Combating Atrocity Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the debate we are having today is an essential one, and my noble friend Lord Alton is to be congratulated on bringing us back to it, as he does regularly and with good reason. It is also a rather paradoxical debate. While the appalling crimes being committed around the world are not being reduced but rather are being intensified, the collective response of Governments is feeble and flawed.

In the first half of the 1990s, two completely horrendous genocides were committed, one at Srebrenica in Bosnia and the other in Rwanda. The international community was horrified, not least because of the inadequacy of its own response ahead of the crimes—for which, as Britain’s ambassador to the UN at the time, I feel some responsibility. The UN Security Council’s reaction then was strong. It established two international tribunals to identify and to try those who committed the crimes, and many of those are now in prison for the rest of their lives. Later in that decade, an International Criminal Court was established as a standing instance to try many of those crimes, and later still the International Court of Justice took up claims of genocide, on which it is still to give a ruling. So something was being done, with the hope of deterring these crimes and then bringing to justice the perpetrators of them.

However, since then, all the developments have been in a negative direction—going backwards. The UN Security Council has been blocked by abusive vetoes of several of its members, many significant member states have declined to join the International Criminal Court or to honour its rulings, and our principal ally, the United States, is doing its best to put the International Criminal Court out of business. This is a miserable record, and it is no wonder that the perpetrators of these crimes have not been deterred.

What needs to be done? First, there should be another attempt to get the UN Security Council to agree that, when genocide is at issue, a veto will not be in order. Such an attempt may not succeed, but those who block it should be required to take responsibility for their actions. I hope the Minister will say that the Government would support such an attempt. Secondly, if this cannot be agreed in the Security Council then the UN General Assembly, which takes its decisions by a majority and where vetoes do not apply, should be encouraged to express its views on these crimes and to bring to bear the court of international public opinion. Thirdly, can the Government not extract themselves from the Catch-22 of saying that it is only for a court to rule on the issue of genocide when no such decision is available, even when there is prima facie evidence that genocide is being committed? My noble friend Lord Alton raised that point again and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, will respond to it.

Speaking as a non-lawyer myself, I feel that accusations of genocide are sometimes—I am not here speaking for one moment about those who have intervened in this debate or, above all, about my noble friend Lord Alton—thrown around too freely. There are plenty of war crimes and atrocities that are being committed which do not necessarily amount to genocide but which surely should be brought to international justice.

In conclusion, I trust that our Government will not conceal from the current US Administration how much we are dismayed by the vindictiveness of their proceedings against the International Criminal Court. Whether the US joins the Rome statute is a matter for it to decide, but the attacks it is directing at the ICC are hardly fitting for a country which established the international tribunals after the Second World War and which voted for the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals.

The matters we are debating are at the heart of our values in international affairs. I trust that we will promote them strongly in the period ahead and not always shelter behind rather complex legal arguments.