Commonwealth

Baroness Helic Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Howell for bringing this debate forward, and for his lifelong dedication to the work of the Commonwealth. Before going to Kigali, the Prime Minister set out, in an article for the Telegraph, how the invisible thread of shared values, history, institutions, and language that binds the Commonwealth creates a trading advantage. As a network of countries and of civil society built around the shared values of the Commonwealth charter—democracy, human rights, tolerance and the rule of law among them—the Commonwealth also has the potential to be one of our greatest tools in facing the key challenges of the 21st century.

As last year’s integrated review recognised, we are in an age of systemic competition. Authoritarian states seek to extend their influence and to challenge the international rules and norms that underpin our security and prosperity. The Commonwealth can be a bulwark against this. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s vision of the Commonwealth as a counterweight to authoritarian regimes but, as our values come under greater pressure, we cannot be complacent.

My noble friend Lord Howell rightly pointed out that the influence from China extends through the Commonwealth. Many Commonwealth members are part of China’s belt and road initiative. Beijing has even gone as far as cultivating ties with Commonwealth country’s armed forces. Can my noble friend tell the House what discussions he and other members of the UK delegation had in Kigali about countering this influence from China, and what practical steps the Commonwealth can take to limit this?

Winning a systemic competition requires us to prove that our system is better. We need to show what we know to be true: democracy, human rights and the rule of law give us a competitive advantage. In order to show this, we need to be faithful to those values. The Kigali communiqué states:

“Heads renewed their commitment to the Commonwealth’s fundamental … values of democracy … They further reiterated their commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms”.


But, in too many countries, human rights are being rolled back. In Freedom House’s annual ranking, 23 Commonwealth members were found to be not free or only partially free.

The Commonwealth’s largest member is often billed as the largest democracy in the world, but I fear it is increasingly at risk of losing that title. It is deeply concerning that Prime Minister Modi’s India is becoming less tolerant, more autocratic and less safe for millions of its own population, including minorities—Christians, Muslims, et cetera. NGOs have faced restrictions. Human rights advocates, such as Aakar Patel, the chair of Amnesty International’s India board, have been subject to travel bans. The Editors Guild of India is calling for the immediate release of Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of a fact-checking site who has been at the forefront of countering fake news and disinformation, and who was arrested earlier this week. He joins other journalists and human rights defenders, including Khurram Parvez, the chair of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances and a leading campaigner against human rights violations in Kashmir.

The communiqué from Rwanda tells us that

“Heads stressed the importance of … freedom of expression”—


yet they stand by as the free press faces attack in the Commonwealth’s largest member. I know that my noble friend the Minister takes this issue seriously and that the British high commission in India is supporting interfaith work, but can he confirm whether the Prime Minister discussed freedom of religion and human rights with Mr Modi in India in April or in Kigali last week?

For many in the United Kingdom, CHOGM was unfortunately overshadowed by the Government’s new refugee offshoring policy. Rwanda is a good example of the grey areas of foreign policy: it is at once a symbol of huge achievement, recovering from genocide, but also a country with an alarming human rights record of political repression, kidnappings and assassinations. Debating the provisions for refugees in Rwanda under the offshoring scheme is a distraction from the more fundamental point: shipping asylum seekers elsewhere fundamentally neglects our responsibilities and duties, which we signed up to and which were not imposed on us.

There is substantial evidence to suggest that the offshoring scheme will be expensive, inefficient and ineffective. It breaches our international legal obligations. The UN Refugee Agency has stated that the Rwanda plan is

“inconsistent with global solidarity and responsibility-sharing”

and

“does not meet the requirements necessary to be considered a lawful and appropriate … arrangement.”

Shared burdens and respect for international law are surely the epitome of Commonwealth values—yet, with the Rwanda plan, we have somehow set them aside.

Sometimes, we seem to think that we can urge others to improve their record on the rule of law, human rights and democracy without respecting and protecting these values ourselves. Underpinning warm words about shared values are real rights and freedoms, which intimately affect the lives of the Commonwealth’s 2.5 billion people. If we are serious about the Commonwealth as a bulwark against authoritarianism and a promoter of human rights, democracy and the rule of law—the values that make it successful—we need to strengthen those rights at home and strongly argue for them abroad.