Central African Republic

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who I know from previous debates takes a particular interest in the important matter of protecting Christians and other religious majorities or minorities around the world. He is right, and I hope to address some of the specific issues he raised. We cannot be content to allow the present situation to continue. We in this country have a responsibility to act both bilaterally and in concert with other countries, including our European Union partners, an issue to which I will return.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I am probably the only Member of Parliament—I appreciate that Members of the House of Lords have been there—who has visited the CAR. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one big problem is that it is surrounded by three broken states—Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan—and becomes a black hole for all the failures of those surrounding states, with all the bad people from there going in and causing even greater problems? That is a major problem that we need to deal with.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have not visited the CAR and I did not know until he told me just before the debate that he had done so. It is always helpful for the House to hear such first-hand accounts from Members. If the time allows us—it may do, with the extension—perhaps we could hear a little more from him about that experience after I have spoken. He is right: CAR has its own issues, which I am addressing, but it is surrounded by countries where there are challenges, including the ones he described. Also, Nigeria is not far away and issues such as Boko Haram and the insecurity and instability there may be relevant to the CAR’s security situation in future.

Returning to what has happened this year, Djotodia eventually declared the Seleka disbanded, but of course many of those who had been members of it continued with their destructive actions regardless of that decision. In response to the attacks and violations committed by Seleka, we saw the formation of another group, known as Anti-balaka, meaning “anti-machete”. This group is comprised predominantly of Christians, but there are also animists, and although it was initially formed as a counter to Seleka, increasingly it stopped distinguishing between the Seleka and the wider Muslim population. Sadly, estimates suggest that more than 5,000 people have died since December in that sectarian violence, affecting initially the Christian community but later, with the response from Anti-balaka, the Muslim community as well.

The current transitional Government are not fully established and they struggle to stop the violence. Just last week reports emerged that Seleka rebels had blocked key roads in Bangui and exchanged fire with peacekeepers.

It is welcome that a number of international missions are in the country, with the purpose of increasing stability, including from the European Union and France, and now the United Nations mission. In September, the UN mission took over from the early peacekeeping response of the African Union. We should pay tribute to the important and difficult work being undertaken by these forces. However, it is clear that they remain undermanned and are not always able to take the steps necessary to stop violence in the country. They often come under fire themselves, including in an attack on the current President’s home, showing that rebel forces are often confident that they can act with complete impunity.

Peacekeepers and the state—in so far as the state exists —are therefore unable to stop fully the violence, and that violence can of course lead to reprisals, which lead to further violence; and so a vicious circle is maintained. It is therefore essential that member states ensure that the UN mission comes to full strength a soon as possible.

Greater humanitarian intervention is also needed to help alleviate other pressures that the country faces. Crops have been looted or destroyed, creating food shortages, and more than 900,000 people have been displaced during the conflict. The International Rescue Committee has stated that women and girls in the CAR listed sexual violence as their No. 1 fear.

More work also needs to be done to promote religious tolerance and understanding. Bringing various communities together is vital if we are to see a peace that lasts. I take heart from just one example that I should like to share with the House: that set by Father Bernard Kinvi, a Catholic priest whom Human Rights Watch has recognised. Father Kinvi had been helping both Christians and Muslims who were hurt during the fighting. In one incident, the Anti-balaka rebels had been targeting Muslims in the area in which he lived. As he was helping the injured, they approached him and singled out for execution a 14-year-old boy who was clinging to his robes. The priest stood his ground and told the Anti-balaka rebels, “If you have to kill him, then you will have to kill me first.” He put his life on the line to uphold universal values of human dignity, and that example is a powerful message on the importance of religious tolerance and understanding. I am sure we would all want to put on record our praise for his courage and determination.

We have a window of opportunity to act to stop the CAR returning to a state of full civil war. The United Kingdom, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development have significant experience in helping countries to rebuild after conflict. We should consider doing more to bring that knowledge to bear in this situation. The CAR is due to hold elections in February, although they may be postponed until later in 2015. We should do our best to help ensure that they are free and fair and that moderate forces are able to compete effectively. We know from history in all parts of the world that elections, particularly in fragile countries, can create difficult periods where extremist politicians and parties can polarise and manipulate the population, feeding off fear and stirring hatred. Should further violence be triggered and escalate to the level we saw this time last year, the population could well lose faith that a Government can provide the change the country needs. With that in mind, will the Minister explore whether there is scope for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy or the British Government to carry out work in the CAR in the run-up to the elections to try to ensure that they are as free and fair as possible?

The UK can help to provide some practical solutions to end the conflicts in the CAR. This year is the 20th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, and there are a number of respects in which Rwanda can be used as a positive case study in attempting to replicate some of the successes we have seen with the rebuilding of the capacity to govern in Rwanda over the past two decades. Replicating that could not only help the civilian population, but strengthen the CAR’s regional relationships. Rwanda has been supported by the British Government. We have helped it in a number of ways, including through aid, but specifically relevant to today’s debate is that we have strengthened Rwanda’s capacity for good governance. If we encourage Rwanda and the Central African Republic to work together, we could help to strengthen the CAR Government through programmes where Rwanda helps to train the civil servants and Ministers of the CAR in modern governance practices.

More needs to be done to promote religious tolerance and understanding. Bringing various communities together is surely vital in building a peace that lasts. In April, I was in Kigali in Rwanda for the Kwibuka 20 commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the genocide. I had the chance to hear the mufti of Rwanda—he is a leader of the Muslim community in Rwanda—speak powerfully about how faith groups in Rwanda, both Christian and Muslim, viewed the signs of violence in the CAR with great concern. In April the faith groups were in the process of creating a forum to bring together Christian and Muslim leaders from the two countries to exchange experiences. Twenty years after the Rwanda genocide, they hoped that lessons could be learned for the Central African Republic.

That process of dialogue has developed considerably since. The faith leaders from the CAR visited Rwanda in August and were impressed by the success of the peace education and reconciliation programmes they observed. They wish to establish similar programmes in the CAR to promote social cohesion. To that end, they have forged a partnership with the Aegis Trust, which provides the secretariat to the all-party group that I chair. The Aegis Trust is a British-based non-governmental organisation whose reconciliation work in Rwanda is funded by a number of organisations, including DFID.

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[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I was not going to speak in the debate, but I have been inspired by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). I think that I am one of the only Members of Parliament who has had an opportunity to visit the Central African Republic. I was inspired to visit CAR following a trip to Rwanda, thinking, “Here is a broken state that we can perhaps have a constructive role in.” For anyone who is interested, a good primer would be to read the excellent “Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure” by Stuart Stevens. It was written several years ago, but sometimes things never change. I highly recommend that people read it.

CAR is a broken state that is surrounded by three other broken states: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan. It is a remarkable country, because it is rich in natural resources that have never really been taken advantage of. I visited with Merlin, a health care NGO that was recently taken over by Save the Children, and I want to make a couple of suggestions to the Minister.

I visited eight regions with hospitals that are effectively white elephants. There is nothing there. The problem is a lack of medicine. I costed fixing up the hospitals and providing medicine for five years, and it would cost something like £7 million to £10 million, which is not huge given the size of the Department for International Development’s budget. If anyone from DFID is listening to the debate, one way that we could help the country is through better health care.

The second way, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby mentioned, is by looking at Rwanda as an example of government and how Governments can change. If we can work with the CAR Government to help them try to have some form of proper governance and a proper transition, we can perhaps grab them out of the French orbit, as we did with Rwanda, and it can perhaps one day be the third African country with no link to Britain to join the Commonwealth.

Rwandan Genocide

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, when over the course of a 100-day period in 1994 at least 800,000 Rwandans were murdered; and calls on the Government to reinforce its commitment to the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine and to working within the UN to promote international justice and to avoid mass atrocities which are still committed across the globe today.

I am delighted to have the opportunity, on my birthday, to open today’s debate marking the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, a 100-day period in 1994. That appalling episode left almost 1 million dead, 3 million refugees, a region riddled with insecurity, and a country and a people struggling to comprehend the enormity of the horrors inflicted on them.

To all the Tutsis and moderate Hutus who died, 7 April 1994 marked the beginning of 100 days of hell—100 days of rape, torture, murder and unspeakable horrors. It was the beginning of 100 days that took nearly 1 million lives. For those who bore witness to Rwanda’s genocide, it was a time that humanity seemed to forget. The Rwandan genocide saw wives become widows and children become orphans. Roughly three quarters of the Tutsi population were eliminated, and Rwanda suffered greatly. Attackers burned down churches with hundreds or thousands of Tutsis inside and slaughtered their victims with machetes. Hundreds of mass graves were dug across the country to bury the victims of what was a long-planned killing spree.

