Africa: Post-conflict Stabilisation

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, as everyone else has done, for his continuing commitment to human rights and developments in Africa. I never cease to be impressed by the standard of debates that we have on these matters in your Lordships’ House.

I have known my noble friend Lord McConnell as a friend for many years, and I have every confidence that he will bring to your Lordships’ House enormous expertise. More important is his passion for tackling poverty and inequality wherever and whenever it occurs. He has spent his entire political life fighting injustice and we are pleased and proud to see him on these Benches.

Given the pervasiveness of violent conflict and the ensuing poverty in several African countries, the case for security sector reform and stabilisation is clearly compelling. Many countries that we are discussing today have suffered armed conflict characterised by similar causes, which demand an integrated approach to disarmament, demobilisation and, most importantly in many ways, reintegration. That is the one aspect of DDR which is not functioning as well as it should. Narrowly focused peace enforcement is no longer the right approach to these matters.

In all the countries under review today we can fairly say that it has been in all cases very difficult to advance justice, given the region’s notoriously weak judicial systems. There is also a poor record of accountability for massive and terrible crimes and ongoing insecurity.

Examples abound of failures to prosecute suspects associated with widespread abuses, such as in the DRC. When I was there recently, we saw clearly how many of those abusers had been freely incorporated into the Congolese National Army. There is little consideration of the need for national reparations programmes, or for tackling the fundamental root causes of conflict.

As others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, have said, people want a peace dividend and a marked improvement in the quality of their lives. Yes, they want schools, they want access to health systems and they want land and support for agriculture. Naturally, people are asking for all those things. The continuing conflict in many areas that we have been discussing stands in the way of that progress.

International stabilisation efforts will fail if those matters are not addressed. There is also a failure properly to monitor what is succeeding or failing. The modern mandate is changing. As the International Crisis Group has stated clearly, it is not simply about peace enforcement but must encompass much wider objectives on security sector reform and DDR, as well as on transitional justice, as we move forward from conflict, on gender empowerment, humanitarian assistance, de-mining—the list of things that need to be done is endless. Stabilisation must address the broader security objectives of justice reform and economic recovery. Impunity must be addressed in all conflict and post-conflict situations. Unless people feel that the perpetrators of abuse have been brought to justice, they will never feel that they have the respect that they need and deserve.

The DfID/FCO Stabilisation Unit has promoted such an approach, and I very much hope that the coalition Government will value and promote its work. Will the Minister clarify how the Government view proposals that we heard from the Conservatives before the election for a military-led stabilisation and reconstruction force? Does he agree that such an approach, mixing the military with the humanitarian, is inappropriate and unhelpful?

I have visited the Great Lakes region many times since 1994, just after the Rwandan genocide. Although there has been progress between the neighbours, between Kinshasa and Kigali, it has still not provided the peace and security which it should. Divisions and tensions remain. The mistrust of the people in the Kivus in Congo of the Rwandanese remains very strong. I was in Bukavu in May, and visited the Panzi hospital, where a wonderful, selfless doctor cares for women victims of sexual violence. He wears a badge which says, “Do not stand idly by”, and we should all bear that in mind when we discuss these issues. He acknowledges that much needs to be done for the long-suffering people of the Kivus.

I met three women who, in the three days before I was there, had been brutally raped by FLDR militia. It was so striking to talk to them and feel their emotion, but also their strength and resilience. I sat there listening to them. All that they wanted to ask me was: would we help to find their children? They did not ask for any sympathy. They just said: “We need to find our children”. Clearly, we cannot and should not look away. We must reform the security sector, because that is the way to secure long-term peace.

In Darfur, Chad and Congo, systematic rape is a feature of military campaigns. The UN commander in the DRC said last year that it is more dangerous to be a woman in a modern conflict than to be a soldier. Thousands of women were raped in the 1994 Rwandan genocides. Only eight convictions for sexual violence were prosecuted by the international criminal tribunal. Despite UN resolutions, violence, especially sexual violence, continues unabated. The underlying causes must be tackled. Fundamentally, that means addressing the issues covered by millennium development goal 3 —that is, dealing with the widespread low status and low value accorded to women. Violence against women is not a parallel issue; it is an intrinsic security issue. As I have seen, after such brutal attacks have taken place, the stigma suffered by women who have endured sexual violence often leads to a total rejection by their families and communities. Indeed, none of the three women whom I met had had any visits from any members of their families.

Women have to be part of the security force, as they are in Liberia, for instance. We have a very good example of a woman president in Liberia, who understands how we should address the needs of such women after such violence—how they need respect and interest taken in them. If they do not get that, the essential link to the community is lost. If we do not involve women, that community experience will be lost. The engagement of women is a key determinant in the potential success of any peace process. They should be at the table—currently, they rarely are. The leadership of women must be supported and encouraged, as must be the participation of women in the decision-making and peace processes.

Will the Minister clarify whether the Government will appoint a Minister tasked to work on violence-against-women issues across the three departments, DfID, the FCO and the MoD? He may be aware that I had that responsibility under the Labour Government. I hope that a similar initiative will be taken by the coalition Government.

As other noble Lords have said, child protection is essential. I will refer to the demobilisation of children, which others have not raised. They need long-term support so that they can come to terms with the horror and trauma that they have experienced. Proper child protection systems and structures are needed, and families and communities need to be part of the integration process. That is urgently needed in the Congo and in Sudan, where the UN has reported that for many years, as a matter of course, young children, including girls, have been recruited into the ranks. Turning things around for those people will require time and, I fear, endless patience.

Governments in the regions that we are focusing on today need to grow in confidence and earn legitimacy. That is essential for stability. We see that central and east African conflicts are contagious. Refugees move across borders, so do armies and so does economic collapse. In the Horn, in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Sudan, we see the tensions that reverberate around access to the sea and to ports, about livestock on the borders, about energy, water and land rights. All of those are sources of tension and conflict. A recent Chatham House report described that as the economic driver of those conflicts. In both central and east Africa, the task is to build governance, reconciliation and economic development.

The problems are huge but, given the political will and the assurance of the resources to assist the Governments of those countries in the efforts that they need to make, they are not insurmountable. Working with regional organisations—with the African Union as the way forward, as others have said—the United Kingdom and the European Union can play a strong and important role.

The human tragedy that we see across the region is not a statistic; it is a continuing and terrible tragedy. The resilience of the people of those countries has been spoken of by many noble Lords. That always reminds me that we cannot be full of doom and gloom about what may happen in Africa; we must be optimistic, as the people of Africa have to be in the circumstances in which they find themselves.