Latin America

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, on his determination and success in securing this debate. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on his impressive maiden speech.

I will raise two issues: first, the contribution that some UK-based NGOs are making to human rights, anti-poverty and development programmes in Latin America; and, secondly, the importance of encouraging the learning of Spanish and Portuguese in our schools and universities if we are to maximise our business opportunities in Latin America.

The economic ascendancy of Brazil is impressive, as we have heard from a number of noble Lords. It has the lowest unemployment figures since 2001, growth is expected to be at least 6 per cent this year, its economy is predicted to become one of the five largest in the world in the next 30 years, and it will host the 2014 football world cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. However, this success in one country masks a very different picture elsewhere in Latin America, where human rights abuses, poverty, discrimination and corruption inhibit economic and democratic participation. I will give just two examples to illustrate what UK NGOs are doing to help.

First, I pay tribute to the work of the UK section of Peace Brigades International, PBI. It sends trained volunteers as human rights defenders operating as observers, accompanying vulnerable individuals under threat and acting as a kind of information go-between for representatives of the international community, the civil authorities and those involved in conflict. It has volunteers in Colombia, among other places, providing protection in a region riddled with internal armed conflict involving killings, kidnapping, torture and extortion. Between 1999 and 2008, Colombia had the highest number of landmine victims in the world, higher even than Afghanistan. The UN special rapporteur on indigenous peoples has reported the extreme vulnerability of such groups, who are at risk of total physical or cultural extinction. The human rights defenders routinely face hostility, including death threats which are sometimes carried out. Similarly in Mexico, where Amnesty International has put on record its particular concern about the widespread discrimination against women, PBI has volunteers who are at risk.

I am sure that the clock should not say nine minutes.

In October last year, the then Foreign Secretary, Mr David Miliband MP, acknowledged the important role played by human rights defenders and called on the Colombian Government publicly to support their work and to provide a sufficient and secure level of state protection for those under threat. I should like to ask the Minister in his reply to reassure the House that the coalition Government will also actively pursue this policy. As regards Mexico, I should like to know what bilateral and multilateral initiatives the Government are planning to take to ensure that human rights defenders receive greater protection from the Mexican authorities. Will he also say what steps the UK is taking to ensure the full implementation of the EU guidelines on human rights defenders?

I also pay tribute to the work of VSO, which since 2008 has operated in five Latin American countries—Bolivia, Honduras, Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador—in addition to its programme in Guyana which has been in place since 1964. Its volunteers help to promote the employability of young people, the sustainability of natural resources, and the access to justice for the poor and marginalised, particularly women and children. In Peru, for example, 29 per cent of the population is aged under 15, 35 per cent do not have access to justice for a variety of reasons, and human rights abuses of certain racial and ethnic groups have resulted in many thousands of deaths, disappearances and acts of discrimination.

One of the many contributions of VSO has been the anti-discrimination training it has supplied to public authorities and the police. This helped to pave the way for local anti-discrimination legislation. It is easy to miss the actual, real-life impact of such a development at such a distance when we are so used to debating and legislating for every last detail of discrimination. There follows an example of what it changed in Peru: before the legislation, no one could enter a public building without a national identity card. People from distant villages whose mother tongue was not Spanish often had no means to obtain their ID card, so they had no access to basic services. Now, that requirement to have ID as an entry ticket has been swept away and the measure has been so successful that other regions are copying it.

That mention of the Spanish language leads me to my other point and here I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages. If UK businesses are to take advantage of emerging markets in Latin America, they will need people who can speak Spanish and Portuguese. Sadly, the lack of language skills in the UK workforce and the general decline in foreign language learning is undermining our international business competitiveness.

It has been estimated that up to £21 billion is being lost to the UK economy every year because of our languages deficit. Currently, the UK does only half as much business with Brazil, which has a population of 200 million, as it does with Denmark, which has a population of 5 million. Brazil is the world's fifth biggest country but only our 30th biggest export market. Even so, that makes it the UK's biggest market in Latin America. Mexico is next, but no other Latin American country is in our top 50. Will the Minister say what is being done to promote trade between Mercosur and EU countries? UKTI has pointed to the importance of networks in promoting bilateral trade and this is precisely where and why knowledge of the relevant languages comes in. English is important, vital even, but it is not enough. UK export businesses which have proactively valued and used language skills have reported a 45 per cent increase in sales.

Interestingly, Spanish is the one European language bucking the trend at GCSE, with take-up increasing instead of declining. This is good news and businesses should be aware of it and more up-front in advertising their wish to recruit people with Spanish or other language skills. Spanish is the fourth most widely used language on the internet and is the second most spoken language in the world after Mandarin. Yet the value of UK exports to the 19 Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America is only £1.9 billion. There is a great deal of potential waiting to be tapped.

London alone has nearly 12,000 schoolchildren who speak Portuguese. That language now figures prominently on the employers’ list of languages that they would like to see among their staff, as confirmed in the CBI’s latest survey published last month. There is a campaign to add Portuguese to the list of the six official languages of the United Nations. If that is successful, there will be even more pressure than there is already on the UK to produce more linguists to work as interpreters and translators.

The popularity of Latin America as a gap-year destination has undoubtedly added to the interest in learning Spanish and Portuguese, but our shortfall in this area is so shameful that it really needs some firm, clear leadership from government to ensure that we are properly equipped to contribute to and take advantage of the economic benefits arising from emerging markets in Latin America, as well as the intercultural understanding needed to sustain relationships and success.