UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what the United Kingdom’s contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is in the current year and next year; and what steps they are taking to ensure that UNRWA does not run out of funds.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom is a long-term supporter of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—UNRWA. So far in 2021 we have provided £27.9 million to UNRWA, although final figures will be published in the annual statistics for international development report. This includes an additional £1 million that I can announce today for UNRWA’s flash appeal following the Gaza conflict, taking our total contribution to the appeal to £4.2 million. We are also working with UNRWA to improve its financial viability.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer, perhaps more for its tone than its substance. Could he confirm that the figure he gave for 2020-21 contrasts with the figure of £70 million in 2018; that is, a cut of something in the region of 60%? Does he also agree that UNWRA’s work is more valuable and more vital in a period such as now when there are no talks going on about resolving the Israel/Palestine dispute? Do not the two things contrast rather sharply?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s second point about talks, I take encouragement that recently, for the first time in many years, President Herzog and President Abbas have spoken, which is a positive. On UNRWA, the noble Lord is correct. The budget has reduced, but nevertheless the funding I stated continues to provide important support, particularly in education for more than 500,000 children, half of whom are girls, within the Palestinian territories.

China: Genocide

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Alton has most admirably and in great detail set out the facts that confront us. I will not repeat what he said, because he has been an example to all of us in the way that he has brought this matter, time and again, before your Lordships’ House.

I suspect that I may be one of the few Members of your Lordships’ House, perhaps the only one, who has some direct experience, and indeed shared collective responsibility, of having failed to avert not one but two genocides—those in Rwanda and at Srebrenica—when I was Britain’s representative at the UN Security Council. Those were genocides that met the Government’s —in my view—narrow and legalistic criterion of being so judged by an international court. That experience scarred my conscience and demonstrated how defective the 1948 genocide convention was, lacking as it did any enforcement provisions or processes.

Following those two searing events, some progress was made to meet the challenges of prevention of genocide and retribution for it. In 1999, the International Criminal Court was established, albeit with a lot of signatories missing, and, in 2005, the “responsibility to protect” norm was endorsed unanimously at a UN summit. But neither of these steps forward has prevented further genocides being committed—most notably and unmistakeably, I would argue, in an instance mentioned by my noble friend Lord Alton, on the Yazidi community in northern Iraq and Syria by IS, for which, shamefully, no legal proceedings at the ICC have yet been instituted.

Now, in Xinjiang, evidence has emerged, validated by journalists, academics, and members of the Uighur community and their families, by technical means and by many Members of your Lordships’ House, of acts by the Chinese Government which undoubtedly constitute serious breaches of international humanitarian law and human rights against the Uighur people of that region and which, being based on ethnic and religious identity, resemble genocide or a prelude to it. Faced with this evidence, what has been the Government’s response? To repeat what I have called a narrow, legalistic definition of genocide, that only an international court can define it as such.

There are, I suggest, two fundamental defects to that view. The first is that, for genocide to be so deemed, a lot of people—in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands, and at Srebrenica, thousands—have first to be killed. The second is that, as China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council with a veto, and a non-member of the ICC, there is not the slightest chance of that criterion ever being met.

I therefore hope that, when the Minister replies to this debate, he will not simply repeat what has been said so often before, and cease saying what the Government will not do when genocidal evidence emerges, as it has done, and will focus rather on what they will say and will do. First, I suggest that, if such evidence is solid and convincing—and it looks like that to me—the Government should not hesitate to say that it constitutes a prima facie case for deeming that genocide is taking, or has taken, place. Secondly, I hope that he will also say that, if they do take that view on the prima facie case, our policies will be based on and guided by that prima facie judgment. If we can take those two steps, we would be beginning to contribute effectively both to prevention and to retribution, instead of just wringing our hands and waiting for the bodies to be brought out.

International Development Strategy

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, we want to ensure that everyone has the ability to thrive and meet their potential. That is a key focus of our approach. We are restoring funding to women and girls to pre-ODA cut levels, focusing on giving more girls a quality education, ending the appalling practice of female genital mutilation, supporting girls’ health and ending the abhorrent use of sexual violence around the world, particularly in conflict. Educating girls is one of the best investments that we can make to fight poverty. Following the recent SR, decisions on specific allocations and individual programmes will be published shortly.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister brief the House on any new commitments that were made under the aid programme during the two weeks of the COP 26 conference that he attended? Will they be funded over and above the 0.5% GNI that has already been allocated, or are the Government going to rob Peter to pay Paul?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the Government committed some time ago—I believe it was two years ago—to double our international climate finance to £11.6 billion. There was a commitment from the Prime Minister that we will add £1 billion to that commitment if the financial trajectory that is anticipated for this country continues and we meet various criteria, but the commitments that were announced around Amazon forest protection, indigenous people’s support and so on will come from the international climate finance commitment that has already been made.

