Brexit: UK International Relations

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I am privileged to serve on the International Relations Committee and I add both my good wishes to our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and my thanks to the clerk and policy analyst who supported our first inquiry on the UN and the UK and the priorities for the new Secretary-General, António Guterres, who I most warmly welcome into his new role.

In this very wide-ranging debate I will focus just on some of the recommendations concerning the organisation and management of the UN, which is not nearly as dry and dusty, or as peripheral to the big issues, as it might sound. On the contrary, at a time when the role and actions of the Secretary-General could prove to be decisively influential in a number of scenarios around the world in a way that those of no other individual could be, it is important that he is able to operate with the strongest possible network of support and coherence within the leadership, culture and structure of the UN—but this is not currently what he has. He will need the active and committed backing of the UK to make some fundamental changes and I hope that the Minister will assure the House that the UK will build on its most welcome support for the limited reforms which so improved the process of selecting him, and go on to achieve the wider reforms which are now needed to allow Mr Guterres to fulfil the potential of his position and of the UN as a whole.

First, the increased transparency that we saw around the selection process should be made permanent, with agreed explicit criteria and qualifications for the role. The report recommends that the UK should take the initiative in getting this ball rolling, as well as looking carefully at the proposal that a single seven-year term should replace the current five-year renewable term. Like my noble friend Lord Hannay, I feel that the Government’s response is too negative on this last point and I ask the Minister to reconsider whether the Secretary-General really should be spending time and effort towards the end of a first term standing for re-election: whether this really does increase his accountability as the Government argue, or whether it is in fact an unnecessary distraction from the time and energy that should be devoted to world affairs, not internal positioning.

Secondly, the reforms in recruitment and selection should not stop with the Secretary-General. Greater cohesion and quality of leadership could be achieved if a whole range of positions within the UN Secretariat and agencies, and in senior leadership positions in UN peacekeeping, were also subject to more transparency and accountability. Many of these positions will be coming vacant during Mr Guterres’s first term, so it is important, as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said, that action be taken quickly. I hope that the UK will do more than express its support in principle, at the Geneva Group and elsewhere, and will table specific proposals designed to make change happen in time to be effective for this Secretary-General, not his successor.

Thirdly, our report recommends that the Secretary-General should be allowed more autonomy in managing the budget, while of course remaining accountable to member states. At present he has only limited authority over the size of the budget and is highly restricted as to how he may allocate it. This works to stifle accountability and puts process before purpose. Witnesses as distinguished and experienced in the affairs of the UN as the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, and Sir Emyr Jones Parry strongly advised radical reform in this area.

Finally, the UN should launch a new communications strategy, including a distinct focus on young people, and the UK should support this. People under 25 currently make up 45% of the world’s population and witnesses including the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, stressed that the UN needs to be much more proactive in its engagement with them in particular. It should not just be an information-giving exercise but a genuine strategy to create mechanisms by which they can be consulted about what the UN does. I would welcome from the Minister a little more detail than is mentioned in the Government’s response to the report about what the UK is doing to support this engagement, particularly through social media.

Sexual Violence in Conflict (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I was not a member of this Select Committee but I should like to thank all noble Lords who were for such a comprehensive report on an extremely important subject. I was particularly pleased to see that the report included references to Colombia, as I have a particular interest in that part of the world. It is often overlooked, although it has to be said that in the last couple of weeks we have seen a probably unprecedented amount of media coverage of Colombia following the rejection of the peace deal by less than 1% in the referendum there. We are also shortly to receive the Nobel Peace Prize-wining President Santos on a state visit to the UK, so my remarks this evening will focus just on Colombia. I endorse the points made by my noble friend Lady Young of Hornsey and will expand on some of them.

In Colombia, sexual violence has been a hidden, widespread and systematic practice perpetrated by all armed actors in the internal conflict—the guerrilla groups, paramilitary units and the state security forces. Of the cases documented, the worst offenders of conflict sexual violence are the paramilitary groups, followed by the security forces and then the guerrilla groups. FARC policies of forced contraception and forced abortion for their rank-and-file troops were a normalised form of violence. They also forcibly recruited girls as combatants in order to render sexual services and as a payment to protect other members of their family.

