UK and the Western Balkans (IRC Report)

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, it is my privilege to serve on the International Relations Committee and to have been part of the inquiry that produced this report, including visiting Kosovo and Macedonia. I place on record my sincere thanks to the clerk, the policy analyst and the special adviser, who were all invaluable in helping to shape and steer our work.

I want to focus on what the report concludes about the role of civil society in helping to achieve and sustain stability across the region and within individual countries, and also on the role that the UK can play in enabling that.

The importance of civil society, in the form of the many NGOs with which we met and about whose work we heard, emerged very strongly in our meetings and evidence sessions, and related in particular to young people and to women. What also came across strongly was how much the UK’s role was welcomed and valued, especially in providing technical support and training to help improve a whole range of objectives essential to a post-conflict society, including the rule of law, through training for the police and the judiciary, anti-corruption, the participation of women in public life, and in education.

One example was the meeting we held in Pristina with the Kosovo Women’s Network and the Kosova Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims. It was striking that both these NGOs represent the interests of all ethnic groups, and that is one reason why NGOs are often so important: they straddle boundaries and obstacles which still impede progress by political parties and traditional structures. In the case of the KWN and the KRCT, the focus is on justice for and the needs of survivors of sexual violence during the war in Kosovo, including domestic violence, and the treatment and rehabilitation of torture victims. They were keen above all that we should understand the frustration they felt about the enormous volume of evidence of cases of sexual violence which is currently held by EULEX—“a Pandora’s box of testimony”, they called it—and which should be bringing perpetrators to justice and some kind of closure for the victims, but on which action is blocked because Kosovo is not recognised by some EU member states, as we have heard. They asked that the UK should facilitate the transfer of this body of testimony to the United Nations, where it might be safeguarded and stand a better chance of being acted on. There was clear recognition that the UK had a particularly credible reputation on this issue, as well as on domestic violence because of our PSVI initiative, and that we could also be expected to offer concrete help in the form of training for judges and other court officials on dealing with violence against women. What specific action is being or can be taken to follow this up and build on our excellent PSVI work in this region, following the review of EULEX?

Similarly, in Macedonia we met representatives of the La Strada programme, where the NGO Open Gate works to combat the trafficking of women—or, in fact, as we learned, mostly children, as the majority of victims are girls under 18 being trafficked for prostitution. We were told that there was a lack of understanding of international human rights standards and case law in this area and, again, that training and support to help to improve the knowledge and skills of relevant professionals would be helpful and could be provided by the UK. Could the Minister say what funding and other kinds of assistance are being provided to Open Gate? Will the Minister undertake to ensure, as the report recommends, that the programme for the western Balkans summit in July in the UK will explicitly include support for, and the involvement of, NGOs and civil society, very much in the same way as was done recently as part of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting? More than just including NGOs in a fringe event, I mean really using them to shape and participate in the mainstream agenda.

As far as young people are concerned, we found that the overriding question is whether they can be persuaded to remain in the region or whether they will seek a better and more prosperous life and opportunities elsewhere. The obvious argument was that a more resilient economy would be a decisive factor in creating the conditions in which young people were more likely to stay, so British investment and trade, currently at a relatively low level, was heartily encouraged. In Macedonia, the Deputy Prime Minister stressed the priority of achieving NATO membership as the key factor that he thought would lead to greater economic investment. I also endorse the need, already expressed by my noble friend Lord Hannay, for Her Majesty’s Government to support and assist in any way that they can the case for NATO membership for Macedonia.

We met the National Youth Council of Macedonia, which represents the interests of 15 to 29 year-olds and has good links with the British Youth Council. Its members were strongly committed to remaining in their country, but we met others in Kosovo aged 13 to 17 who did not have strong identification with Kosovo as an independent state, describing and defining themselves either as Albanians or as Serbs but not as Kosovans, and almost all with the vision of leaving to study, work and live elsewhere.

Across the region, though, we saw how important it is for the UK to continue to engage in improving educational opportunities for young people, and the soft power value of investing in training for future leaders—for example, by expanding the Chevening scholarships and encouraging students from the western Balkans to come to the UK for higher education. In this context, even though I appreciate that the Minister is speaking today for the FCO, I ask him if he will undertake to speak to his colleagues in the Home Office on the issue of students and immigration figures. Once again, as your Lordships have found in several other reports from Select Committees, this came up loud and clear in this inquiry too. The Government’s response to the report is regrettably silent on the issue. We recommend that international students should not be treated as economic migrants; it is unnecessary and self-defeating, whether in relation to the western Balkans or anywhere else.

In conclusion, I emphasise the importance of maintaining and deepening the UK’s engagement in the region, and doing so irrespective of our membership or otherwise of the EU. There are many ways in which our historic involvement and our skill set as a nation can offer a positive, even unique, contribution to developing democracy and stability in the region, in our mutual interests.