As Linda Melvern, the journalist and author, said in one of the Committee Rooms of the House on 26 March to those of us commemorating the genocide:

“Here was the direst of all human situations. The crime of genocide—the intent to destroy a human group…There were no sealed trains or secluded camps in Rwanda. A planned and political campaign, the genocide of the Tutsi took place in broad daylight.”

On the 20th anniversary of the genocide, people are talking again of tribes in Rwanda—the Hutu tribe, the Tutsi tribe—but it is important to remember that the Hutus and Tutsis were the same before colonial rule created a divide. They lived in the same space on the same hills, spoke the same language, had the same religion and often intermarried. The only difference was a superficial judgment on appearance and occupation. In 1994, Rwanda was 85% Hutu, 14% Tutsi and 1% Twa.

As many Members will know, the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide came about on 6 April 1994, when President Juvénal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down as it came in to land at Kigali airport. Immediately, a pre-planned policy of extermination of all Tutsis was triggered, and throughout the entire country, right down to every village, Hutus turned on their Tutsi neighbours and slaughtered them. The Hutus who attempted to intervene or prevent the violence were also killed.

The international community should have responded to the Rwandan genocide, but in 1994 it collectively failed to do anything to help the Rwandan people in their hour of need. The Americans had been traumatised by the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia the previous October, making the Clinton Administration unwilling to intervene, especially in Africa. Regrettably, Britain did nothing, having no interest in a former Belgian colony. France, much to its shame, continued to support the interim Rwandan Government even after it became clear that they were driving the planned genocide.

The international response to the Rwandan genocide was woeful, as was the lack of action by the United Nations. There were dreadful misreadings of what was happening, and the plight of the Tutsis was ignored, with many people refusing to acknowledge that the events taking place were a genocide of the Tutsis. Indeed, not one Government called on the perpetrators to stop the genocide. Not one UN member state severed diplomatic ties. Not one Government called for the representative of the interim Rwandan Government to be suspended from the chamber of the UN. The international community turned its back on Rwanda and left the Tutsi people to their fate.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

One real problem at the time was the fact that the UN international assistance mission for Rwanda was there under a chapter VI mandate from the Security Council—peacekeeping rather than peace enforcement—and had really rotten rules of engagement. No one in the Security Council was prepared to increase the potency of those peacekeepers on the ground. More than that, as my hon. Friend knows, the Belgians withdrew their paratroopers and left the general there absolutely alone, with 246 people.

[Mr Newmark]

My hon. and gallant Friend is absolutely right. Anybody who has seen the film “Shooting Dogs” will know the frustrations that the general felt at the lack of support and the lack of acknowledgment that a genocide was taking place. The title “Shooting Dogs” was because the peacekeepers could shoot dogs, since they might eat dead bodies or attack people, but could not shoot individuals who were slaughtering the Tutsis right in front of them.

It is easy for us to say, “It must never happen again”, but it may happen at any moment, and perhaps already is in Syria, the Central African Republic and north-eastern Nigeria—places where the wrong ID card or recognition of one’s tribe can still carry a death sentence. I wish to take this opportunity to reflect on not only the lessons and legacies of the genocide itself but the steps taken by the international community to ensure that it never happens again and by Rwanda in its transition to a peaceful and more prosperous future.

The horrific events that transpired during the Rwandan genocide, and later in Srebrenica, served as the impetus for all UN member states to commit unanimously at the 2005 world summit to the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. At the world summit, states acknowledged that the world should no longer tolerate political indifference and inaction, whenever and wherever populations face an imminent risk of mass atrocity crimes. By committing to the responsibility to protect, known as R2P, countries committed to protecting populations at risk of crimes such as the one experienced in Rwanda in 1994.

Since 2005, UN member states have taken important steps to strengthen the responsibility to protect at both international and domestic level. Those initiatives include the creation of a global network of focal points and the development of domestic and regional capacities to prevent genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. Since 2011, the UN Security Council has also invoked R2P when authorising measures to protect civilians in Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya, South Sudan and elsewhere, although I believe that today we are once again falling short of our responsibility to protect in Syria. Preventing mass atrocity crimes is a responsibility that we must all bear and a principle for which we should all work. States should continue to build support for R2P and ensure that it is consistently and effectively implemented in practice.

The UK has also taken steps to reduce international war crimes and protect civilians. The Foreign Secretary’s work in calling for an end to rape as a weapon of war is highly necessary and important. In June he will ask 140 nations to write action against sexual violence into military training and doctrine. If that vital piece of work had been in place 20 years ago, perhaps many women and girls would have been saved from this cruel weapon of war. We need to continue to work to ensure that the horrific events in Rwanda do not unfold elsewhere in the future.

Dr Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, noted that the best way to honour the memory of those murdered in 1994 is to build a world where the international community permits no people to stand alone when threatened by genocide. The 20th commemoration of the Rwandan genocide compels us to reflect, but also to act and uphold our collective responsibility to protect.

I believe that the UK will continue to fight to ensure that the events of 7 April to 17 July 1994 do not recur, and I was pleased that the Foreign Secretary and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), took time to attend commemorations in Kigali to mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide. It is important that we remember the terrible events of 1994 and as a nation pay tribute to the victims.

Over the past 20 years, Rwanda’s development has been truly astonishing, and the UK has played a leading role in helping to transform it from a failed war-torn state into a stable and growing economy. In particular, the UK has done much to help the country’s poorest people lift themselves out of poverty over the past two decades. Britain is helping thousands of children across Rwanda to get an education, giving them the chance of a better future. We are helping more than half a million people to get a job so that they can lift themselves out of poverty. We are also helping thousands of families to ensure that they have enough food to eat to lead healthier, happier lives.

The UK is supporting a programme in Rwanda to help build peace and reconciliation following the genocide. We are helping to teach schoolchildren how they can become ambassadors for peace in their country, and funding vital research into how we can prevent genocide from happening again. To commemorate the genocide, the Department for International Development provided £2.5 million to support the Aegis Trust’s work in upgrading the Kigali genocide memorial and helping communities to reconcile their differences. Over the next three years, Britain’s support will help to establish a genocide archive and fund new research on how to prevent future genocide, and ensure that the event of the genocide is stored and made more accessible, including with online documentation from the Gacaca courts. Finally, Aegis will undertake research on preventing genocide, and will provide education about it and its causes to Rwandan schoolchildren, communities and youth leaders.

Since I first visited Rwanda in 2007, I have seen an enormous amount of progress. The overriding feeling that I get every time I visit the country is of a people wanting to move onwards and upwards to a better future. Indeed, I am making my own small contribution to Rwanda by setting up my own charity, A Partner in Education, and building a primary school in Kigali called Umubano, which means togetherness in Kinyarwandan. The school was built two years ago and currently educates 175 children, including many vulnerable children from poor backgrounds. Rwanda has few natural resources, and therefore its future lies in its children. Through my school, I am delighted to make my own small contribution to Rwanda’s future.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, we owe it not only to the victims of the 1994 genocide, but to all victims of genocide to remain vigilant, proactive, and to remember the sacrifice that they never deserved to make. To mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda we should say: never again.

I conclude by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for taking me to Rwanda in 2007 on project Umubano—a Conservative party initiative that has worked on a variety of social action projects over the past seven years. That early introduction to Rwanda has led to a love of the country and its people, and a lifetime commitment to support its future development.

I thank my team, both past and present, at A Partner in Education, for all they have done and continue to do, including Kitty Llewellyn, Alvin Mihigo, Pippa Richards—who shares a birthday with me today—Stephen Bayley, Kate Hanon, Emily Gilkinson and Angie Kotler. I also thank SURF, the survivors charity, and the Aegis Trust, for their work in ensuring that future generations learn the lessons of the terrible event of 1994. I thank my constituent, Hayley Boatwright, for her input into this speech, and finally I thank Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda’s Foreign Minister, for her friendship and support for my endeavours to give Rwanda a better future.

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[Stephen Twigg]

I hope so. That is my honest answer. I will come to the specifics of how we might move forward on the responsibility to protect. It would be terrible if we had another situation where an atrocity was emerging and, for definitional reasons, we were unable to take appropriate action to prevent it from happening.

While I was in Kigali last month, in addition to attending the national commemoration at the football stadium, we had the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Kigali genocide memorial, which all Members have mentioned. The commemoration event was incredibly powerful. During that day, the mufti of Rwanda, the leader of the Muslim community there, spoke, and he did so on behalf of the Muslim community and also the main Christian Churches in Rwanda. He spoke about a new cross-faith initiative to take up what is happening in the Central African Republic. One of the things that has come out of the Rwandan genocide is that the Government as well as the people of Rwanda are key voices in demanding international action in situations that they rightly fear could result in genocide or other mass atrocities.

