Covid-19: International Response

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

My Lords, G20 leaders made a statement on Covid-19 after a virtual summit on 26 March 2020. It said:

“The G20 is committed to do whatever it takes to overcome the pandemic, along with the … WHO … and other international organizations, working within their existing mandates. We are determined to spare no effort, both individually and collectively”.


Furthermore, it says:

“We fully support and commit to further strengthen the WHO’s mandate in coordinating the international fight against the pandemic”,


adding:

“We will quickly work together and with stakeholders to close the financing gap in the WHO Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan. We further commit to provide immediate resources to the WHO’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund”.


As we all know, the United States is a key member of the G20 and the largest funder of the WHO. It funded $400 million for the WHO in 2019 alone. However, on 15 April 2020, in the midst of the crisis, the US President, Donald Trump, announced:

“I am directing my administration to halt funding while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”


In his view, the WHO failed in its basic duty in its response to the coronavirus outbreak.

In the light of the US President’s announcement, what assessment have the Government made of the impact that this will have on the international fight against Covid-19, and what efforts have been made to meet the shortfall caused by the US’s withdrawal of funds to the WHO?

Pakistan: Aid Programmes and Human Rights

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate. Pakistan is a big country with a population of 200 million people. Minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and others constitute about 3.5% of the total population of the country. There are several hundred places of worship across Pakistan that belong to various religious minorities. Various articles in the constitution of Pakistan, such as Articles 20, 21, 22, 26, 27 and 28, accord rights to minorities as equal citizens of the country, free to profess their religions and visit their places of worship.

Minorities have visible representation in the parliamentary set-up of Pakistan. There are special reserved seats for minorities in all houses of representatives: four seats in the Pakistan Senate, 10 in the National Assembly, and eight in the Punjab, nine in the Sindh and three each in the Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies. On top of that, minorities are free to stand in any elections as citizens of Pakistan, and they do get elected.

It is important to mention here that there is a 5% jobs quota in the public sector in Pakistan allocated to the minority communities, which constitute only 3.5% of the total population of the country. Furthermore, 11 August is observed as Minorities Day. There is a special ministry at the federal level, called the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Inter-faith Harmony, which looks after minorities’ rights in the country.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan. It arouses sentiments among the general populace that have led to death and destruction in Pakistan, sadly. Many in Pakistan believe that their country’s blasphemy law is misunderstood, as if it protects only Muslims. In reality, however, it protects all Pakistanis equally. According to the official figures, the majority, 95%, of those accused under the blasphemy law are Muslims. The maximum penalty under the blasphemy law is death but, as I understand, no one has ever been executed by a court of law under this section. I stand to be corrected.

While I very much appreciate DfID’s support in education, reducing poverty, building resilience and many other important sectors in the poorest areas of Pakistan, will the Minister say what Her Majesty’s Government can do to help the democratic Government in Pakistan and support their endeavours to make the country more peaceful, tolerant and prosperous?

International Widows Day

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for securing this debate. I very much appreciate his work supporting widows through his charity, the Loomba Foundation.

A widow from any culture, religion or part of the world will see the loss of her partner as the biggest shock and emotional and mental trauma, leaving her with feelings of loneliness and insecurity. In many parts of the world, the loss of a husband makes a woman more vulnerable socially and economically, particularly in cultures where women are not allowed to gain employment or remarry. Hence, it becomes incumbent on Governments to have systems in place to support the widows. Sadly, there is hardly any support available for widows in developing countries, although some countries may have policies on paper.

As we all know, the biggest flocks of widows emerge during wars and in areas of conflict, where the men are more likely to be killed in large numbers, leaving the women to deal with the aftermath. In recent European history, we saw the Balkans conflict, in which men were killed in large numbers. I visited Bosnia a few years ago, and the cemetery of Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 men are buried. Their bodies had been found in mass graves by the United Nations, many years after their deaths. Some of those held responsible, including General Mladic and Dr Karadzic, were tried in the International Criminal Court, and are serving long sentences. During my visit to Srebrenica I met the mothers of those victims. I cannot describe the level of their grief, sorrow and anger. However, one thing that they were content with was that at least some of them had found the remains of their loved ones, and some of those responsible for the atrocities had been brought to justice.

I can draw a parallel with the Srebrenica massacre, one in which tens of thousands of women are still searching for their husbands and looking for justice: it is happening in Kashmir. Over the last three decades, tens of thousands of people, mostly men, have been killed. Many of them are reported to have been picked up from their own homes, or from the streets, by the Indian security forces. Some of them have been released. The bodies of many were found by the roadsides and tens of thousands are still missing. Wives of those missing men in Kashmir, known as “half widows”, have been searching for their husbands in police stations, detention centres and prisons all over India, without any success.

