Eritrea and Ethiopia

Lord Rea Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rea (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, for securing this short debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for introducing me to Eritrea in the year 2000 during a lull in the war with Ethiopia. In the next phase of the war the Eritreans did not do so well; it ended in a rather unsatisfactory ceasefire a year or so later. The subsequent developments in the economically damaging state of “no war, no peace”, were described extremely well by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. The unresolved border tension, as several noble Lords have said, is having a major impact on Eritrea’s economy—less so, I guess, than in Ethiopia, which has a much bigger population. The standing army that Eritrea maintains is a major drain on a country with only 3 million people.

When we were in Eritrea, we visited, among other places, the Red Sea port of Massawa, where we met the Minister for the coast and fisheries, Petros Solomon, an impressive former senior officer in the independence struggle. He took us to see a remarkable coastal prawn and tilapia aquaculture pilot project, which was being developed with the help of a small American grant. If that project had gone ahead and expanded it could have become a valuable food-producing and export industry. Sadly, it was abandoned a year or so later, possibly due to government opposition to external NGOs.

In 2001, I was among those invited to attend the 10th anniversary celebrations of the end of the independence struggle. Among other visits we were taken by helicopter to the former battleground of Nakfa, which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, described. We were impressed by the ingenuity and courage of the Eritreans and their capacity for hard work. However, shortly after our visit, 15 senior government members, known as the G15, who had signed a letter to President Isaias Afewerki urging him to implement the agreed democratic constitution and hold elections, were all arrested. They included Petros Solomon, whom the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and I had met one and a half years earlier. Some 13 years later, he is still in prison, without trial and held incommunicado, as is his wife. Can the noble Baroness, to whom I gave notice of this question, say whether our embassy has been able to obtain any information about this man and his colleagues who are still detained? Some fear that he and some of the other G15 letter writers may no longer be alive.

There are other long-term political prisoners, including a number of journalists known as the 31, whose fate is unknown, and there are almost certainly many more. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have condemned these and other arrests and disappearances, as the noble Baroness is fully aware. As all other speakers have said, there is compulsory conscription for national service and not all of it is military. Some consists of what could euphemistically be called vocational training, but pay is very low—pocket money if you are lucky. There is also a large standing army which has to be maintained because of the tension with Ethiopia and which the country can ill afford.

It is alleged that many national service recruits are being used as virtual slave labour, in poor conditions in ore-producing mines. The Eritrean Government deny this. Does the noble Baroness have any information on this? According to an independent report by the Danish immigration service, the reason given by most Eritrean asylum seekers for leaving the country is economic rather than political, although deserters from national service naturally fear punishment if they return. As noble Lords have said, this report appears to have been withdrawn. Other noble Lords have testified to the important part played by human rights abusers in the exodus of Eritreans. As we hold this short debate, there is a UN human rights commission of inquiry going on. It was not allowed into Eritrea itself, so it has, apparently, had to rely on external testimony. Does the noble Baroness have any information on the progress of this inquiry?

Other informants give another, rather more hopeful, side to the story. There is grass-roots development and, within limits, considerable local democracy. As can be imagined, this does not include criticism of the president who, like President Putin, is unaccountable but still apparently popular, despite having lost the war with Ethiopia and heading an autocratic regime. As in Russia, support for the president is strongest in provincial and rural areas. In part, this is due to the policy of land reform which grants land—all of which is state owned—to landless farmers on equitable long-term leases. WHO and UNDP have praised the effectiveness of Eritrea’s antimalarial programme and its collaboration with external advisers in public health. It has achieved the millennium development goals in education and maternal and child health. This information comes, not just from the Eritrean Government, but from United Nations agencies. Its expansion of free education and healthcare is well ahead of most other countries in Africa.

Eritrean support of al-Shabaab in Somalia is denied by the regime’s supporters who say that, in fact, Eritrea has its own jihadist problem. Does the noble Baroness have direct evidence of this alleged Eritrean involvement in Somalia? Could this possibly be Ethiopian propaganda?