Remembrance is vital, especially in this year. Commemoration and education are crucial, but as Members on both sides of the House have said, we need also to focus on prevention, and it is on that subject that I wish to finish my remarks. How can we make this responsibility to protect a concrete reality? I concur with the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). There are some real challenges in forging a consensus globally on this. We cannot underestimate the scale of those challenges, but it is vital that the United Kingdom is at the forefront of taking this forward.

Will the Minister say something about the current initiative from the French Government, who are proposing a code of conduct concerning the use of the veto power by the permanent members of the Security Council? The French Government propose that this should be adopted—this comes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—in cases of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The proposal is for a mutual commitment by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to suspend their right of veto in situations of mass atrocities.

We know that in 1994 there was a failure of collective action to prevent Rwandans from being killed simply because they were Tutsi or because they were Hutu people intervening on behalf of Tutsis.

[Mr Newmark]

On that important point, the French proposal is excellent but the weakness in it is what we see in Syria today, where the Russians have a vested interest in what is going on. It would be impossible to achieve a consensus, whereby all five suspended their veto, if vested interests were at stake.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which anticipates something that I am about to say. He is right to remind us of the scale of the challenge. The French proposal is an important step in the right direction and I encourage the British Government to take a positive approach to it, but clearly it is not sufficient if we cannot secure the political will of the other members. We are talking here primarily about Russia and China in the context of challenges that we face today.

When the responsibility to protect was adopted universally by the UN General Assembly, that marked an important moment in the collective recognition of our shared responsibility. However, we all know that it is one thing to adopt principles and another to act on them. The veto power has been used on a number of occasions, most recently in the context of Syria, when double vetoes by Russia and China have blocked actions that could have saved civilian lives. I urge the Minister to signal the UK’s support for the French initiative as a way of strengthening the resolve of the permanent members of the Security Council to prevent atrocities from happening and to respond to them more quickly when they do happen.

“Never again” was the slogan the world adopted after the Nazi holocaust. We have learnt a lot since then, but we have also seen what happened in Cambodia and Srebrenica, what is happening in Syria, in the Central African Republic and in Darfur and, of course, what happened in Rwanda. We still have a long way to go, but I hope that in this House, as this debate demonstrates, we can show that there is a real sense of shared concern, shared humanity and solidarity with those working in other parts of the world, often in far more challenging circumstances, to prevent genocide and to educate people about it.

I finish by thanking the hon. Member for Braintree once again for giving us the opportunity to air this very important set of issues.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) on securing this very important debate commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. I would also like to wish him a happy birthday. The fact that the Backbench Business Committee granted the debate shows that it sees this as a serious issue that should be discussed. It is a great pleasure to follow not only my hon. Friend, but other hon. Members who have spoken passionately, drawing on first-hand knowledge of visiting Rwanda. There is nothing better than visiting the country to see what the situation is like on the ground. I actually met my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) there before the election, with Project Umubano.

Members have congratulated my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) on setting up Project Umubano for the Conservative party. It has been phenomenally successful, not just in what we have done—there has been some extremely good work—but in enabling people who might never have had the opportunity to visit that country to go and see it for themselves, particularly some of the young people who have worked there for two weeks during the summer. When they come back they understand what it is like and why we give money for international development. It is a very important initiative to have started.

[Mr Newmark]

Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking our right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for all his efforts and hard work in setting up that initiative, because he has introduced people like me and colleagues on the Government side of the House to the concept of international development and to the tragedy that happened in Rwanda? We have much to thank him for.

[Pauline Latham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I also note that the Prime Minister endorsed it when in opposition, and Lord Ashcroft has been incredibly supportive of various initiatives out there, so many people have been involved. However, our debate is not about what the Conservative party has done, even though it has been fantastic for many people; it is about what has happened.

I have now been to Rwanda six times: four with Project Umubano, one with the International Development Committee and, most recently, in April, with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. I have seen how the country has progressed over that period. It has changed from being quite a good African country to being an amazing African country, and the example it has set could provide many lessons for other African countries. There have been criticisms by the international press about the President of Rwanda, but we should consider where he has moved the country from and to in just 20 years. We might think that we have done quite well in moving on from the second world war, and that was 70 years ago. People have not forgotten what happened, but I believe that they are prepared to put it behind them and to move on. I have been astonished at the consensus that that has generated among people there.

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[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and, indeed, everyone who has already spoken. We have heard some excellent and moving speeches.

In April 1994, I and my family lived in Tanzania and our only real contact with the outside world was the BBC World Service. At this point, I pay tribute to the importance of the World Service for broadcasting by and large the best unbiased news around the world. We have already heard how important the service was to many Rwandans. Whenever we talk about the future of the World Service—whether in this Parliament or the next—let us never forget how much it is valued by hundreds of millions, even billions, of people around the world.

I was particularly interested in two things that were going on in April 1994. The first was the remarkable events in South Africa, where a really serious situation that could have resulted in severe civil unrest—possibly even a civil war—was turned around by national reconciliation and international mediation, which resulted in the wonderful election that brought President Nelson Mandela to power. There could have been chaos, but there was not.

At the same time, the opposite was happening in Rwanda, where the Arusha accords—which had given a glimmer of light not just to Rwanda, but to Burundi—were torn apart when the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi crashed on 6 April 1994. I remember that particularly well, because on that very evening someone was waiting at Kigali airport to receive a friend of ours who was going to work in Rwanda for a few weeks before coming to Tanzania. His plane had to be diverted and the man who was meant to meet him at the airport did not survive that night—he was caught up in the genocide.

Since then, as we have been reminded, Rwanda has made enormous progress. This is not just about the economic growth of up to 8% a year on average, but about education. It is investing in higher education and there is recognition, as has been said, that the future of Rwanda is in its human capital. It lacks natural resources other than its beauty and its agriculture. It does not have the minerals, but it does have the people, which is why the President and the Government are absolutely right to invest in higher education.

One example of the progress Rwanda has made is the way in which it is tackling malaria. The President and the Government have now said that they want to eliminate deaths as a result of malaria by 2018. I do not doubt that that is possible, such is the progress they have made with the distribution of bed nets, indoor residual spraying and the improvement of the health service. Other Members have referred to the lack of corruption, and Rwanda is indeed a model of a country that says that corruption is bad for development and for the ordinary people.

The UK has played a major role under both the previous and the current Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire and I had the pleasure of going on an international development trip, during which we saw an excellent programme for the establishment of a land registry and the granting of titles to every single plot—about 10 million of them—in Rwanda. That has already resulted in improvements in investment, productivity and agriculture, particularly smallholder agriculture, which is vital for employment and household incomes in Rwanda and elsewhere. Rwanda also has stability, which is vital and prized and probably the primary reason why President Kagame is so popular.

Instability, however, remains in the region. The people of Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo have felt the consequences of that instability at various times. Nowhere is that more true than in the DRC, which has seen millions of people die and hundreds of thousands, even millions, of women suffer the brutality of rape and sexual violence. There must be no let-up in the work to bring peace to that region. We cannot focus on Rwanda without focusing on the entire region. We must ensure that those who, for whatever reason, perpetrate this violence are defeated and brought to account.

If there is one lesson that I want the United Kingdom and the international community to learn above all—I hope that we do learn it—it is that when there is prevarication and delay in confronting evil, it consequences will only be worse. The example of the Rwandan genocide was one of prevarication and delay in confronting evil, a word which I do not use lightly. Evil was present in Rwanda at that time, as it has been in other places that have subsequently seen the kind of devastation experienced by Rwanda.

This is a time to remember not just those who perished and their families, but the survivors. I, too, have been very privileged to take part in Project Umubano, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). One organisation we work with in Rwanda is SURF, or the Survivors Fund UK. With tremendous support from the UK—from DFID and Comic Relief, and from individual donors—it is working with local organisations to support survivors, whether widows, young people or orphans, and umbrella organisations. Together, such organisations care for the needs of more than 300,000 survivors and their dependants, who are often some of the poorest. They obviously suffer from disability and unemployment, and they include widows and children who have had to bring up their siblings from a very young age. The work of all the organisations aims to foster self-reliance. I read about a lady called Francine, who said:

“Before I was alone, I never thought about the future of my life. After joining this group”—

a project supported by DFID in Rwanda—

“I can look forward because I share my life experience with others.”

That is so important. We should not forget the survivors, and I am sure that we will not do so.

Survivors have a need not just for food and employment, but for justice. For many of them, justice has still not come. There has been the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, which will close this year. It has cost $1 billion, which is an enormous amount of money. It has done important work, but it has no mandate for reparation, and the Rwandan survivors have received none. In many ways, the Gacaca courts have been much more effective and efficient than the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda—they have a mandate for restitution and have made many thousands of restitution grants, although many of them have not been fulfilled—but even they do not have a mandate for reparation. It is very important to the survivors—or, God forbid, to victims of any future mass killings—that the concept of reparation is implemented and not forgotten, because it is a vital part of justice.