Iran

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, I served on the International Relations and Defence Committee of your Lordships’ House. As the noble Lord has said, we came to the very clear conclusion that it was in Britain’s interest to sustain the JCPOA and t do everything possible to reverse the action taken by the Trump Administration. That was our clear position, and I think it was the right one.

Successive British Governments, as far back as when Jack Straw was Foreign Secretary, and of different parties, including the coalition, took the view that active diplomacy backed up by economic sanctions was the best way to head off the risk of Iran acquiring fissile material capable of arming a nuclear weapon. Those Governments sustained that policy even in the face of great pressure from the Trump Administration to renege on the JCPOA which had been agreed with Iran in 2015. I believe they were right to do so and are right now to continue doing so, in concert with the Biden Administration’s efforts to revive the JCPOA and to bring Iran back into conformity with its provisions.

Why so? Because alternative courses of action, including that chosen by President Trump of “maximum pressure,” showed no signs whatever of working and contained massive risks to the whole international community: the risk of an Iran either with nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery, or so close to that as to represent a credible threat to obtain them; a potential, indeed probable, nuclear arms race in a very volatile region; irreparable damage to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is a cornerstone of international peace of security; and the possibility of another armed conflict in a region which has already seen too many of them. Frankly, that is quite a list of risks.

Of course, it takes two to tango in this attempt to revive the JCPOA. The hiatus in the Vienna talks following the Iranian presidential election leaves the diplomatic route hanging by a thread, exemplified by the visit to Tehran last week of the co-ordinator of the E3’s position. But the risks from the diplomatic route collapsing makes going the last mile worthwhile—indeed, necessary, I suggest—and I strongly support the Government’s policy of doing just that.

I also share the views expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Lamont, that we ought discreetly to look for ways in which our interests and those of Iran overlap, whether it be the future of Afghanistan, drugs or the handling of flows of refugees. I do hope that the Government will find some way of opening up channels of discussion—not linking it with any other issue but simply reflecting the fact that there is an overlap in our fundamental interests in these matters. Iran suffers as much as any country from the flow of drugs, suffers hugely from the flow of refugees, and will be a victim of any terrorist outbreaks based either on the activities of ISIS in Afghanistan or on the Taliban themselves—because they will be directed against Iran’s co-religionists, the Hazara.

In the long run, the best solution to tensions in the Gulf region remains agreement by all sides to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, to cease meddling in each other’s internal affairs, and to work together on economic co-operation, of which there could be a massive amount. But that will be a work of years, not of weeks or months. I just hope that we will not lose sight of it, because it is the only viable way forward in a region where we have considerable political, security and commercial interests. Until we can get to that position, we will be continually faced by these crises.

As to the cruel and unjustified treatment of British-Iranian dual nationals, exemplified by the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, no effort to bring that to an end should be spared by the Government. However, I have to say that linking it in any way to the nuclear issue is only too likely to prove counterproductive and unsuccessful.

UN Peacebuilding Fund: Financial Support

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s second question, we are seeking to do that at the earliest opportunity, but I can reassure her that the equalities assessment across all areas was very much part of our thinking and our decision-making, including across bilateral country spend. We are working on the annual report and looking to produce it—it will be later this year. When I have a specific date, I will of course inform my noble friend.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that when António Guterres became Secretary-General of the UN—I am delighted that the Minister will be seeing him tomorrow—among his top priorities were conflict prevention and peacebuilding? Our Government supported those priorities, including with resources. Does the Minister recognise that the cuts he referred to today are, in fact, us letting down the United Nations? I suggest that is hardly an auspicious way of recognising the 80th anniversary of that first Atlantic charter, which laid the foundation stone for the establishment of the UN.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

The noble Lord will know that I respect his deep insights into the workings of the UN. However, as I indicated, my experience, through my direct dealings, is that, while these are challenging circumstances, the United Nations recognises the circumstances we are working in and, equally, the importance of the United Kingdom’s continued support of the multilateral system, through the UN.

Genocide: Bringing Perpetrators to Justice

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I personally went through two traumatising experiences of genocide in the 1990s when I was Britain’s representative on the UN Security Council: Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in 1995. That is why I strongly support and welcome my noble friend Lord Alton’s debate today. If proof was needed that the lack of any enforcement provisions in the 1948 convention against genocide left a wide-open door to that most reprehensible of crimes, that was it.

