Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Convention on Genocide

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh, and to speak in this debate on the 75th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights and the UN genocide convention. I am pleased that the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), is here to respond this afternoon. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) and the hon. Members for Henley (John Howell) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate. I also thank Dr Kate Ferguson and the whole team at Protection Approaches as well as the teams at the Aegis Trust, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Remembering Srebrenica and the young people from Hampton School, who have campaign called “Genocide 80/20”, and who are campaigning tirelessly on preventing genocides and mass atrocities.

In the 1990s, long before being elected to this place, I worked in Bosnia during and after the war; more recently, I visited the site of the Srebrenica memorial to the genocide. I have also visited Yad Vashem in Israel and the Holodomor memorial in Kyiv, which I went to last year with other MPs.

Given that background and those visits, I am honoured to be the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity. I became chair four years ago, when I was elected— I cannot believe it has been four years—because I am so passionate about not seeing an endless train of atrocities. Some of the most important decisions that we will make as parliamentarians will be about atrocities, but when we see them it is too late for many people.

I will focus on early warning and prevention, and especially the call for a national strategy on mass atrocity crimes. This is not an abstract policy area; we have seen it with our own eyes. I have seen the real and devastating impact that hate has when it is left unchecked. The convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide was the first human rights treaty— adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, 75 years ago this Saturday. It signified the international community’s commitment to make sure that the incomprehensible horrors of the past could never be repeated. That commitment to “never again” has resounded down through those 75 years, and it must really mean something.

The convention means that the international community has committed to doing whatever it takes to make sure that the early-warning systems are in place and that there are no excuses for inaction. It sets out a definition of genocide as the

“intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

It is that special “intent” that makes it a uniquely difficult crime to determine.

While the convention was a signal of the intention of 152 states to finally end genocide once and for all, its implementation in the real world falls short of its bold ambitions, as we have seen over these 75 years. Responses are too frequently focused on acknowledging that a genocide has already occurred, and sometimes punishing those responsible. That is absolutely important—it is important that justice is seen—but it falls short of fulfilling the original intention of the genocide convention: there is not enough focus on identifying potential genocides and preventing them before they metastasise into a cancer of hate and suffering.

The APPG on the prevention of genocide, which I chair, has set out the case for the need for a consistent response to mass-atrocity crimes—a need for a national strategy. There is not enough strategic oversight from the Government to pick out those early indications or risks, or to respond to urgent warnings. Modern atrocity crimes all share very similar features and should be met with policies that address them.

I have heard people in my constituency say, “I can’t watch the news at the moment—it’s too much.” It feels so overwhelming when we hear about all the situations happening. However, saying that there is something is similar about them—that they can be addressed early on, that they can be spotted and that action can be taken—gives power back to Governments, back to us, and to our embassies and high commissions around the world, so that we can take action.

Those broad causes can be broken down into separate elements. First, modern atrocities are often motivated or legitimised through politics of identity-based grievance, discrimination and often a lack of human rights. Secondly, they can be through an organised conspiracy by state or non-state actors. Thirdly, modern atrocities frequently arise from a group taking advantage of unchecked power. If that power remains unchecked, escalation can then take place faster than the international community can respond, leading to widespread violence and systematic human rights violations.

Those may sound like extreme and rare occurrences, but that is not the case. Across the world, mass atrocities occur much more frequently than we would like to think, and many have been raised by other members in this debate. Just look at Ukraine or the persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan, which the hon. Member for Strangford has already referred to and which we saw when we visited Pakistan earlier this year. There is a report with many recommendations for both our Government and the Government of Pakistan, which I hope the Minister will look at and consider as well.

Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Tigray, Myanmar, Xinjiang, the Hazaras, the Yazidis, and what is happening in Israel and Palestine are all examples of ongoing atrocities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale said, we condemn the actions of Hamas against the Jews, who are living peacefully—the rape of women, the killing and hostage-taking. We also condemn the disproportionate use of force by Israel—the use of access to water, food, medicines and fuel as a weapon of war, and the forced displacement of 1.7 million people and rising. The incidence of mass atrocities is rising across the world because inequality, social fracture, democratic backsliding, resource scarcity, arms proliferation, climate change and the internationalisation of malign, non-state actors are all moving us in the wrong direction.

Although that news is deeply concerning, we know that mass atrocities are predictable and often preventable. Early intervention is the key. Not only is that more likely to succeed in saving lives, but it will have a lower financial, military and diplomatic cost as well; it is good value for money to save lives by early intervention when it is seen that atrocities are on their way to being committed. As I have said, to intervene early enough we need a coherent strategy backed up with strong political will that is consistently monitoring and responding to the causes that I have outlined. Early intervention is not good only in itself; it is fundamental to our security in the UK. Preventing mass atrocity crimes is not a nice-to-have or a concern simply for those of us committed to human rights; it is fundamental to our national security.