I am drawing a parallel between Kashmir and Srebrenica because thousands of mass graves have been identified in Kashmir which need to be investigated, to find out the identities of those buried there. According to the Amnesty International report of May 2008:

“Amnesty International urges the Government of India to launch urgent investigations into hundreds of unidentified graves discovered since 2006 in Jammu and Kashmir. The investigation must be independent, impartial and follow international standards. The grave sites are believed to contain the remains of victims of unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other abuses”.


In its report of 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights wanted,

“to consider establishing a Commission of Inquiry to conduct a comprehensive independent international investigation into allegations of human rights violations in Kashmir… Alleged sites of mass graves in the Kashmir Valley and Jammu region should be investigated”.

However, the Indian Government have refused these investigations any access.

Human Rights Watch, in its report on 14 June 2018, said:

“The Indian government should immediately act on the recommendations in the first-ever report by the United Nations on human rights in Kashmir”.


Despite these calls from the international bodies, the Indian Government refuse to give access to the United Nations for an independent investigation into these mass graves.

Can I ask the Minister a specific question? If she is unable to answer it now, I am willing to receive a written reply from her later. Will the British Government help the United Nations get access to investigate these human rights abuses, including the mass graves in Kashmir?

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness asks a perfectly logical question about what we have done about some of the people who we might have wrongly removed from this country. Officials spent a long time doing a manual trawl of some of the people we removed. I had the numbers—the number 57 comes to mind, but I will double check and write to the noble Baroness about the exact breakdown of the numbers that we checked.

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

Is there a right of appeal for those claiming compensation under the Windrush scheme?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That is a very good point. I do not know whether there is a right of appeal. Obviously there are a number of different categories, some of which will be yes or no because it is cut and dried, but others may not be. I will write to the noble Lord on the appeal process.

International Women’s Day

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to take part in the International Women’s Day debate, which is to recognise and celebrate women’s achievements as well as highlighting the challenges they face across the world.

I wish to speak about the plight of Kashmiri women who are living under some of the most difficult conditions in the world. The daily lives of the women of Kashmir are controlled by occupying military forces. They do not know when the Indian Army or some other paramilitary force will force their way into their homes, harass them, rape them, beat up family members and take away the men, some of whom will come back alive with torture scars; the bodies of some of the others may be found weeks or months later on roadsides, and others may not be seen again.

The term “half-widows” is commonly used in Indian-occupied Kashmir for the wives of men who have gone missing. According to the Guardian of 10 October 2010, while authorities in Kashmir estimate the missing number to be approximately 4,000, the Association of Disappeared Persons estimates that there are between 8,000 to 10,000 missing people in the region. The number of publicly announced and reported half-widows in the Kashmir valley is between 2,000 and 2,500. Along with the plight of 6,000 orphans—the children of half-widows who are affected deeply by the conflict—this issue adds much to the crisis. True data and numbers for both half-orphans and half-widows are thought to be much higher.

According to a detailed report of 2007 by the award-winning Kashmiri-based journalist Haroon Marani, the primary concern of a family is to find their missing person. They move from one police station to another; from one army camp to another, and so on. It takes months and years to find out.

On pellet gun victims, according to a report on French news channel France 24, on 30 November 2018, India introduced official “non-lethal” 12-gauge pellet shotguns in Kashmir in 2010. Reliable aggregate data about the number of injuries and blindings from the pellet guns is hard to come by. Government data from 2017 revealed that the weapon killed 13 people and injured more than 6,000 in eight months alone, including nearly 800 with eye injuries. The Central Reserve Police Force, the Indian paramilitary deployed in Kashmir, told a court in 2016 that it fired about 1.3 million pellets in just 32 days.

Amnesty International has urged the Indian Government to ban the use of pellet guns, and lawyers and other rights groups have appealed to courts, to little avail so far. US-based Physicians for Human Rights has called their use “inherently inaccurate”, “indiscriminate” and potentially,

“lethal to humans at close range”.

There is an estimated figure of between 10,000 to 12,000 women being raped in the last three decades by the security forces. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights report of April 2018:

“Authorities have failed to independently investigate and prosecute allegations of sexual violence by security forces personnel. There is no record of allegations of sexual violence by security forces being prosecuted in a civilian court …


One significant case that illustrates the state’s failure to investigate and prosecute allegations of sexual violence and addressing impunity for sexual crimes in Kashmir is the Kunan-Poshpora mass rape, which took place 27 years ago and for which attempts to seek justice have been denied and blocked over the years by the authorities at different levels.