Since then, attempts have been made to remedy that lacuna, with the establishment of regional courts and then the International Criminal Court, and with the endorsement by the 2005 UN summit of the emerging norm of the responsibility to protect. But, as the evidence before us of genocide committed against Iraq’s Yazidis and Myanmar’s Rohingya, and of the threats to the Uighurs of Xinjiang and the Tigrayans of Ethiopia, demonstrates, these attempts have fallen short of what is needed. So, what should be done to bring perpetrators of genocide to justice and thus strengthen the deterrent effect which the 1948 convention was intended to have?

Here are four suggestions. First, the UK, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, should press for the council to extend the jurisdiction of the ICC to cover countries which have not signed up to the Rome statute, but in whose territory genocide may have been committed. That route was used successfully in the cases of crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region and in Libya; it should now be used in the cases of Iraq’s Yazidis and Burma’s Rohingyas. Secondly, the UK should also maintain its support for the French initiative to get the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to agree not to use the veto when the risk or actuality of genocide was involved. Thirdly, our Houses of Parliament should prepare the ground to make use of the opening in the Trade Act to consider allegations of genocide by any proposed trade partner. Fourthly, we should tighten up our own immigration and residence legislation and its enforcement so that never again, as was shamefully the case with some of those accused of genocide in Rwanda, could perpetrators find impunity in the UK.

I hope that the Minister can say at the end of this debate whether the four points I have identified—others have mentioned most of them too—are part of the Government’s agenda.

Israel and Gaza

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we must engage directly with all initiatives which seek to bring peace to the region. This conflict has gone on for far too long. We know what the ultimate goal should be and should ensure we exercise all opportunities in achievement of that goal. We have taken immediate steps, as I have already indicated. On the issue of extremism and radicalisation, I agree with the noble Baroness; we have to ensure that the whole ideological base and the hijacking of the agenda by extremist and terrorist organisations are put to rest. The best way to do that is to bring together voices that want to see progress on this most important issue.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, perhaps I could press the Minister a little further on some of his earlier answers. Could he say whether, in the meetings of the Security Council between 16 and 19 May, our representative gave full support to the call by the UN Secretary-General for an early ceasefire? If the answer if not unambiguously “yes”, why not? Does he not agree that, as I think he has said, we have now seen beyond demonstrable doubt that the policy of neglecting the Palestine-Israel negotiations over recent years is neither producing security for Israel nor generating well-being for the Palestinians?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on the second question the noble Lord raised, I think I have made the position clear. In reply to his first point, both at the Security Council and in the Statement yesterday we called for an immediate ceasefire.

Integrated Review: Development Aid

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, we owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for providing the occasion for this overdue and necessary debate about the swingeing cuts Britain is making to its aid budget. It is shameful that we are not holding this debate in government time and on the Floor of the House, although I understand why the Government are in no hurry to defend the indefensible. If these cuts are defensible, is it not a trifle odd that we have now heard from 20 speakers and only one has attempted to defend the Government’s decision?

I will make one critical point to be clear at the outset. What is at issue is not whether to cut Britain’s aid budget at all during the economic contraction caused by the pandemic. The 0.7% commitment, which is in our domestic law, contains a self-correcting mechanism. If our economy shrinks, as it did last year, our 0.7% commitment does too, since it is linked to our GNI. Last year, that automatically cut our aid budget by £2.9 billion or thereabouts. It is the second massive, additional cut, made by switching from 0.7% to 0.5%, that is at issue.

It is too easy to think of these figures as abstract. They are not. These are cuts in food for starving people, cuts in girls’ education, cuts in support for primary healthcare provision and cuts in scientific research programmes, which also bring benefit to our own universities. When will the Government come clean about the detail of the consequences and try to defend them?

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, posed the question of whether the cuts will damage our worldwide influence—that is, our soft power. Frankly, anyone who denies that effect is inviting ridicule. Of course they will. We will lose bilateral influence around the world. It will also show up in loss of support as we compete for multilateral influence in the great aid-giving agencies and in elections at the UN.

I note in their integrated review the Government’s

“commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development when the fiscal situation allows.”

However, that formula is pretty meaningless. Could not the Minister mark this debate by giving one simple undertaking: that Britain will return to full 0.7% compliance in the year following our economy’s return to growth?

Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the review we are debating today is an impressive and perceptive analysis of the threats, challenges and opportunities that this country faces as it charts its way in a new chapter of its history, following our departure from the European Union, so it should be welcomed. There are some blemishes, of course, including the silliness of the reluctance to mention the European Union except in passing. Less estimable, I suggest, is the fact that the cart of key security decisions—the merger of the FCO and DfID, the savage cuts in the overseas aid budget and the detail of defence spending over the next few years—has preceded the horse of the review. Those decisions should surely have been shaped by the review, not have pre-empted it.