Let me first commend the progress made in recent years. Since I became chair of the all-party parliamentary group on prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity, we have been monitoring the situation closely, and we have seen progress. There is commitment to prioritising mass atrocity prevention in the integrated review and in the new 2030 foreign policy framework.

There was the creation of the new mass atrocity prevention hub, which sits in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Although it is welcome, that hub must have teeth and the scope to work across Government Departments, with clear lines of accountable political leadership with the means to prevent, mitigate, respond and punish. At the moment, we do not have an approach for how to foresee and respond to the pathologised violence of mass atrocity crimes, which is different from violent conflict. The hub must be preventive in nature, in line with the UK’s commitment.

It is also encouraging to see the integration of atrocity prevention in several countries’ strategies—meaning that embassies and high commissions are taking this up and taking action—and to see the UK championing a crimes against humanity treaty at the United Nations. In the international development White Paper published recently, there is a section that says that new technologies should be used to expedite the forecasting of conflict and mass atrocity risks, extending the length of time from a few months to a few years in advance, in order to buy time for response. Access to data and technology should be extended so that early warning is used more systematically across the international system. It is a good start and it is good in its own right, but it just does not go far enough; a national strategy would take that much further.

[Tony Lloyd]

Just a brief point, if I may. I fundamentally agree that the national strategy would move the situation forward, but we also need to internationalise this process. We need to at least bring together like-minded nations who would be prepared to buy in to exactly the same framework.

[Fleur Anderson]

I wholeheartedly agree. The UK championing a crimes against humanity treaty would be one stage of that, but it needs to go further, with internationalising through many other treaties that we are involved in and in many other streams of work.

If we had an international strategy and embassies took it up consistently, we would be more enabled on the ground through different embassies working together, as they do in many countries. A national strategy must have four components; this has also been raised in the International Development Committee’s report, “From Srebrenica to a safer tomorrow: Preventing future mass atrocities around the world”, which concluded that there was an urgent need for the UK to adopt a national strategy for preventing and responding to atrocity crimes.

The four core components are, first, that prevention-first policy thinking should be at the centre of any strategy. That prevention-first approach must address the causes of atrocities by disrupting and dismantling the organised architecture of atrocities. Secondly, the strategy must invest in network analysis that monitors and evaluates the drivers that cause atrocities; maps potential motivations and the interrelations between perpetrators and the coalitions that can help prevent escalation; and identifies the points where leverage can be effectively applied, and which actors can do that. The paragraph in the international White Paper incorporates that.

The third part must be a more holistic approach to developing a resilient society—this is the part that I keep going on about in many meetings. It is about civil society strength, where cohesive, equitable communities, high in public trust and with strong, inclusive institutions, can limit and mitigate the damage from both internal and external shocks. When the potential for mass atrocities is building, women’s groups, young people, access to better employment and jobs or support for human rights defenders and environmental protectors can be the crucial things on the ground that stop and prevent movement towards atrocities. As well as the diplomatic and military, civil society is absolutely crucial. It is like the three legs needed for the stool that will enable us to prevent atrocities.

Lastly, we need an institutionalisation that finds the right balance between integration and specialisation—this is how the mechanics of Whitehall works—to ensure that atrocity prevention is neither mainstreamed nor siloed to death. It leads to more effective action by co-ordinating, convening and unlocking responses. If we brought in this national strategy, the Minister would be free to do what is absolutely right, without being hamstrung by a lack of real political infrastructure.

The absence of a policy on atrocity prevention has left the UK ill-prepared to respond to some of the greatest foreign policy crises of our time: Sudan, Ukraine, Tigray and more that have already been mentioned. When the Government refused, over years, to acknowledge the atrocity risks rising in Sudan, the Minister here went further than most this summer to call out the atrocities in Darfur. Without policy on these crimes, however, even with his contributions the UK is unable to go further and take meaningful actions necessary to help protect people in Sudan. That is just one example. The Minister knows that the violence we are talking about, whether in Darfur or Syria, is markedly different from armed conflict and should not be responded to in the same fashion.

To conclude, we need a national strategy on mass atrocities, so that we lead international efforts to stamp out signs of atrocity wherever it raises its ugly head. We need a strategy that has political weight; that is consistent and not up to the interests of different Ministers, ambassadors or high commissioners; that is built in with early warning and identification; and that is resourced both in Whitehall and in countries. We need to ensure it supports a civil society for peace, so that when we say, “Never again,” we really mean never again.