented. The horror of the Rwandan genocide and the long war in the DRC are still claiming lives. More recently, the conflict in Burundi has left some 300,000 people dead.
Developments in post-conflict stabilisation depend on progress in strengthening democracy, the rule of law, transparency and good governance. Monitoring the effectiveness of the United Kingdom’s aid through the objectives set out in international and bilateral aid programmes should be paramount. Accountability to Parliament and mutual accountability between the UK and recipients should be an integral part of aid programmes, and in this context I pay tribute to the work of the all-party group on the Great Lakes region in Africa, of which I have the honour to be vice-chair.
At the Development Cooperation Forum held at the United Nations last week, the new director-general of DfID set out the UK’s international development policies. Mr Michael Anderson told the delegates, drawn from UN diplomatic missions and the international development community, that one of the UK’s top priorities was transparency and accountability in international aid and development. The director-general said, in terms:
“The tide of history is with this initiative. The next generation will not understand why it took us so long to grasp this initiative”.
Mr Anderson continued:
“DfID will now be accountable to all, worldwide. DfID will welcome scrutiny. We will put all our aid programme documentation on the web. We are committed to transparency in contracts. We will set up an independent aid watchdog, reporting directly to Parliament. We will introduce a UK aid transparency guarantee”.
Those are fine-sounding objectives and I acknowledge that Mr Anderson has been in post only since April. But noble Lords may agree that, never mind the next generation, it is this generation that does not understand why it has taken so long for government to grasp the importance of transparency and accountability, particularly for what amounts to a budget, funded by the taxpayer, of some £9 billion a year.
Can the Minister perhaps clarify the extent of this “new” initiative? Does it include developing programmes that build in mutual accountability between the donor and the recipient for aid delivery, disbursement and programme targets? The scale of the task should not be underestimated. For instance, there are over 40 donors operating independently in Uganda alone, and local politicians believe there to be over 200 NGOs present in the country.
What assessment has DfID made of the capacity of Uganda and of other aid recipients in the Great Lakes region to manage country programmes that meet their priorities? Has DfID established audit trails with recipients to track aid flows through to project destination? Is DfID aware that, according to the director-general of CIVICUS, a civil society alliance, speaking at the Development Cooperation Forum, less than 10 per cent of aid is reaching front-line destinations?
Can the Minister comment on the balance between the roles of the FCO and DfID and the pursuit of British interests within the economic restraints that now bind the United Kingdom? Do the Government accept the case for strengthening the diplomacy content of UK aid distribution, for establishing audit trails, transparency and cost-effectiveness, and monitoring whether our objectives are being met? If not, why not?
In this context, can the Minister also advise if the Government are looking at the implications for the Great Lakes region of their emerging foreign and international development policies? Promoting stability and security in the region is clearly in our interests, but what are the Government’s priorities for Africa when compared with the demands in Afghanistan?
It is a depressing fact that in 2010, 50 years after the Congo became independent, people in the eastern DRC and neighbouring countries are still suffering appalling levels of violence. Oxfam states in its report Breaking the Cycle of Violence that Governments in the region have failed to uphold commitments to punish war crimes. They have failed to protect civilians and end the impunity in the militarised exploitation of mineral resources. They have failed to build on what is potentially one of the region’s most important agreements, the pact on security, stability and development.
Mr Philip Alston, a United Nations special rapporteur, observed:
“DRC has long suffered from recommendation fatigue. Hundreds of reports have proposed thousands of reforms”.
Oxfam concurs:
“the people of the Great Lakes do not need more recommendations that Governments agree to, and then do little about.
Recent field research in Southern Sudan by a team from Waging Peace brings disturbing findings. Contrary to the belief that the Lord's Resistance Army was close to elimination, it found that the LRA has been attacking civilians with increased frequency and violence. This year, more than 600 people have been abducted, about 360 killed and more than 30,000 displaced. Human Rights Watch recently defined the LRA as the “greatest civilian threat” to the population of the DRC. There are signs that the LRA is regrouping, with the apparent aim of returning to Uganda.
The mutilation and murder of villagers, sometimes at the hands of children abducted on earlier raids, fuels insecurity and instability. It has disrupted the elections in the Western Equatoria State, with people now too frightened to leave their homes to cast their votes, and has prevented the distribution of vital aid to the region.
There are now concerns that the LRA will attempt to disrupt Sudan's forthcoming southern secession referendum, due in January 2011. There has been a dismal lack of co-ordinated, sustained interest and action by the regional government armies, by UN peacekeepers and by the international community, in stopping the LRA. As a result, one of the most vicious rebel groups in history continues, more than 23 years after it first emerged, to target innocent civilians across central Africa.
As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it is surely incumbent on the United Kingdom to be as effective as possible in securing support for the UN missions working in the LRA-infiltrated areas. The UK, as one of Uganda's largest donors, needs to be more effective in supporting the Ugandan Government in their efforts to eradicate the LRA.
By contrast, in east Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe are not directly in a post-conflict stabilisation process. Nevertheless, violence and unrest around the 2007 elections in Kenya indicated just how fragile an established democratic process can be. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, the flight of millions from the oppressive regime of President Mugabe has generated widespread instability and insecurity in the region. The response from both the African Union and the Southern African Development Community to the Zimbabwe crisis has been disappointing and timid. Despite insisting that this was an African problem requiring an African solution, neither the AU nor SADC has lived up to the trust placed in them by the UN and by the international community.