The impact of the state security forces’ involvement in sexual violence has had a particularly devastating effect as they are, of course, responsible for protecting the civilian population. When sexual violence is committed by the security forces, civilians are left with no authority to whom they can turn for justice.

As we know, and as my noble friend Lady Young has also mentioned, the Colombian Government have been involved for the past four years in peace talks with the largest of Colombia’s guerrilla groups, the FARC. Colombian women’s organisations and victims’ organisations went to Havana to discuss the issue. Women human rights defenders also went and spoke directly to the negotiators on various occasions to ensure that they understood that women would not accept amnesty for conflict-related sexual violence. This was accepted by the parties and the final agreement excluded conflict-related sexual violence from any amnesty.

As a result, the Colombian Government appointed a special unit in the public prosecutor’s office to investigate the crimes of conflict-related sexual violence. This was a major step forward, but serious concerns are already being expressed by civil society organisations such as ABColombia, to whom I express my sincere thanks for all the background briefing and up-to-the-minute reports it has been sending me. The concern is that the investigators in this unit are focusing only on crimes committed by the FARC, and while this is a positive step in the right direction, there is also a pressing need to ensure that sexual violence by the security forces is also prioritised and scrutinised.

I ask the Minister what discussions Her Majesty’s Government have had with the Colombians about progress on investigating conflict-related sexual violence specifically carried out by the security forces. The building of civil society’s trust in the security forces is clearly essential after any internal conflict, and to leave these crimes in impunity would leave many Colombian women without truth, without justice and without reparation, and would certainly weaken the process of peace-building in Colombia, which is still continuing despite the setback of the referendum.

The progress achieved in the peace agreement on this particular issue was impressive. Following a good deal of pressure, the state, in November 2013, finally appointed two women negotiators. It also established a gender sub-commission which reviewed all aspects of the agreements to ensure that they all contained a gender perspective. The gender sub-commission was made up of women from both sides of the negotiating table, with expert advice from women’s civil society organisations. The core aspect of the agreement was to exclude conflict sexual violence crimes from amnesties. As we know, the peace accord signed in September was then sadly and extremely narrowly rejected in the 2 October referendum. But talks continue and women’s organisations are extremely concerned to ensure that their achievements are not dismantled and that conflict sexual violence is not amnestied in any potential reformulation of the peace agreement.

This is a crucial issue for Colombian women and I ask the Minister to ensure that the British embassy in Bogota supports women’s NGOs in their efforts to ensure that this aspect of the agreement is not weakened. President Santos will be in the UK at the beginning of November on his state visit and I urge the Government to ensure that he meets with NGOs working on human rights in Colombia, and particularly those NGOs working on the issue of conflict sexual violence. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s assurance on this point.

Middle East

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, language is the key to understanding different cultures, so the importance of Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages is obvious. Arabic is the first language of nearly 300 million people, the majority Muslim. A further billion Muslims are not native speakers, but engage with Arabic as the language of the Koran. Its relevance to the UK is cultural, economic and security-related. About 2 million Muslims live here and the next generation needs at least some linguistic and cultural understanding of the Arab and Muslim worlds, and to start young before stereotypes and prejudices take root.

English as a filter can mislead. Many early reports of the Egyptian revolution in 2011 relied on articulate, English-speaking protesters, which suggested that the society was dominated by secular liberals, until Islamist election victories showed otherwise. The right sort of Arabic is important too. After 9/11, the US trained many soldiers in Egyptian Arabic, but then sent them to Iraq. What is right for diplomacy will not be right for religious texts, which will be different again from a regional dialect for the purposes of military operations.

In the UK, many Muslim children attend mosque school and learn the classical Arabic of the Koran. If only they could also learn modern standard Arabic at their mainstream school alongside non-Muslim pupils. Language is a gateway to cultural understanding and hostility is largely bred through ignorance. But only six state schools teach Arabic on the timetable and only 16 of our 130 universities. Proficiency takes time, and three or four years from scratch at university will not produce the level of expertise that we need to assist UK policy on the Middle East. In addition, 15% of British employers want staff with Arabic and an understanding of Arab business behaviour. We need a long-term strategy covering all ages and stages of education. Will the Government work with schools and HE to develop this?