Middle East

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

My Lords, one recent development in the Middle East was the peaceful transfer of power in the Republic of Yemen. Yemen and her neighbour, Somalia, are key to the stability of the region, and indeed to a far wider region beyond, including our own society, where we have many Britons whose original families came from Yemen.

Yemen is not a member of the GCC, but it has been greatly assisted by the immense and careful work that the GCC has put in over the past year or so. This culminated in a unique memorandum of understanding in November 2011. The implementation of that has brought a welcome period of calm after the excitement and deaths of Tahrir Square, through which the Arab spring manifested itself in Yemen.

The transition of power from President Saleh to President Hadi has now been marked by the beginning of the national dialogue. This will take a transitional period of two years. There will be a review of the constitution, which has already started, and a referendum involving the entire electorate in 18 months on that review. According to the MoU, this will be followed by a full and contested presidential election in 2013. The recent early presidential election had a single candidate. This body of work involved the entire political spectrum of Yemen for the first time. Thirty-eight of the 40 opposition parties, known as the Joint Meeting Parties, participated in both the election and in forming the national Government of unity, who incorporate the original governing party. Former President Saleh, in a unique tribute to the calmness of the situation in Yemen, has remained the president of his party. The Joint Meeting Parties and the governing party have formed the national Government of unity.

All this was made democratically possible by the early presidential election of 21 February this year. I had the good fortune to be an official observer, at the Government’s request. It was suggested that I went to Aden, and I did. There I watched the real and tangible milestone that the early presidential election marked for the people. I was able to compare the system clearly because I had been the head of the European Union election observation mission for the presidential election of 2006, when I spent the best part of six months in Yemen, travelling across the country and witnessing what went on.

The election of last month, just a few weeks ago, did great credit to all concerned. The Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum, which was formed as a result of the recommendation that I made in 2006, fulfilled its role superbly. It trained people, transmitted knowledge and, with the support of the UNDP, all the appropriate literature was put out. There was a great amount of advertising, even in the scant two-month period between November and February. It was a great credit to all concerned that the election went so well. I was particularly pleased to see the enormous interest of women in the election, and I believe that a lot can be done in offering further training to bring women into the public sector. The procedures and processes went well and the new President, Mansour Hadi, has a firm body of support from the electorate behind him.

It has been an immense struggle for everyone to get so far. I pay tribute particularly to those in Aden who got to the polling stations, because the massive southern movement, which is extremely violent, did everything it could to stop people voting. I managed to visit 50 polling stations, but by noon half had closed and by 3.30 pm the remainder had to be closed because of the violence. Yet people came out to vote. They minded so much. They had their thumbs marked by the Indian ink that the United Nations says is such an essential feature of elections these days. I am not so sure that that is such a clever thing to do. It makes it very difficult for people to go home afterwards. The key was that people came out to vote in spite of all the opposition against them. Unlike the United Nations, I am delighted by the presidential immunity that was passed before the election. To do otherwise would have handed incoming President Hadi a poisoned chalice. I think Yemen has a right to be proud of herself. She can get ahead now and does not have to sit in the same position as Egypt with a search for the past poisoning everything.

The search for stability in Yemen is something that I know we are all going to support as powerfully as we possibly can. I was very impressed by the combined efforts of all concerned, including the diplomatic corps. We had particularly strong inputs from the European Union ambassador, Ambassador D’Urso; the ambassador from the UK, Nicholas Hopton; and Mr Feierstein from the USA. They all worked together with the GCC in supporting the Government.

In Yemen and the surrounding countries, the key must lie in capacity building and institution building and in making absolutely certain that our interventions, whether they are aid or trade, political or otherwise, strengthen what is available and build capacity. There is so much excellence locally, and I am absolutely sure that if we work hard to support the Yemeni people and all the Yemeni political parties and their Government of unity, the time ahead will be very much better than it has been in the past. I commend this success story—the peaceful transfer of power in the Republic of Yemen—to your Lordships’ House.