In the Great Lakes region, the UK is well placed to play a key role in the post-conflict stabilisation of the region. This is a critical time, with presidential elections due in most countries over the next two years. The challenges are severe. The UK must be active in addressing the causes of instability across the region—from the root causes of the conflict in eastern DRC to concerns over opaque contracts, the low level of due diligence performed by companies and their lack of accountability for the proceeds from the lucrative extractive industries in this mineral and oil-rich region.
The region is beset by the woes of weak states. In the 2010 Failed States Index, the DRC ranks fifth and Uganda 21st, followed by Burundi, which is 23rd. Rwanda is only slightly better in 41st place, despite its recent economic progress, which has been recognised by the Commonwealth Business Award for 2010. In Rwanda, there are growing concerns about shrinking political plurality and media space, and the murder last month of Jean-Leonard Rugambage, an editor of Umuvugizi, one of Rwanda's few independent newspapers, signals a further attack on freedom of expression.
Does the Minister agree that the United Kingdom should put greater onus on encouraging respect for the civil and media freedoms in Rwanda? What plans do the Government have for continuing support, via DfID, to the Media High Council following the closure of two of Rwanda’s leading independent newspapers? Does the Minister agree that the erosion of civil and media freedoms is contrary to the agreement to promote good governance and human rights set out in the memorandum of understanding signed by the UK and Rwanda?
Similar concerns are surfacing in Uganda with the controversial Bill before Parliament to amend the Press and Journalists Act 1995. Civil society is fearful that, if passed, draconian publication offences will shackle press freedom. Stability across the region is at best fragile. Stability requires not only a co-ordinated approach from donor governments, but a positive regional engagement by Great Lakes Governments. Here there are still major uncertainties, particularly regarding the ongoing conflicts in the DRC.
The Secretary of State, Mr Andrew Mitchell, said in another place that,
“we will make conflict prevention, resolution and reconstruction central to our approach to development”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/7/10; col. 1029.]
Does the Minister therefore agree that ending the conflict in the DRC is crucial to achieving these aims in the Great Lakes region? Does the Minister recognise that securing this stability specifically before the drawdown of UN peacekeeping forces is complete—which must be done across a firmly objective-driven and not time-bound framework—is crucial to preventing the loss of substantial technical and financial investments made by the UK over the past 10 years? As the Secretary of State states:
“Hard-pressed taxpayers need to know that the expenditure of their money is being scrutinised … and is really delivering results”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/7/10; col. 1025.]
In that regard, can the Minister tell your Lordships what steps the Government are taking to persuade the Government of the DRC and those others in the region, particularly Rwanda, to engage seriously in an effective combined approach to ending the conflict spilling out of the eastern DRC?
In its report, Breaking the Cycle of Violence, Oxfam points out that,
“a long list of regional agreements and institutions has grown up in the Great Lakes. In the East, the EAC … provides some real potential; so, too, in the west does the CEPGL ... But governments have squandered one of the region’s most important agreements: the Pact on Security, Stability and Development”.
There are many regional intergovernmental organisations in the Great Lakes region with overlapping memberships and similar objectives to promote its economic integration. Mostly, they lack material, human and financial resources, and the determined political will necessary from their members. But, according to Oxfam, to varying degrees they represent the hope for the future. In this context, could the Minister tell us what discussions the Government have had recently with Rwandan and Congolese counterparts on their progress on honouring commitments that they made with the UN, the EU and the USA in the Nairobi communiqué which was signed two and a half years ago, in November 2007? Observers agree that despite the promises on addressing threats to security and stability, there has been little progress.
In his 2005 report on reforming the United Nations, Kofi Annan, the then Secretary-General, noted the tendency for fragile states to return to violence within five years of the conclusion of armed conflict. Burundi is a case in point where four years after the peace accords, current presidential elections are being jeopardised by threats of outbreaks of violence. Without effective post-conflict peace-building, through strengthening public institutions, judicial and security sector reforms, and economic initiatives, countries can become trapped in a conflict cycle with no way out.
From its research into security sector management, Cranfield University has demonstrated the importance of aid and development agencies monitoring and evaluating their performance. Its studies show that the ability to measure aid effectiveness is essential for maintaining and improving performance in donor programmes. Without measurement and evaluation, we will never know if our aid and development funds are being dispersed effectively and efficiently in advancing security and stability, to the benefit of recipient states and the UK’s foreign policy objectives. I beg to move.
Lord Chidgey
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I mention briefly the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, who echoed the need for disbursing our aid in the most effective way, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who drew on his wide experience of working with NGOs and expressed his concern about the need for sensitivity in aid programmes. I refer also to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, with her great experience in Sudan and northern Uganda, and thank her for mentioning again the acute shortage of essential services. She mentioned that the DfID annual report for 2009 states that Uganda is off track. I thank her for that, and I shall make a point of looking that up. Perhaps I may also say that the contributions of the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Winchester and of Gloucester, particularly in regard to the Congo round table, the visits to the DRC and the refugee camps in Tanzania, were very helpful to me.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on his maiden speech and thank him for sharing with us his passion on these matters and his perspective from the Scottish dimension, which was an unexpected added benefit to the debate.
I thank all other noble Lords for their contributions and the Minister for his responses. I realise that some of the questions were deep, difficult and complex, but I am sure, if I ask him nicely, my noble friend will write to us in more detail on some of the questions that it was not possible to answer on this occasion. I am pleased to acknowledge that he has agreed to do that. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.