Eritreans are intensely proud people and respond negatively if told what to do. They are determined to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—hence their rejection, often to their own detriment, of many projects by aid agencies, whether official or non-governmental, and their stringent conditions for accepting much needed inward investment. They are determined not to be exploited by multinational corporations. It would be very useful to hear what the UK’s experience of investment in capital projects has been in Eritrea.

I suggest that, as with other long-drawn-out conflicts, discussion, initially perhaps behind closed doors, is more likely to lead to an acceptable outcome than open confrontation or sanctions. Having said that, political prisoners such as Petros Solomon, of whom I spoke, must be released, or at least be tried in open court. Their continued detention without trial and the failure to implement independent Eritrea’s agreed democratic constitution are major factors blocking the development of normal relations between Eritrea and the rest of the world.

UN: Technical Agencies

Lord Rea Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Rea (Lab)]

My Lords, this short debate covers a very wide-ranging subject but it is regrettable that there are only three speakers. Perhaps this is something to do with it being on Thursday afternoon, but it is surprising. There are many people who are far more expert on the United Nations and the World Health Organisation—about which I shall speak—than I am. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, may be relieved that she has to answer only three speakers when the United Nations covers such a huge range of subjects.

In my short contribution, I will concentrate on the World Health Organisation, which is just one of some 20 United Nations agencies. Its membership covers every single country in the United Nations—194 at my last count—and it has representatives in 140 of them, collaborating with national health ministries. In some developing countries, a WHO team helps with developing the governance and administration of health services in various ways. Although the WHO has been criticised as cumbersome—even sclerotic—it has had some very able directors-general who have pulled it into better shape. The WHO has some significant successes to its credit, the best known being the elimination of smallpox and the near-elimination of poliomyelitis. It has had many more quiet successes, many of which are still going on, concerned largely with monitoring disease levels, particularly epidemic outbreaks. Until recently WHO has concentrated on infectious, rather than non-communicable, diseases but there has been increasing interest in looking at the origins and handling of the latter since Gro Brundtland’s reign as director-general. This is appropriate, since they now make up half the diseases affecting the developing world as well as nearly all the serious diseases affecting the developed world.

In the area of infectious diseases, the WHO collaborates with a number of other agencies. Some of these are its own offspring but receive separate funding and have devolved or different administration. I am thinking of UNAIDS or the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. So in its governance it retains a considerable degree of democracy and accountability through its committee structure at different levels, with representation from member states meeting regularly. My noble friend mentioned the regular attendance of at least two of our Ministers.

Some of the most useful work of the World Health Organisation is done by its many expert committees, some of which are standing committees meeting regularly with permanent staff on subjects such as essential medicines and biological standards. There is one group that regularly reviews the guidelines the WHO issues fairly regularly on a variety of topics. My noble friend mentioned perhaps the most recent, which was on sugar intake and has ruffled some feathers in the food industry. Other expert committees are ad hoc on topical subjects and may meet only a few times, but the members of these committees are all internationally recognised authorities in their chosen field. They are selected from panels of experts held by the WHO. A sizeable proportion of these experts is from the United Kingdom. Will the Minister describe the process by which they are selected? When they are selected, do they make a declaration of interest before they are appointed?

Reports from these committees are widely respected, although not always welcomed by Governments, which is as it should be. Progress in public health often involves controversial measures not welcomed by vested interests making profits from the activity or product concerned which is deleterious to health.

I shall make a very few remarks on drugs. The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs has rather laid down the approach internationally to the control of drugs. The emphasis has largely been on curbing supply with a prohibitionist stance. The director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has said that it is time for the UN’s stance on drugs to change from having a largely prohibitionist role to one more focused on the health impact of drugs and on reducing the harm they cause. Will the Minister say whether the Government have moved even a little in that direction?