[Mr Newmark]

I thank my hon. Friend for his amazing work in leading Project Umubano, and I commend his excellent Swahili, which I have heard at first hand. Does he agree that, following this terrible tragedy, what was most impressive was the ability of the Government to abolish the death penalty, rather than to use it to seek retribution?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I did not realise that that had happened until my second or third visit to Rwanda, and I was hugely struck by it. If we compare even the reaction of the allied powers after the second world war with what Rwanda has done, I think that it was a very gracious and humble but formidable act that speaks very powerfully and should be much better known.

What lessons can we learn? We have heard much about the responsibility to protect, which is absolutely vital, but I want to draw a few other conclusions. The first is about intelligence. General Dallaire, who has often been mentioned—I have read his excellent book—knew and passed on information at quite an early stage, and certainly several months before the genocide took place, about a potential catastrophe in the country, but it was ignored. We ignore intelligence at our peril in such matters. We may at the moment have intelligence from countries around the world about something serious that is brewing, and we must take note of it and act on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Newmark]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee, and indeed the Leader of the House, for their support in enabling this important debate to take place in the main Chamber. I also thank Members in all parts of the House for their excellent contributions, and for sharing their respective experiences. I congratulate this Government and the last Government, especially the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, on their commitment to helping Rwanda on its path to recovery, and—this point was made by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—on welcoming Rwanda to the Commonwealth of Nations.

As for those who died in 1994, we will remember them, and honour them, by reaffirming in the House today the words “Never again.”

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, when over the course of a 100-day period in 1994 at least 800,000 Rwandans were murdered; and calls on the Government to reinforce its commitment to the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine and to working within the UN to promote international justice and to avoid mass atrocities which are still committed across the globe today.

Ukraine

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes, there have been many discussions, including regular conference calls between EU Foreign Ministers and Secretary Kerry, which have also included my Turkish colleague, Foreign Minister Davutoglu, so Turkey’s opinions are very closely aligned with the ones I have been expressing. It of course has a particular affinity with the Tatar minority in Crimea, so Turkey is extremely anxious about this situation. It must choose its own measures, however: it is not a member of the European Union and it will choose, of course, its own measures as a sovereign state.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that if President Putin is willing to use the protection of Russian speakers as a pretext for going into Ukraine and he gets away with it, he might think about doing the same in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania where there are also Russian speakers?

[Mr Hague]

This is a source of profound anxiety to people in the Baltic states and other states of the former Soviet Union. Russia should take note that there has been very little, if any, diplomatic support for its position from central Asian states, who perhaps have some of the same anxieties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alexander]

I have no criticism of the French, German and Polish Foreign Ministers. We saw from the dynamic on the streets of Kiev that that potential agreement was overtaken by events, including the fleeing of the President from Ukraine. I do not believe that any reasonable criticism can be levelled at the European Union for somehow ignoring or being unwilling to work with our friends, colleagues and allies in the United States. Indeed, one of the brighter shafts of light amid the darkness has been the degree of effective co-operation between European leaders and the US Secretary of State John Kerry in the recent days and weeks. This is a big geopolitical moment and, as the Foreign Secretary made clear, all of us in the west—in the European Union and the United States—have a strong interest in upholding the international order that has lasted in Europe since the second world war.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Germany is particularly vulnerable to economic sanctions in relation to energy. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we should work hard to convince the Americans to lift their restrictions on energy exports to Europe, as that would take pressure off Germany in this regard?

[Mr Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is well taken. My research in recent days has shown me that, notwithstanding the importance of looking again at the capacity for, say, liquid natural gas to be exported to the European Union from the United States, given its developing capabilities in shale gas and shale oil, this is not simply a matter of regarding energy as a strategic asset. We must also take into account the capabilities and facilities at the ports, for example. This is a longer-term endeavour and, critical though it is to be able to strengthen the resilience and diversity of the European Union’s energy supplies, the action that the hon. Gentleman suggests would not provide an immediate resolution to the crisis. It is important that we look at the issue, however.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) on his speech—he just persuaded me against the idea of holding referendums very often.

What more do we really need to know about Vladimir Putin? Even if we leave aside for a moment his self-enrichment, which would put Victor Yanukovych, Imelda Marcos and Muammar Gaddafi to shame; the way in which misinformation, media manipulation and the repression of independent journalists are a standard part of the Putin package; and the perversion of the criminal justice system in Russia, which means that more than 95% of all prosecutions lead to conviction, because they are determined by political persuasion, rather than justice; what more do we need to know?

[Mr Newmark]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Chris Bryant]

I do not know which point it is, but of course I will give way.

[Mr Newmark]

He seems to have forgotten one important point. You can add targeted assassinations on British soil to your list.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not have a list, but I think that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) does.

Iran and Syria

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Those are very serious concerns. As the right hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) have mentioned, it is important to keep up the momentum in addressing the nuclear programme, but that does not mean that we do not have other disagreements. The state sponsorship of terrorism and, in particular, the heavy Iranian involvement that is exacerbating the Syrian conflict and supporting a regime that is perpetrating such murder and abuse of its own people are malign activities in the wider region, but that should not deter us from trying to solve the nuclear issue.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on re-engaging with Iran, which could play an important role in bringing peace, particularly to Syria. It would be helpful if he could enlighten us on his discussions with the Iranian Foreign Minister on what critical path the Iranians see to bringing peace in Syria and, on the flip-side of that coin, what conversations he has had with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which still seem to be supplying Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS, ISIL and other jihadis who are already preventing peace in the region.

[Mr Hague]

On the question about Saudi Arabia and other states, those countries are part of the core Friends of Syria group and among the 11 countries that came to London at my invitation a few weeks ago. I discuss the situation regularly with His Royal Highness Prince Saud, the Saudi Foreign Minister, and we have all agreed that our support should go through the supreme military council of General Idris and the Syrian National Coalition. Those 11 countries have agreed that we should not support other groups in Syria, particularly extremist groups, so we look to our partners in the group to live up to those commitments. On the question about Iran, our discussions on Syria have been centred, as I mentioned earlier, on Iran supporting the outcome of Geneva I as the basis for a political settlement in Syria, but it has not yet given that support.

Middle East Peace Process/Syria and Iran

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

That absolutely remains an aspiration of the Government but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, it has been very difficult to bring about. Britain strongly supported the idea at the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in 2010, but it has not yet proved possible, despite the hard work of the Finnish facilitator, to bring together a conference on weapons of mass destruction in the middle east. However, we will continue our efforts to do so. If we make significant progress and achieve a breakthrough in the nuclear talks with Iran, that will greatly improve the atmosphere for bringing together such a conference.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I, too, would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for the work that he has done. I would also like to congratulate the Foreign Secretary on pressing the reset button with President Rouhani, because Iran can play an important role in bringing peace to Syria. I also congratulate him on his initiative in trying to bring chemical weapons under control in Syria today. Notwithstanding that, there are serious concerns about crimes against humanity—some involving the use of chemical weapons, some not—and as the evidence becomes clear as a result of the United Nations’ work, will he ensure that such evidence is used to bring Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher to justice?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support for these initiatives. As I have said, the issues of justice and accountability, and of the gathering of evidence, remain vital. We have used British funds to train human rights journalists and others to document the crimes that have been committed, so that the evidence is there in the future, and we will continue to support that kind of work. I believe that the demand in Syria for justice and accountability will be overwhelming as the evidence from this conflict emerges over the coming months and years, and we need to be ready to support that across the whole world.

International Commission on Missing Persons

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the important issue of UK policy on the International Commission on Missing Persons. The debate is particularly timely as last week we commemorated the 18th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, in which 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed in what was declared to be the worst crime on European soil since the second world war. At the memorial service of that anniversary, 409 newly identified bodies were buried, giving families some closure on the grief that they have been living with for almost two decades.

Last year, I travelled to Bosnia on Project Maja with Baroness Warsi and, while in Sarajevo, I visited the International Commission on Missing Persons. I was struck by that unique and highly effective organisation, which has revolutionised the international community’s approach to addressing the issue of missing persons. In doing so, it has made a genuine contribution to justice and peace building in the Balkans and elsewhere in the world. Since that visit, I have wondered what the UK Government can do to support its vital work, and I am grateful for this opportunity to put some questions to the Minister directly today.

By way of background, it may be helpful if I first offer Members a brief introduction to the organisation. President Clinton founded the ICMP in 1996 as an organisation to clarify the fate of missing persons following the Balkans war. Confronting the scale of the problem, the ICMP developed state-of-the-art DNA identification technology and has helped to resolve 70% of missing persons cases from the 1990s conflict, including 7,000 of the 8,100 missing from Srebrenica. Such unparalleled results provide the means to end the desperate uncertainty that families have endured. The ICMP has also provided irrefutable evidence to the domestic and international courts that heard war crimes cases, including those of Karadzic and Mladic. For the first time in history, DNA evidence is being used to convict the architects of genocide.

