Mediation, Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, a week ago I took part in a debate here on the desirability or otherwise of a written constitution. I was put on the speakers’ list to follow a slew of noble and learned Lords whose knowledge, experience and fingertip ability to bring out the right quotation and citation was extraordinary and belittling. This week, I am put on the speakers’ list to follow diplomats, politicians and others who have run the world or been close to people who have run the world. Here I stand now, seeking to make as much sense and legitimacy for my being here as I tried to make last week. The feature in common for both debates is the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich. I am now so used to the noble Lord that his presence is comforting; last week, it was less so.

I want to move from macro to micro, and those who know me will not need much help to understand that I wish to speak about a country that is very dear to me, namely Haiti. I lived there for 10 years and did all kinds of things, from microfinance to organising co-operatives, planting trees, literacy and working with Haitian people in the fields and the council chambers, sometimes in the midst of alarmingly hostile situations. I come from that experience and it allows me to declare, as a possible conflict of interest, my co-chairing of the Haiti APPG. I was also ordained as a Methodist minister in Haiti. Our two sons were born there in a local hospital with Haitian medical care, so nobody could ever accuse me of being impartial as I share my remarks with the House today.

Three items concerning Haiti have come to my attention in the few days since I put down my name to speak. First was the news that the United Nations has agreed to extend its remit to maintain a Gang Suppression Force in Haiti for a further six months. Secondly, one of the countries providing troops to that force is Sri Lanka. Some 1,500 of its soldiers have been present in Haiti since June. Thirdly, there was a long article in the Spectator by a man called Bruce Gilley under the headline

“It’s time to colonise Haiti”.


I found it provocative, ill informed and malicious. That is not untypical of the approaches to encapsulate or describe what is happening in Haiti.

Despite the longer time than usual which is now allotted, time limits me to just two of those items. Between 2004 and 2007, at least 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers sexually exploited and abused Haitian children, boys and girls, some as young as eight, anally and orally. This was revealed by an internal United Nations report; it is excoriating to read. None of these peacekeepers was imprisoned for sexual assault or misconduct or brought to justice. There is no evidence of any credible, transparent or independent vetting process for troops constituting the present deployment from Sri Lanka. The complete absence of such measures is causing great concern to members of the Sri Lanka Campaign with whom I have been in conversation. Yet 1,500 Sri Lankan soldiers are on Haitian soil again. It is doubtful that many lessons have been learned from the previous dreadful experience.

Such happenings seem to be a regular occurrence in Haiti. Let us remind ourselves that the country suffered an enormous earthquake in January 2010. Over a quarter of a million people died—more than twice the total number of people killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. The world made a show of rallying round and the United Nations strengthened what it called a “stabilisation force” to keep order on the streets, but abusive events seemed to flourish in the chaos of those times. Uruguay was forced to recall five of its peacekeepers from Haiti in 2011 amid allegations that, while wearing their country’s uniform, they were involved in the sexual assault of a local young man. Apart from that recall—even though there is much informal sharing of information that cannot be ascertained—no further investigation was mounted.

In the same year, an internal investigation conducted by Oxfam revealed that some aid workers, including the charity’s Haiti director, used local women. They were shamefully described as “prostitutes” as if they bore some of the blame for what was happening. All they had post-earthquake was their bodies; nothing else could earn them a penny or two. That they took part, therefore, in what were called “orgies” among the development workers under the aegis of Oxfam was a horrid thing. Amid widespread allegations of a cover-up, details of that 2011 event did not become public until 2018.

Peacekeepers from Nepal were accused of being responsible for a cholera outbreak, subsequently proved to the satisfaction of the investigation, which has killed as many as 10,000 in Haiti—a country that had never known cholera before. Compare the blanket of silence that has fallen on this experience with the publicity given to the incidence of Ebola in Sierra Leone at roughly the same time, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in more recent times.

Then there is Donald Trump, bless him; I paused for effect there but I did not seem to get it. In the 2024 election he and, please note, his Vice-President alleged that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating their neighbours’ pets. There were no credible reports, police records or substantiated evidence of pets being stolen, harmed or eaten by Haitian immigrants.

The grotesque Mr Trump repeatedly referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country, an adjective which, if he continues on his present course, might become useful to us all in our attempts to describe his country. He has begun the process of repatriating 300,000 Haitians to the land of their birth, where 10 million are already subjected to poverty of an order almost impossible to understand; it is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

I call these observations that I put together for this talk a charge list. The United Kingdom is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The United Nations has signally failed to engage with the needs of Haiti. The hundreds of millions of dollars it has poured into Haiti for various iterations of peacekeeping, stabilisation or gang suppression forces represents a downright waste of money of the first order. Can our representative in New York show an interest in these matters and see how a fraction of what has been lost and wasted there could have done immense good in the country I am referring to? With that, I rest my charge.

European Convention on Human Rights: 75th Anniversary

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and I am glad to begin my remarks by stating that bald fact. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, that, if there were tick boxes for their speeches, I would put a tick in and sit down because I do not want to say any more than that.

There was a debate recently in Strasbourg, entitled, rather quaintly, “Multiperspectivity in the field of journalism”, which was all about how journalists can see the same facts and report two entirely different stories. I want to apply it now to the House of Lords: people see the same facts and draw entirely different narratives from them. I have always felt a bit fragile in your Lordships’ House, since I have no political experience and certainly no legal experience. Consequently, I listen to the debate in order to hear where things stand.

And multiperspectivity has marked this debate. In the political sphere, all I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is that it is such a relief to me that two rows behind him sits the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, whose remarks on the Council of Europe and the convention were so positive. He has served with such distinction in Europe, and he is widely honoured for the contribution he has made to its affairs. So, there is multiperspectivity straight in my eye as I look across the Chamber.

Similarly on the legal arguments, we had all those debates about immigration during the tenure of the last Government. From the government side, the noble Lord, Lord Murray—who is here—was obliged by convention not to disclose what legal advice the Government were receiving, but he did a doughty job at the Dispatch Box. It was always difficult for me as a non-lawyer to hear distinguished lawyers on each side of the argument and then for those of us who stand listening to know how to make the distinctions we needed to make.

I have just joined the Constitution Committee, so the future of Britain is under threat.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

But the rule of law is what we have set ourselves as our first project. Last week, I had breakfast at the Supreme Court. Never have I been surrounded by so many stars in the galaxy as I was then. I made the point that the United Nations charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European convention all have as Article 6 access to a fair trial.

I started my remarks on that occasion by stipulating that the architecture of my entire life has been built on the fact that, when I was five and a half years of age, a letter from my father’s solicitor to my mother indicated that, because she was the guilty party in their relationship, she should leave his client’s—my father’s—house within one week and take her children with her. My mother could not defend herself against that because she did not have two pennies to put together to get the legal counsel or support. In any case, the law was different then.

Out of that little exchange in the Supreme Court has come a magnificent response from one of the justices, who specialises in access to justice and brought out a report in 2016 about how to deal with people not having access to justice and wanting to have its recommendations implemented all these years later.

I look forward to the future—all those voices to listen to and all those cases to weigh up. I have to say that politicians should try a little harder, and the lawyers should try a little harder, to realise that not everybody is one of them.