Human Rights

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord and to join in the debate. My noble friend has chosen an interesting subject, but in a sense it is a non-story. No one should be surprised that the Conservative Party is engaged with human rights—but it has taken some time. When I was at school and my father was a Suez rebel in Parliament, you did not interfere with other countries unless you had invaded or colonised them and they were coloured red on the map. Fortunately, the US got us out of the Suez Canal and eventually blew both political parties toward the winds of change of the early 1960s. After that, our entry into Europe helped to define our legal commitment to fundamental human rights, which has now become a sine qua non of foreign policy. It is a way of thinking about foreign policy.

We still think we know better. We even have the right to interfere now under various UN and EU conventions. In the 1991 Harare Declaration, the Commonwealth emphasised fundamental human rights and the equality of women. However, since then it has stepped back from grand statements and seems more content with quiet diplomacy, aid, trade and education. I know that the Minister agrees with that approach. I welcome the latest statements of the Foreign Secretary and look forward to many initiatives in future.

“Human rights” means different things and we have to be careful how we influence other countries in this field. Human rights work can be very dangerous for the individuals and aid organisations concerned. I hope that my noble friend agrees that it is not just a matter of applying the universal declaration: every state will interpret rights in its own setting and background. In India and Nepal, for instance, there is a strong tradition of NGOs campaigning with impunity. This is not the case in Sri Lanka, Burma or Zimbabwe. However, reformers in those countries have been encouraged by outside pressure and sanctions, and this can be a justification for those sanctions.

Human rights can be seen as a mirror that is held up, rather than as a policy. The Minister said this week that lecturing will do no good. I assume that he was referring to Governments. Obviously, Beijing does not take kindly to our complaints about its treatment of Uighurs, any more than New Delhi enjoys our protests against its failure to protect the Dalits. Both countries are in a formal annual intergovernment dialogue with the European Union on human rights—occasions at which nothing happens to improve the plight of the Uighurs or Dalits. It is left largely to campaigners.

Perhaps the most effective dialogue is through different channels such as trade and economic relations. One obvious example from China is the continued existence of Hong Kong as a refuge and as a beacon of international norms. In the case of India, there is great potential, for example, for more corporate responsibility in large international companies.

The Conservative Party lost some of its pre-election momentum with the scrapping of its plans to repeal the Human Rights Act—a clear casualty of the coalition. Its human rights commission is still in business and has just published a first-rate report proposing reforms to the UN Human Rights Council, a body whose membership and credibility have been questioned for some time, as has been said.

Let us be clear: we will continue to use human rights when it suits us. Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and his fellow combatant Paul Kagame in Rwanda were both supported for many years by the British aid programme at a time when they ignored opposition and the needs of their large minorities. Those two men have been very effective leaders but I hope that we will never give up cajoling them—often through aid conditionality—into better governance and human rights. Sudan, which was mentioned by my noble friend, is currently a good example of our foreign policy. I congratulate the FCO and DfID on putting so much effort into this with the help of at least three former ambassadors in Sudan and Egypt, so there can be no doubt about our commitment.

As the referendum goes through we have to be very cautious about our relations with Khartoum. The US made bad mistakes in the past about terrorism in Sudan when Osama Bin Laden was training there. It is now rightly pressing the north to support a peaceful transition in the south. Human rights have certainly become an issue. Unlike my noble friend I support the Government’s new emphasis on trade and improving commercial relations, which have been at a low level for much too long. If we see human rights in the context of sticks and carrots—let us face it, most of it is in that form—it may not please the purer forms of campaigners but it will be more effective diplomacy which could achieve a better result in the long run. At least, that is how the real world looks to me.