The distinctive expertise that the ICMP brings to this field is reflected in the growing contribution that it is making beyond the Balkans. This year, having just opened up offices in Libya, the ICMP received funds from the UK, which were announced by the Prime Minister during his visit to Tripoli. The organisation has already started DNA testing, and within just one month it identified 100 victims of Gaddafi’s forces.

The ICMP has also been working in Iraq for several years. Sadly, it is clear that, in the future, Syria will also require similar assistance. Indeed, as the conflict in Syria continues to rage on, it should be noted that according to information received by the ICMP, at least 28,000 people are thought to be missing. As we look to the future and hope for a peace settlement, I would like to ensure that the issue of missing persons is addressed in the context of any future peace agreement, just as it was in the Dayton peace accords that ended the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Furthermore, it is important that action is taken now to work with the thousands of families who are displaced in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq because of the conflict and who have missing relatives, so that when the conflict ends, measures will already have been taken to address an issue that will figure prominently in rebuilding Syria and restoring peace to the region.

In addition to its post-conflict work, the ICMP has assisted Chile, Colombia and South Africa with addressing missing persons cases following human rights violations, and it has also assisted in the aftermath of natural disasters in Thailand and the Philippines and Hurricane Katrina in the United States. In total, the ICMP has identified the remains of more than 19,000 individuals in the past decade.

Having learned about the widespread and vital work of this organisation, I now come to the crux of the matter, which is that the future of this important organisation is in jeopardy. I believe that the UK Government can do more to support its future. However, this is a matter not of funding but of diplomatic support. Having achieved what it was established to do in the western Balkans, the ICMP is gradually winding down its assistance in that region. Yet all of its programmes worldwide rely, with varied effectiveness, on a legal status recognised in a few states in the Balkans and a headquarters in Sarajevo. That is not a sustainable basis for its future.

The ICMP is not incorporated under the domestic law of any one country, and it is not a non-governmental organisation. Its lack of formal international legal status hampers its ability to carry out its work and, as a result, it was forced to close its office in Colombia and its efforts in Libya and Iraq are being put at unnecessary risk. A draft legal framework was negotiated by the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark in 2004, within which ICMP could operate, but the document was never concluded, leaving the ICMP without a permanent, internationally recognised status.

So what can the UK do? I was initially keen for the UK to take the lead on supporting the ICMP and for the organisation to be based in the UK, but I have been persuaded that the logical place for it to have a sustainable headquarters would be in The Hague, which is keen to provide the ICMP with a home. As the seat of many international justice institutions, including the International Criminal Court, The Hague would be an ideal permanent base for the ICMP. However, the Dutch condition is that the ICMP’s legal status be put on a more sustainable footing, allowing it to operate in the Netherlands, and in the often dangerous countries in which it works, with the immunities it needs to protect its database of genetic information, some of which is voluntarily provided by family members of the missing.

The Dutch Foreign Minister is prepared to lead a process aimed at securing that status, but only if he has reassurance that the other partner countries will support his efforts. This is where the UK Government could do more. To assure the future of the ICMP and to secure its work, it is vital that the UK give a clear signal of support for the Dutch initiative. I therefore urge the Minister to make the UK’s support clear, thereby making a decisive contribution to securing the organisation’s future for the benefit of all.

The Foreign Secretary visited the ICMP last October, which was an excellent signal of support, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been actively working with the Netherlands ever since to resolve questions over the ICMP’s future status. As a matter of principle, I am no advocate of tying the UK to permanent financial commitments with international organisations, but the fact that ICMP has not had the luxury of permanent funding, and that it has innovated and managed costs effectively at every stage in its history, underscores another critical reason for me to support the organisation. Furthermore, having developed a broad range of programmes and the world’s largest human identification laboratory, the ICMP has a budget of a mere £5 million, which means that its endeavours to alleviate suffering around the world are very cost-effective. It does not seek any permanent funding commitments. Instead, a permanent legal status will enable it to build on an exceptional track record of success in raising voluntary contributions.

It is clear that an effective response to the tragedy of missing persons caused by conflict is, and will remain, a fundamental element of successful conflict prevention and post-conflict resolution. The UK has a direct interest in ensuring that present and future international peace-building strategies include missing persons as an integral element. To assure the ICMP’s future, it is now time for the UK to take a leadership role in encouraging other states to support the Dutch initiative to give the ICMP a permanent status. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response both to the idea of giving the ICMP a permanent legal status and on what the FCO can specifically do to give the ICMP the support it duly deserves.

Finally, I wish to thank a number of individuals for their insights: first and foremost, Adam Boys and his team at the ICMP for the tremendous work that they do; Baroness Warsi, for introducing me to Bosnia through Project Maja; my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), for sharing their experiences in the Balkans; Lady Nott, for taking me to meet the mothers of Srebrenica; my researcher, Lara Nelson, for helping me to put together this speech and indeed for all her work for me during the past three years; and finally everyone at the Foreign Office, especially Arminka Helic, for their input and encouragement in helping me better to understand the work of the ICMP.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

May I begin by saying how delighted I am to serve under your guidance this morning, Mr Hollobone?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) on securing this important debate on the International Commission on Missing Persons. I know that it is an issue in which he takes a very keen interest, and with my colleague Baroness Warsi he has visited Sarajevo to see the ICMP’s incredible operation at first hand. I also congratulate him on the articulate and knowledgeable way in which he introduced this important debate.

I know that my hon. Friend shares my view that often when conflict and violence end, our attention is drawn away too quickly to another crisis and other parts of the world. However, for many people a conflict cannot truly end until they know the fate of their missing loved ones. Those loved ones are parents, wives, husbands or children, who are often civilians and not combatants and who were separated from their families by the chaos of war, who disappeared while in detention or who simply did not return home one day.

As the House may be aware, this week saw the burials of another 409 newly identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre. This year alone, more than 6,000 victims of that massacre have been identified and 6,000 families—after 18 years of uncertainty, anguish and longing—at last have a chance to mourn their dead and to give them the dignity of a decent burial, as well as an opportunity for acceptance and closure.

However, as my hon. Friend quite rightly pointed out, those events, while solemn, could not have taken place without the ceaseless and vital work of the ICMP. As he also rightly said, the ICMP has identified approximately 16,000 people from the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, including 85% of those reported missing after the fall of Srebrenica. The ICMP has also responded to requests for documentation and expert testimony from international and domestic courts on matters relating to serious international crimes. Without the ICMP, many families in the former Yugoslavia would have been unable to gain any form of closure, and without that vital closure the feelings of injustice and resentment would continue to build, fuelling ethnic tensions and making reconciliation all but impossible, particularly for future generations.

That is why the Government have played an active role in championing the ICMP’s work, alongside our broader conflict prevention, peace-building and international justice policies. We are firmly committed to the ICMP, just as we are committed to challenging impunity and ensuring accountability for the most serious international crimes. We are clear that where there is no accountability, there is no justice, and that where there is no justice, there will not be lasting peace, reconciliation or stability. That is why we also welcome the excellent work that the ICMP has done, including sharing its pioneering expertise, particularly in the use of DNA, in other conflict zones.

Although it is of course saddening that the ICMP’s work continues to be relevant and needed, we recognise the important role that it has played, and will continue to play, in identifying many missing people in places such as Iraq, Kosovo, Libya and—my hon. Friend made this point forcefully—in Syria. It is clear that in the aftermath of the terrible conflict that is raging in Syria, Syria will face many challenges to achieving peaceful transition, recovery and reconstruction. The UK will continue to support the Geneva II process to deliver a transitional governing body with full executive authority. I am sure that my hon. Friend will accept that it is for the Syrian people to agree the make-up of a transitional Government who can win the consent of all Syrians, and to decide how transition will take place, including—importantly—the future role of the ICMP in Syria. However, we believe that the ICMP’s expertise will be relevant, and we continue to work closely with the United Nations to ensure that the international community is ready to support a future Syrian authority to rebuild stability and democracy.

Of course, the ICMP makes a vital contribution not only in conflict zones but in its work to identify the victims of natural and other disasters, such as those that have happened in Thailand and the Maldives, and following Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

It is in recognition of its work that the Government have provided consistent political and financial support to the ICMP for a number of years; again, that was accurately pointed out by my hon. Friend. In addition to contributions made through the European Union, the UK Government have directly provided more than £3 million in funding towards the work of the ICMP since 2000. Recent UK programmes have included funding of almost £400,000 to assist the ICMP with identification of missing persons in Libya.