One overall impression stands out: Britain can no longer hope to overcome these threats and challenges acting alone. We need allies and partners if we are to prevail. In the period following Brexit and four years of alliance disruption and disregard from President Trump’s White House, that is no small order. That challenge is underlined by last week’s decision by the US to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by September, best characterised tersely by our own Chief of the Defence Staff as

“not a decision we hoped for”.

What should we think about the much-trumpeted tilt towards the Indo-Pacific? Leave aside the fact that the review does not even give geographical definition to that region. Does it begin in east Africa and extend to the western coast of Latin America? Does it include Pakistan, for example? Is it welcome to our closest ally, the US, or would it have preferred us to put more effort into Euro-Atlantic security and into Africa, where it has never been deeply engaged?

It is a pity more was not said about multilateral peacekeeping by the UN and by regional organisations such as the African Union. With the retreat from coalitions of the willing expeditions, such as those to Iraq and Afghanistan, there will inevitably be more demand for peacekeeping if some parts of the world are not to fall into chaos and insecurity. But that sort of peacekeeping needs to be made more effective and, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we have a responsibility to provide training, mentoring, specialised services, and equipment.

The sections of the review on nuclear weapons policy have been criticised by many others. I suggest that they lack any developed rationale, let alone any justification. Just when the two largest possessors of these weapons have frozen their strategic missile arsenals for another five years, we are going to head off in the opposite direction, thus undermining our capacity to pursue the objective of strategic stability at this year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. The doctrine of “deliberate ambiguity” as to the numbers of our warheads and the purposes for which they might be used, which has been proudly proclaimed by the Government as a new kind of doctrine, does not strengthen our security at all. If all nuclear weapon possessor states practised that doctrine, would we be less at risk from nuclear war? I rather doubt that.

In conclusion, the review, if not some of its policy prescriptions, is welcome but we will soon see whether there is a gap between rhetoric and reality as it is put into practice. I fear there will be.

The UK’s Relationship with the Pacific Alliance (International Relations Committee Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome this debate. I regret having to begin my contribution to it with a procedural issue, which is the lengthening gap between the publication of Select Committee reports and the holding of debates on them. In the case of this report, it is well over a year. I do so free of any accusation of self-serving, because I am no longer on the committee, as I was when the noble Lord, Lord Howell, so brilliantly chaired our committee and produced this report.

I challenge anyone who is aware of the speed with which international affairs develop to defend gaps of this sort between publication and debate, or indeed the failure so far to schedule a debate on the committee’s report on sub-Saharan Africa, which was published more than seven months ago. I really plead with the Minister, when he comes to reply to the debate, not to take cover behind talking about this committee or that group being responsible for such delays, and rather to agree to go and consider with his colleagues how we could do better. If we can set a two-month limit for the Government to respond to the conclusions and recommendations of these reports, as we do, why on earth can the House not set itself a time limit of, let us say, four or five months after publication to have a debate?

This debate is a timely reminder of just how thin our relationships are with the countries of Latin America and their regional and subregional organisations, such as the Pacific Alliance. Months, if not years, go by when neither the Government nor Parliament pay much attention to those countries, yet they comprise a substantial portion of the world’s population and economy. In the 19th century we played an important and often beneficial role in their development, and I am not referring just to football. Since then, our role has dwindled through neglect, yet these countries are natural partners and allies in trade, in promoting human rights, in protecting democratic institutions and in dealing with climate change. This makes all the more lamentable the Government’s decision to renege on our commitment to the UN target of giving 0.7% of our gross national income to aid. Can the Minister say what effect that decision is likely to have in the next financial year on our aid to Latin America in general and to the countries of the Pacific Alliance and their programmes in particular?

One key area in which we could strengthen our links with Latin America is that of trade policy. It has been stated time and again by the Government that leaving the EU would enable us to negotiate free trade agreements worldwide, but what sign is there of that in Latin America? So far, there is nothing more than rolling over agreements which simply replicate what already existed when we were an EU member state. That is just running to stand still, however much hyperbole the Secretary of State for International Trade may lavish on their signature. One might ask, quite literally: where is the beef? Are we, for example, going to move ahead with Mercosur while its agreement with the EU is not yet ratified, and can we improve on it? What work has the DIT done to identify products—ethanol, for example—from the countries of Latin America on which we could offer better access than the EU? I hope the answers to these last questions will be given by the Minister and will not be similar to that given in the context of our report on sub-Saharan Africa, which was, “We have done absolutely nothing to identify improved access.”

The Government speak often about the objective of pursuing a “global Britain” foreign policy. So far, that remains a slogan without much content—more a branding exercise than a policy. But if it is to become more than that in reality, it will need to have a Latin American dimension and to encompass the countries of the Pacific Alliance. I hope the Minister will be able to say something about that when he replies to the debate.