According to survivors and a local administration official, on the night of 23 February 1991, soldiers from the 4 Rajputana Rifles regiment of the Indian Army gang-raped around 23 women of Kunan and Poshpora villages of Kupwara district. The Indian Army and Government of India have denied the allegations”.


The special rapporteur states that:

“Information received through both written and oral testimonies highlighted the use of mass rape, allegedly by members of the State security forces, as well as acts of enforced disappearance, killings and acts of torture and ill-treatment, which were used to intimidate and to counteract political opposition and insurgency … she was ‘not informed of any measures to ensure accountability and redress for victims’”.


Women in Indian-occupied Kashmir are living lives under siege and constant surveillance whether in public or in their own homes. According to the UN Human Rights Council, they have lived for many decades under the mercy of the security forces, which operate with complete impunity. These women fear for themselves and their children, brothers, husbands and fathers day and night. They are suffering from grave physical and mental traumas. They are in dire need of help.

As many noble Lords know, I have stood on these Benches of your Lordships’ House many times and pleaded for justice and protection for Kashmiri women, but I am disappointed to say that I have not seen our Government taking any action at any level in this regard. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the head of the Commonwealth, Britain has huge responsibility for human rights globally—

[Noble Lords]

Order.

[Lord Hussain]

Government Ministers are very touchy about it. Let me finish.

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Hussain]

Sorry. Can I have one minute please?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, everyone has been very good about trying to observe the advisory time limit. I know Members have undertakings at the end of this debate, so if the noble Lord would respect the time limit and bring his remarks to a close, that would be very helpful. I am sorry: you are well in excess of the advisory time limit at the moment and other Members have to be taken into account.

[Lord Hussain]

We simply cannot turn a blind eye to the appalling and horrendous conditions that Kashmiri women are having to live under. May I ask the Minister whether she believes that the dignity, honour and respect of a Kashmiri woman is any different from that of a British or European woman? May I also ask what she is prepared to do to help the women of Kashmir live a normal life without fear? What will the Government do to raise these issues with the Indian Government?

Kashmir

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hussain]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the human rights situation in Indian-held Kashmir.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government monitor closely the situation in India-administered Kashmir. We encourage all states to ensure that their domestic laws are in line with international standards. Any allegations of human rights abuses must be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently.

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. For decades, the Indian army has been reported for illegal detentions, torture, rape and murder in Kashmir. Last year, it started to use pellet guns on civilians in the region, often blinding them. According to the Amnesty International report of September this year called Losing Sight in Kashmir, of the 88 people named in the report 31 suffered injuries in both eyes. What will Her Majesty’s Government do to get those human rights abuses investigated independently and impartially?

[Lord Bates]

We are certainly aware of the accusations that were made. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that there will be remote monitoring of the human rights situation in Kashmir and the findings will be made public in the near future.

Women: Developing Countries

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hussain]

My Lords, I have visited Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia in the last few months, or within the past year. I have come to share some of the findings about what women face in those countries. I will start with the example of Sudan.

Sudan is a developing nation that faces many challenges in regard to gender inequality. Freedom House gave Sudan the lowest possible ranking among repressive regimes during 2012. South Sudan received a slightly higher rating, but it was also rated as “not free”. In the 2013 report of the 2012 data, Sudan ranked 171st out of 186 countries on the Human Development Index. It is also one of the very few countries that are not signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Despite all this, there have been positive changes in regard to gender equality in Sudan. As of 2012, women comprise 24.1% of the National Assembly of Sudan. Sudan’s women comprise a larger percentage of the national parliament than in many westernised nations. However, gender inequalities in Sudan, particularly pertaining to female genital cutting and the disparity of women to men in the labour market, have received attention from the international community.

The difference in education between boys and girls is one of the most obvious and critical inequalities in Sudan. In general, girls just learn how to read and write and some simple arithmetic, then exit school when they reach puberty, which coincides with six years of primary school. The female population with at least a secondary education in 2010 was 12.8% for females compared with 18.2% for males. Although both these figures are very low, males have a statistically more significant opportunity to obtain a secondary education.