[Mr Newmark]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for everything that he is saying. However, it is not only a financial commitment that the ICMP seeks, because frankly I could go round to a bunch of my friends and raise £5 million to keep the ICMP going. The ICMP’s frustration is at the lack of political will by the major countries—including even the United States, which originally formed the ICMP—to give it permanent legal status. That is what the ICMP needs, and I wonder what the Government will do to assist it in giving it the permanent legal status it needs, because that is what its future depends on. The clock is ticking, the ICMP’s centre will close down this year and if the ICMP does not gain permanent legal status we will not be able to help families, for example in Syria, who will have missing persons and who will need the support that the ICMP provides.

[Mark Simmonds]

I am grateful for that intervention by my hon. Friend; he is not only visionary but prescient, because I am about to address exactly the point that he has just raised. He is absolutely right that it is important to fund the future work of the ICMP through projects, but the ICMP does not just need financial support. The ICMP is keen to secure a legal status and move its headquarters. Despite the success of its projects, we also understand—again, this was a point that he correctly made—that ICMP programmes have been thwarted because of its current legal status. That is why it is all the more important that the ICMP be afforded a status that allows it to operate with Governments and countries across the globe.

The Government support the ICMP’s efforts to establish a legal status that will afford its staff, records and equipment the protection required to allow it to operate in potentially hostile political environments, and to have a global reach and an international profile that befits the importance of its role. It is vital for the families of the missing, and for the processes of reconciliation and international justice, that the ICMP be able to continue its work unimpeded and that the expertise that has been developed is not lost. I agree with my hon. Friend about that.

The city authority of The Hague has offered the ICMP the opportunity to relocate its headquarters there, and the Dutch Government have offered assistance in dealing with questions of policy and legality, such as securing legal status for the ICMP. We readily support the Dutch Government’s initiative in offering the ICMP a new home in The Hague, alongside other international institutions. Officials from the British embassy in The Hague took part in an initial working group held in May, specifically to discuss the issues that my hon. Friend outlined, and we will participate in further discussions as we move the process further.

For my hon. Friend’s information, we will participate in the next ICMP event in The Hague at the end of October, at which it will share its ambitions and plans for the long-term future. In parallel, we will also consider who should fill the significant role of the UK’s international commissioner to the ICMP.

As my hon. Friend will know, last week we marked the 18th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. It needs to be said that, although significant work has been done, there is still a significant amount more to do. Sadly, some of those responsible for the appalling atrocities that took place are still at large and many victims’ remains have not yet been identified. The difficult, painstaking work must continue, not just in the former Yugoslavia but in some of the other places that we have discussed this morning.

In conclusion, the Government will continue to support strongly both the ICMP’s work and efforts to formalise its status. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend. I reiterate that the UK Government are committed to the ICMP and will continue to press other Governments to do likewise to ensure that it is as effective a body as possible, so that reconciliation, peace and stability can be brought into being and maintained in some of the places around the world that have suffered terrible conflict and atrocities.

Arms to Syria

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baron]

I take on board what my hon. Friend has said, and I agree with him in large part. There is a deficit of trust on these issues, partly courtesy of the Iraq decision but also because of Afghanistan. That is why it is even more important for Parliament to express its view. We should not be bounced into a decision simply because we are heading into a recess.

We need to learn from our mistakes in other respects as well. For example, we armed the mujaheddin in the 1980s, and we armed Saddam Hussein when he attacked Iran. Some of those weapons were eventually pointed against us. Many of the weapons supplied to Libya have ended up in Syria and northern Mali. We have made mistakes on this front, and we must learn from them.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend at least acknowledge that doing nothing also has a cost, and that if we do nothing, two things will happen? The Assad regime will continue to try to slaughter its own people into submission. Where 12 months ago there were hardly any Jabhat al-Nusra on the ground, there are today perhaps 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000, and if we continue to do nothing, we create the space to allow more and more jihadis to come into the ground. If we support the moderate opposition, that will stop the flaking off from the Free Syrian Army to Jabhat al-Nusra.

[Mr Baron]

I take on board what my hon. Friend says, but I think it does him no service to try to create the impression that those of us who suggest that we should not arm the rebels are insisting that we do nothing. It is actually quite the opposite. I think there is an awful lot that we could be doing—on the humanitarian front and on the diplomatic front. I will return to the issue in a minute or two, if my hon. Friend will bear with me. I will allow him in again, if he wishes to come back to me.

If I had another concern, it would be that, as has been hinted at already, the civil war in Syria is in many respects a proxy war being fought out at different levels—whether it be Sunni versus Shi’a Muslim; the old Persian gulf rivalry of Iran versus Saudi Arabia; or indeed the west versus Russia and China. The risk of pouring more weapons into this conflict and of pouring more fuel on to the fire is that we not only increase the violence within Syria but extend the conflict beyond Syria’s borders in very large measure. That would be a mistake of historic proportions.

Returning to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) about doing nothing, I would suggest that there is a lot more that we can do, particularly on the humanitarian and diplomatic fronts.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Newmark]

rose—

[Mr Baron]

I give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin).

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

I thought I made that point a moment ago.

We have in this House in recent years established not a precedent in any formal sense, or, indeed, a convention in any constitutional sense, but on the occasion of military action against Iraq the House was given the opportunity to vote, and more recently on the occasion of possible involvement with France, supported by the United States, in relation to Libya again the House was given the opportunity to vote. It might be argued that the supply of arms does not fall neatly into that category, but my argument would be that it constitutes a major change in the foreign policy of this Government, with unknown political, military and perhaps even constitutional significance. That being the case, I would argue as strongly as possible that the House is entitled to pass judgment on this policy before it is implemented. Indeed, I go further than that: were the Government to implement a policy of this kind without allowing the House an opportunity to pass judgment, it would be an abuse of process, and would most certainly be regarded as such outside this House.

[Mr Newmark]

The devil is always in the detail. I hear what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says about not giving arms directly to the opposition, but does he then believe that if we are selling arms to a third party such as Saudi Arabia and those arms then go on to Syria, we should again seek the approval of the House before selling any further arms to a third-party country such as Saudi?

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

My hon. Friend will be well aware that there is an agreement called the al-Yamamah agreement which regulates the sale of arms from the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia, and if he is suggesting we should violate that agreement I think he had better consult Ministers in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence and perhaps also the chief executive officer of BAE.

The point I want to make is that this is a decision of such significance and with such important potential consequences that the House should have the opportunity to pass judgment. There are those who say, “All right, we are doing nothing then.” That is true, in that we may not be doing quite as much as some of us would like, but I do not think it is an issue for regret that we are the highest single donor of humanitarian aid. I think we should be immensely proud of that, and having taken that decision, we should be encouraging others to do the same.

Let me give an illustration of that. Jordan is a country with which we are closely allied, and it is a neighbouring country in the region which has received very large numbers of refugees. The refugee camps are characterised by forced marriage, rape and violence, and the impact on the fragile economy—and, indeed, the fragile Government—of Jordan of an influx of refugees on the scale now being experienced must inevitably have an effect on that country. If we were preparing our humanitarian effort for its own intrinsic merit, we would also be creating a pragmatic outcome in helping to protect from possible instability a country that is of great importance to us and of great importance in the middle east, not least because it, along with Egypt, signed a peace agreement with Israel.

Another point the right hon. Member for Neath made very eloquently is that no solution is possible without Russia. That may be thoroughly distasteful to us, but it is a fact, and therefore establishing some agreement with Moscow and joining together—as John Kerry, the US Secretary of State suggested—could be a very powerful factor in providing the political solution that everyone agrees is necessary.

The Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), has twice said from a sedentary position that no one was barring Iran from any conference in Geneva, and I am delighted to hear that. He would give me even more comfort if he were to say positively that Iran would be invited, however, because this issue is of very considerable regional significance, and Ahmadinejad has been replaced by someone who is alleged to be of a less combative nature, and we now have an opportunity to test that out, and to see whether there is genuinely a change in Iran’s attitude on issues of this kind.

One further thing we can do, which I do not think has been mentioned yet, is to counsel Israel against intervention. The Golan heights, occupied by Israel, remain an issue of great political significance in Syria, particularly for the current President, whose father was the Minister of Defence when the Golan heights were lost. Israel has an interest in that regard, but I do not believe its interests would be properly served by becoming engaged militarily. I hope the British Government are putting that argument in the strongest possible terms to the Government of Israel.

Let me conclude by reiterating that this is a very significant foreign policy proposal. The Government have said that they have not yet decided whether to implement it, but if they want to have the discretion to take a decision of this kind, it can only be because they have considered that decision among a range of options. We need only look at who has signed this motion to see that they come from across the entire political spectrum. The motion is therefore the determination of those from all parts of this House, and that is why I believe the proper course of action is for it to be passed.

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[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and echo the apology of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) for missing the opening comments of his speech because of the Intelligence and Security Committee meeting. The right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) began his comments by saying that he had supported the Iraq war but believed that intervention of the kind being considered in Syria would be inappropriate, but I come at this from exactly the other way around. I opposed the Iraq war but I have, over the past year, come to the view that intervention of the kind we are discussing would be not only ethically justified, but politically desirable.

The fact that I have come to that view is not that important. What is particularly significant is that President Obama, who has been hugely reluctant to be involved, in any way, militarily in Syria, has nevertheless been persuaded, with all the advice available to him and with all the analysis that has been made, that the time has come to change position and give military support. The British and French Governments, who have supported the European embargo, have been forced to change their view towards a different position. Governments are often accused of pandering to public opinion—going for votes—but here it is the other way around; public opinion is against supplying weapons in Syria. No votes are to be won by doing this, so it is worth asking why three of the major Governments in the world have gradually come to the view that, far from being an irresponsible act, it may not be a good solution but it is less bad than the alternatives. That is the judgment we are being asked to make.

When we use the terms “rebels” and “Government”, we must remind ourselves that more than 100 members of the United Nations—more than half the UN—have broken ranks with Syria and have recognised the Syrian opposition as the legitimate spokesmen of the Syrian people. The Arab League has expelled the Assad regime and invited the Syrian opposition to take its place. So the term “rebels” is not necessarily as significant as it often is.

[Mr Newmark]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we must not conflate wishing to support, and supporting, the moderate majority and the Free Syrian Army, with condemning Jabhat al-Nusra and others, who also may condemn the regime?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, because it has been part of Assad’s tactics from the very beginning to try to force his own people and the wider international community to believe that there is a stark choice between the Assad regime and jihadi extremists such as Jabhat al-Nusra and to ignore the fact that the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian secular forces and moderate Islamic forces, represent between them the overwhelming majority of the Syrian public, and to suggest that they are somehow irrelevant to this debate.

Let me share with the House why I changed my view over the past year. I did so for two reasons, the first of which is the humanitarian situation. More than 100,000 people have died so far. We are not talking about soldiers, militia or rebels; the vast majority of them were innocent men, women and children. All the analysis by human rights organisations—by Amnesty International and others—says not that every one of them was killed by the Assad regime, but that the vast majority were killed and slaughtered because of indiscriminate bombing by the Assad regime throughout Syria, particularly in the urban areas, where the opposition was active.

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[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, and I have probably spent more time in Syria than most Members of this House, including meeting Bashar Assad up to 10 times over a six-year period. My experience of Syria is very different from the Syria we have heard about today. Syria has always been a highly secular country. There is no Salafi tradition in Syria; it has more of a Sufi tradition and a mystical approach to Islam. There was no sense of radicalism there, so how have we got from where we were to where we are today with a highly sectarian divide and the potential for a fragmented Somalia on the Mediterranean?

We must remember how this began, which was when a 13-year-old boy in Daraa had the audacity to urinate on a poster of President Assad. The security forces took him, beat him up, killed him, cut off his penis, and returned him to his parents. That sparked massive outrage among civilians in five different cities and was the beginning of the Arab Spring. Those who point to hardly any complicity of the Assad regime in causing what is happening today should think carefully. It made a very bad situation worse with civil disobedience met by repression. Ultimately, individuals felt that they had to protect their communities, and small militias were set up in various towns. The Free Syrian Army was really a fragmented group of people, and only more recently has it become a little more co-ordinated under General Idris. The Syrian National Council has been equally dysfunctional and has not sought to reach out at all beyond the Sunni community.

In February when I was in Cairo, there was an opportunity and the Russians said that they would try to lead engagement. The regime was feeling insecure, but unfortunately Minister Lavrov dropped the ball. He did not do anything and, in fact, the opposite happened. Iran and Russia provided more arms, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard bolstered the Assad regime, including his personal bodyguard, which became a member of the IRG. Until then I had always believed in engagement, but Al-Qusayr was a turning point. The regime knew it could not win alone, so Iran and Hezbollah came in and gave it the support to win Al-Qusayr. I changed my mind and believe that one needs to do a little more than simply provide humanitarian aid. From my understanding of Assad, he will have to be pushed, or driven kicking and screaming to the negotiating table.

My solution is fivefold. First, radical diplomatic engagement is absolutely necessary including—I agree with all Members of the House—with Rouhani and the Iranian regime. This is time to press the reset button.

[Mr Jenkin]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if we persist in doing nothing, the situation will continue to deteriorate and the radical Sunni factions will come to dominate the opposition to Assad? They are providing a playground for terrorism, where British citizens are going to train as terrorists and coming back to this country.

[Mr Newmark]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, there are 70 to 80 citizens of the United Kingdom who are today with Jabhat al-Nusra and the more radical groups. However, those groups represent only 5,000 or 6,000 people on the ground, versus the silent majority of 15 million Sunnis.

The second part of the strategy, beyond radical diplomatic engagement, should be containment. We must protect the likes of Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey from becoming infected by this explosion. Thirdly, we must provide more aid, not just to Jordan and Lebanon, but internally.

[Bob Stewart]

I am in favour of considering military intervention to escort aid into Syria. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Mr Newmark]

Yes, I do, although that is not without its dangers. When we ask the UN to do something, we have to think about what protection it will get.

My fourth point is that the Syrian National Council must become less dysfunctional. It cannot be a puppet of the Qatari regime, which it has been to date, representing just the Sunnis. It must reach out to the Alawites, the Kurds, the Druze and the Christians.

My fifth recommendation is this. I am not asking for British soldiers on the ground or for our pilots’ lives to be put at risk; I am asking for what the Syrian people have set out to me time and time again. We need to rebalance the situation on the ground. We need to arm the Free Syrian Army and support General Idris. If we do not, unfortunately more and more of the Free Syrian Army—the moderates—will drift towards the extremists. I am afraid that inaction will breed extremism and the fragmentation of Syria. Supporting the Free Syrian Army is also more likely to bring Assad and Russia to the negotiating table.

Returning to the point of this debate, I would not wish to bind the hands of the Executive on a foreign policy matter where our soldiers’ and our pilots’ lives are not at risk. Therefore, I would oppose the motion.

Syria (EU Restrictive Measures)

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

In response to my hon. Friend’s first point, let me again make it clear that the efforts of the United Kingdom Government—this should not be left unsaid—are directed to supporting those who do not have the ideology and the declared aims of al-Qaeda. It is very important that that distinction is made, because those moderate forces are looking for recognition. They want to be able to say that they can hold areas and provide support to civilian populations, because they want to be able to provide a contrast with those who might not have Syria’s long-term interests at heart. That is why our support for the National Coalition is so important.

In response to my hon. Friend’s second point, I can do no better than repeat the words of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who said yesterday:

“I regularly come back to the House whenever there is the slightest variation in the situation, so if there are any developments in the Government’s policy I would certainly seek to do so.”

He later said:

“If we come to a choice about that, it is a very important foreign policy and moral choice, which of course should be discussed fully in this House.”—[Official Report, 20 May 2013; Vol. 563, c. 908-909.]

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Jabhat al-Nusra and the Salafists were a fairly small group about 12 months ago. Part of the problem is that they have been much better armed and are much better fighters, so that elements in the Free Syria army, which is not as well armed as the Islamists, are flaking away to them. That is one area that my hon. Friend needs to consider. Another is that the UK has the chair of the UN Security Council— the presidency—next month. That presents us with an opportunity to pursue a radical agenda of engagement with all parties, perhaps including Iran, which has elections next month.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the Minister replies, may I remind all Members that this is a timed debate? The Minister has been generous in giving way, but this debate needs to end at 8.46 pm. At least nine Members, if not more, wish to participate, so we need to make a little more progress through the Minister’s speech if we are to get everybody in—unless those who are making interventions but are on the list plan to withdraw their names.

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[Emma Reynolds]

History teaches us to be extremely cautious. In the past, the west—ourselves, the US and others—has supplied arms to forces that then turned against us, so we need to learn the lessons of history and be extremely cautious.

[Mr Newmark]

I totally respect the hon. Lady’s position, but history has also taught us that when we stood aside and did nothing in Rwanda, 800,000 people got slaughtered, and it took us four years to go into Bosnia, while, again, hundreds of thousands of people got slaughtered.

[Emma Reynolds]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about the loss of life in Syria. The problem with the solution that the Government seem to be offering us is that it could lead to an escalation, not a de-escalation, of the conflict by fuelling the fires of the conflict, rather than encouraging a solution.

The opposition in Syria is fragmented. What more can the Government do to help the moderate elements of the opposition unite and work together?

If the Government believe that arming the opposition in Syria is now the best option available to the EU, how will that help halt the violence and secure a peace that lasts? Are there not significant risks now and in post-conflict Syria, and what would be the implications for peace and reconciliation between the country’s diverse religious and ethnic groups after the conflict?