On health, women in Sudan do not have the same access to healthcare as men do. A critical measure of the access to basic healthcare services is the maternal mortality rate. This defines the rate of deaths of pregnant women and is directly related to the levels of available healthcare services. In 2008 the maternal mortality rate in Sudan was 750 per 100,000 live births. Comparatively, the rate for a developed nation such as the United States is 9.1 per 100,000 live births. The adolescent fertility rate—the measurement of adolescent births per 1,000 women—is part of the millennium development goals and a general indicator of the burden of fertility on young women in a country. The rate for Sudan in 2011 was 61.9 per 1,000.

I will now move from Sudan to South Sudan. The International Rescue Committee reports:

“Violence against women and girls is both a feature of today’s escalating humanitarian crisis, and a persistent feature of daily life across South Sudan. It is a deeply entrenched problem that has a severe impact on the health, well-being and opportunities of generations of women.

The IRC recently conducted an assessment in Yida, an informal camp of some 25,000 refugees who have fled the Nuba Mountains, across the border in Sudan. Women and girls reported that rape, domestic violence and forced early marriage were common, both during their flight and in the camp. Afraid to speak out, women and girls were often cut off from help, including health care, and other basic services …

While figures are unreliable, we know that violence against women and girls is an endemic problem in South Sudan. Services for survivors of violence are severely lacking, women and girls have few ways to report violence, and even fewer options for care. Women and girls tell the IRC that violence is one of the most significant problems they face and that it limits their ability to benefit from or participate meaningfully in the country’s development. The issue is surrounded by silence and denial”.

Can the Minister say whether DfID will prioritise services in border areas and areas of return? Insecurity and displacement exacerbates risks for women and girls. Additional investment must be made in prevention, without sacrificing programmes that provide essential services to survivors. DfID should develop longer-term initiatives that address deep-seated power inequalities in Sudan and South Sudan. Such programmes should include livelihoods programming that is designed to reduce women’s vulnerability to violence, as well as to cope with the social and economic consequences of such violence.

In most families in Ethiopia the female is of lower status from birth and commands little respect relative to her brother and male counterparts. As soon as she is able she starts caring for younger siblings, helps in food preparation and spends long hours hauling water and fetching firewood. As she grows older she is valued for the role she will play in establishing kinship bonds through marriage to another family, thereby strengthening the community status of her family. She is told to be subservient, as a disobedient daughter is an embarrassment to her family.

Low status characterises virtually every aspect of girls and women in life. Given the heavy workload imposed on them at an early age, early marriage without choice and a subservient role to both husband and mother-in-law, girls and women are left with few opportunities to make and act on their own decisions. In Ethiopia, women traditionally enjoy little independent decision-making on most individual and family issues, including the option to choose whether to give birth in a health facility, or seek the assistance of a trained provider.

Harmful traditional practices, including female genital cutting, early marriage and child bearing, gender-based violence, forced marriage, wife inheritance and a high value given to large families all impose huge negative impacts on women’s reproductive health. Today Ethiopia has the second largest population in sub-Saharan Africa and every woman bears, on average, 5.4 children, placing an insupportable burden on families, communities and a country that faces chronic food shortages and environmental degradation. High maternal and infant mortality rates are inevitable results.

The National Committee on Traditional Practices of Ethiopia identified 120 harmful traditional practices—HTPs—including female genital cutting, early and enforced marriages, rape and wife inheritance. More than 85% of Ethiopians live in rural areas and 48% of women are married before the age of 15, with the highest early marriage rates in the country. The average Ethiopian woman bears 5.4 children during her lifetime. Those who marry very young are likely to bear more children. A pregnancy out of wedlock, whether consensual or by rape, is deeply shameful to the entire family. For many families, marrying a daughter at a young age is understood to be the best way to protect her from sexual advances and unwanted pregnancy.

Women in Ethiopia are subject to a variety of HTPs, including female genital cutting, that qualify as serious abuse. More than 74% of Ethiopian women of all ages have been subject to female genital cutting, a practice that is centuries-old. The health risks associated with FGCs are considerable. The good news is that women held 28% of the seats in the national parliament in Ethiopia in 2011. I hope that this may help in empowering Ethiopian women more and that effective steps will be taken to eliminate practices such as FGC.