The Prime Minister was in Washington last week, yet in yesterday’s statement by the Foreign Secretary, we heard little detail about what the Prime Minister has discovered about President Obama’s thinking on arming the opposition. Can the Minister enlighten the House on that point? Moreover, can the Minister provide the House with more detail about the format of the US-Russian peace conference and what role our Government will play in it?

Finally, if the Government veto the continuation of the arms embargo next week and after that decide to arm the opposition, will the Minister commit to bringing that future decision before the House, so Members on both sides can vote on what the Foreign Secretary yesterday called a moral issue?

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[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Although this debate is somewhat retrospective, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) pointed out, it raises important questions about our current and prospective roles in the conflict in Syria.

I echo the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter). I have spent seven years travelling to Syria and have had the opportunity to meet Bashar Assad and other members of the regime several times. The tragedy that is unfolding for the silent middle in Syria is terrible to behold. It is a beautiful country that is being dismembered day by day. We must think very carefully about our next steps.

What is the situation today? On one side is the Assad regime, which is responsible, as we have heard, for more than 80,000 deaths, more than 1 million refugees and more than 4 million internally displaced people. The regime has 300,000 soldiers plus the dreaded Shabiha, 16,000 pieces of heavy artillery and an air force. It has the Russians on its side, who are providing hardware such as S300s, Yakhont surface-to-ship missiles and the most robust air defence system in the middle east other than Israel’s, as well as military advisers who are increasing in number day by day. It also has the Iranians on its side, who are providing the Revolutionary Guard and strategic advice, and it has Hezbollah on its side. It has electronic intelligence, money and arms provided by the Iranians, and it even has the Shabiha being formed into a national defence brigade by the Iranians, who are giving direction.

What does the opposition side have? Simply, it has two groups that are highly fragmented—the FSA, which has about 30,000 people, led by General Idris, who essentially have just small arms at their disposal; and on the other side, as many colleagues have said, the Salafis, who have about 3,000 to 5,000 people and are themselves fragmented. We have heard about Jabhat al-Nusra, but there is also Liwa al-Islam, Liwa Saqour and Kata’ib Ahrar al-Sham, among other Islamist groups that are fighting there.

So we have an asymmetric war in which Bashar Assad has no incentive whatever to negotiate seriously. What are our options? They are fourfold. One is a containment strategy that would prevent the conflict from spreading, but unfortunately it would merely lead to more death. Another is a no-fly zone, as proposed by the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). That would indeed tip the balance, but it would put the lives of our Air Force pilots at risk, and I do not believe that after Iraq and Afghanistan, the military establishment in this country has any appetite for that.

The third option is lifting the arms embargo, which I believe would put pressure on Bashar Assad. However, as the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said—I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) will also make this point when he gets his opportunity to speak—there is a risk that arms may fall into the wrong hands. However, the signal that we would send by lifting the arms embargo would put pressure on the regime.

The final option is a radical diplomatic engagement strategy. In that regard, we have two opportunities before us. One is the fact that the UK holds the presidency of the UN Security Council next month, and the other is that there are Iranian elections next month, which may provide an opportunity for us to press the reset button regarding engagement with Iran. As the hon. Member for Islington North said, we need to engage with all parties—the Gulf states, Turkey, the EU and the US as well as Syria, Russia and Iran.

Time is running out. We must show Bashar Assad at Geneva that he is at the last chance saloon. I encourage the Foreign Secretary to exert pressure through a two-pronged strategy of radical diplomatic engagement with all parties and a real threat of lethal support to the FSA. Only then will there be a real prospect of ending the tragedy unfolding in Syria.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. We have two more speakers. If each takes five minutes and no more, we will have a few minutes for the Minister at the end. I call Robert Halfon.

Syria

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I would like to move on at 4.30 pm, preferably—if at all possible—having accommodated everyone, so that is the bar for Members and the Foreign Secretary.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I have listened very carefully to what the Foreign Secretary has said, and I shall try to throw him another lifeline regarding Iran. Given that Iran is supplying arms, money, men and intelligence, does he agree that the elections in Iran in four weeks’ time, after which Mr Ahmadinejad will no longer be in place, may present an opportunity for us to press the reset button in our relations with Iran?

[Mr Hague]

I will give very short answers from now on, following your injunction, Mr Speaker. We must always have hope about elections in other countries, but I am not over-optimistic, let us say, about a major change on this issue, although we are open, of course, to an improvement in our relations with Iran in the right circumstances.

Sexual Violence in Conflict

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I saw rape used as a weapon of war when I was in Bosnia in 1992-93. Between 25,000 and 50,000 women were raped during the Bosnian war. At Foca, Visegrad, Omarska and Prijedor, rape camps were deliberately set up to be used by visiting Bosnian-Serb soldiers when they felt like it. My wife, Claire Podbielski-Stewart—she was then Claire Podbielski—was involved as a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross in visiting Prijedor to try to stop what was happening there.

Elsewhere, individually, women were raped in front of their families—their husbands and their children. Do Members really understand how ghastly that must be for the families? The woman and the husband are demeaned, and the children are terrorised and horrified. They will be horrified for the rest of their lives.

Too often, once that foul crime has been committed, everyone is killed. I found a family outside a house near Vitez—mother, daughter, son and husband in a line. The daughter was holding a puppy. She was killed by the bullet that killed the puppy. I took the family to the local morgue. I went past the same place the next day to discover they had been returned. They were the wrong religion in the morgue. How ghastly is sexual violence in war. How foul.

My soldiers buried 104 people in a mass grave, which I revisited last year. We think there were 104 people. Most were women; a lot of them were children. It was foul, it was ghastly, and it was most definitely something that we should campaign to stop. I applaud what the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for International Development and others are doing to try to stop the revolting practice of sexual violence in war.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Bob Stewart]

I will, if my hon. Friend is quick.

[Mr Newmark]

I will be quick.

I would draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the fact that not only the rape itself is ghastly, but the conviction and prosecution rates. In the field where he fought, only one in 20,000 perpetrators of those crimes was prosecuted. Will he therefore join me in welcoming the international protocol proposed by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, which will ensure prosecution and investigation?

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend—that was quick. Of course, I agree with him. I have given evidence in five trials. I am thrilled that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has brought charges against people for rape as a crime against humanity, and secured convictions. I am fully aware that not even one in every 100 people guilty of such crimes in Bosnia has been brought to justice.

I am delighted that in Europe, for the first time ever, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is bringing rape convictions. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda started the process, and it is a great move. We must send a firm message to the whole world that sexual violence is considered as one of the gravest crimes.

I will end by commending our British soldiers. Shall I tell the House what a solider said to me when a previous Foreign Secretary—a Conservative one at that—gave me an order to start planning a withdrawal from Bosnia in December 1992? I wandered out and said to a soldier, “I am planning our withdrawal.” He said, “We’re not withdrawing, sir.” I said, “Well, we might have to if I am ordered by the Government to do so.” He said, “Not me, sir.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Our duty is here protecting these women, children and the vulnerable. That is what we are here to do.” We never did withdraw, but my goodness that shows the quality of our soldiers. We hear far too many stories about how badly our armed forces behave, but here was a soldier who showed the quality of person we send out to put our values into the world outside our country.

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[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I would like to thank you, Mr Speaker, for indulging me in my request. I was trying to be in two debates at once. I spoke in the eating disorders debate elsewhere and unfortunately the winding-up speeches took a bit longer than I thought.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) on securing this important debate, which I was happy to co-sponsor. She knows the enormous interest I take in this issue, and not only in the international context; I have also spoken about domestic violence in this country, and as I have said before, if men knew the odds of getting caught and prosecuted—the prosecution rate is 6%, so they have a 94% chance of getting away with it—they would probably go for it. The international statistics are even more dramatic. In the former Yugoslavia, men have a 1:20,000 chance of being prosecuted, and in Rwanda, where I have spent the past seven years travelling, the figure is 1:50,000. That is a disgrace, and the Foreign Secretary is absolutely right to take a lead in this important initiative.

As I have seen in Rwanda, the by-product of rape as a weapon of war are the orphans who live on after the conflict, infected with AIDS. I have spent time over the past seven years working with such children in a school in Kigali. Their mothers have been killed off by AIDS, but the children live on with the condition; they effectively have a time bomb within their bodies. They could die at any time. It is important to consider not only rape itself. We must investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of rape, but we must also think about what happens afterwards. We need to think about the children who were born as a result of rape, many of whom have AIDS. Perhaps through the International Development Secretary we can see what we can do to give them more support.

I also want to pay tribute to the International Commission on Missing Persons, which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary knows. I am spending a huge amount of time working on our taking a lead in supporting the excellent work of the commission in Bosnia over the past 15-plus years. It has done great work, and it is important that the UK should take the lead in securing a future for it. Finally, I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s international protocol to investigate and prosecute sexual violence against women, because prosecution is extremely important.