TB, HIV and malaria are common in Ethiopia. DfID support in eliminating or reducing some of these problems is essential and I have seen some of the facilities that DfID has funded. They were excellent and many people were using them and were highly appreciative of DfID’s support. I hope that the Minister will assure us that this support will continue.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hussain]

My Lords, I strongly believe in the United Kingdom Government’s overseas development budget, which is making a huge difference to the lives of millions of people around the world. It helps in reducing poverty, addressing dire medical needs, providing nutrition, combating deadly diseases such as TB, malaria and AIDS, empowering women and tackling radicalisation in many parts of the world. In the past 12 months, I have had the opportunity of visiting South Sudan and Ethiopia and have witnessed how our aid is helping to build the lives of some of the neediest people in the world. While I fully understand the economic situation at home and the hardship that some of our own citizens have to go through, I fully support our commitment to DfID. Can the Minister assure the House that we will continue that commitment?

On the diplomatic front, the world’s focus has been on developments in the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. However, I have watched the Indian subcontinent more closely. India is steadily making its place in the emerging economies of the world but the gap between rich and poor in that country is not decreasing. Hence more people suffer from hunger and poverty in India than anywhere else in the region. Yet, according to Russia Today, India is stepping up its space programme with a higher budget, the launch of a new satellite and a proposed mission to Mars. The country’s space agency will attempt 10 space missions by November 2013, bringing its total budget to $1.3 billion.

In Pakistan, at the end of the elected Government’s tenure, elections have been held despite many threats and deadly attacks by extremists. The new Government face many challenges including terrorism, law and order, corruption, an energy crisis and the country’s relations with its neighbours, particularly with its historic rival, India. The good news is that Indian Prime Minister Mr Manmohan Singh and Mr Nawaz Sharif have exchanged warm greetings. Let us hope that they are able to resolve their disputes, including the Kashmir issue according to the wishes of its people. If that happens, it will ultimately save both countries millions of pounds from their defence budgets that they need to spend on their publics.

Bangladesh is generally known as a progressive, multi-party democracy and a growing economy in south-east Asia. It has strong political and economic ties with the United Kingdom. Our bilateral trade has steadily grown over the years, largely in favour of Bangladesh. Bangladesh also receives £250 million in aid from the United Kingdom every year—at least until 2015. In the past few years, reports of corruption, torture, extrajudicial killings and the sudden disappearance of journalists and political activists from opposition parties have risen significantly. It is over a year now since Mr Ilias Ali, one of the prominent leaders of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was kidnapped along with his driver. He has not been found since. I had the opportunity of meeting Mr Ali on his visit to the United Kingdom a few months before he was kidnapped. He is one out of thousands of such victims considered by many to have been abducted by government agencies and who have not been seen since—some have been found dead.

According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2013, the overall human rights situation in Bangladesh has worsened in 2012,

“as the government narrowed political and civil society space, continued to shield abusive security forces from accountability, and flatly ignored calls by Human Rights Watch to reform laws and procedures in flawed war crimes and mutiny trials”.

In February 2013, the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, expressed concern at aspects of non-compliance with fair trial and due process reported during proceedings before Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, including the pronouncement of death sentences.

Another deadly fire in a Bangladeshi garments factory this time killed over 1,200 people—one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history. The disaster has created worldwide concern for the factory workers who provide, through their sweat and blood, cheap clothes for the developed world. However, before all the victims of the factory collapse were buried, another human tragedy visited Bangladesh with the killings of unknown numbers of opposition protestors by the Government in the early hours of 6 May. This was after a massive anti-government rally. The exact number of casualties in the darkness of the night is still unknown, but the Asian Human Rights Commission calls it “a massacre of demonstrators”. In the absence of any reliable information, the Economist states that what happened in Dakar and beyond in the early hours of 6 May looks like a massacre. Bangladesh police say that 22 people died, but the Opposition claim that the figure could be as high as 2,000.

Bangladesh has been known as a land of religious moderation and the Bangladeshi diaspora are generally recognised as such. About half a million British Bangladeshis in the UK are troubled by the recent events in Bangladesh. On behalf of many of them, I ask the Minister to urge the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to use its good offices to ascertain the truth behind the 6 May massacre in Dakar. The world’s microfinance guru and practitioner Professor Muhammad Yunus commented on the state of Bangladesh:

“The collapse of the building is just a precursor to the imminent collapse of all our state institutions. If we don't face up to the cracks in our state systems, then we as a nation will get lost in the debris of the collapse ... We will have to find ways to fix the institutions to protect them from complete collapse”.

The situation in Bangladesh is showing all signs of anarchy and civil war that could derail democracy and drag the country back into the dark ages. It is time for the influential friendly countries such as the United Kingdom to help Bangladesh to bring back peace, tolerance and reconciliation to the country. I ask the Minister to ask the Foreign Secretary to raise those issues with his counterpart or indeed with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, at the earliest opportunity.