Conflict in Ethiopia

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gary Streeter

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Sir Gary. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on securing this important debate. The conflict in Ethiopia, which began two years ago in the region of Tigray, has been and continues to be brutal, devastating and destabilising for the wider horn of Africa. There are reports of thousands of deaths and abductions and of the widespread use of rape and sexual violence in the conflict, and warnings that the scale and systematic nature of the violence, and the language that accompanies it, may amount to genocide.

I pay tribute today to brave journalists, including Lucy Kassa, who has borne witness to the scale and intensity of the violence, and politicians, including Filsan Ahmed, who resigned from the Ethiopian Government over their handling of the conflict in Tigray. Both are remarkable young women who have borne significant personal cost for their work to give voice to people suffering under this conflict.

For some of my constituents, the conflict in Tigray has meant a total loss of contact with close family members over the past two years. I have a constituent whose parents and brother, who has Down’s syndrome, are in Tigray. She knows that her aunt was one of the first to be killed in the conflict, but she has not had any word at all from other family members for more than two years, resulting in unbearable worry, anxiety and anguish.

The conflict has left 20 million people across Ethiopia in urgent need of food aid, hospitals entirely without medicine and 2.8 million children without access to school. The scale of the conflict is as appalling as its brutality, with 500,000 people dead as a result of fighting and conflict-related factors such as famine, and 100,000 dead just since the fighting resumed in September. Yet for a conflict that is causing such suffering and has the potential to cause such widespread destabilisation, there has been extraordinarily little international outcry or mainstream media coverage of the devastation and insufficient international engagement.

The ceasefire that was recently signed is welcome, but it is not clear that it is yet having any impact, with further reports of violence today—not entirely surprising given the absence of the Eritrean authorities from the negotiations, since Eritrean forces are reported to be among the main perpetrators of violence in Tigray.

The humanitarian need is desperate, as is the need to investigate the crimes that have been committed so far within this conflict, to gather evidence and testimony and to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. There has been extensive verification of widespread atrocities in Ethiopia, including by Amnesty International, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the UN Human Rights Council. Their inquiries have found evidence of atrocities that may amount to war crimes, including massacres of civilians and evidence of language indicative of genocide.

One extreme feature of this conflict is the widespread use of sexual violence. Conservative estimates are that more than 26,000 women have been affected, while some estimates are far higher. While all parties to the conflict have been accused of atrocities, the UNHRC’s investigation identifies Tigrayan women as having been targeted for particular violence. It also found that the Ethiopians were the only air force in possession of the drones being used in aerial bombardments, including on a refugee camp.

The highly respected Dr Denis Mukwege Foundation released a report in November 2022 that concluded that data suggests Ethiopian and allied forces committed conflict-related sexual violence on a widespread and systemic basis in order to eliminate and/or forcibly displace the ethnic Tigrayan population. The UN Human Rights Council has found action taken by the Ethiopian legal justice system to be wholly inadequate in terms of numbers of prosecutions and lack of information about prosecutions and convictions. It is a dire situation that demands the attention of the world.

I welcome the Minister to his place. I know that he has a personal commitment to see peace in Ethiopia. I ask him to set out what actions the UK Government are taking over atrocity crimes in Ethiopia, both through direct interventions with the Ethiopian Government and through the UN. Will the Government invite representatives from Tigrayan civil society and other diaspora communities in the UK affected by conflict-related sexual violence to their Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict conference? What actions are the UK Government taking to progress and support investigations on the reports of genocide in the Tigray region of Ethiopia? Finally, what actions are the UK Government taking to help to secure humanitarian access into Tigray to meet the urgent needs of the population there?

My constituents, and all those whose families are affected by this terrible conflict, need to know that the UK Government are doing everything possible to work for peace, justice and humanitarian access.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

We now turn to the Front-Bench speeches. I suggest seven minutes rather than five for the first two speeches, then the Minister can take the rest.

History Curriculum: Migration

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gary Streeter

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again; her speech, including its introduction, is excellent. Does she agree that it is essential that our children understand the importance of how migrants have flocked to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for years and have integrated well into our systems? It is important to understand that not all immigrants wish to have “their” country and “our” country; indeed, our country is made up of those who live here, integrate and raise their children to be British, and who have made this nation as great as it is today. In my constituency, there are Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, people from eastern Europe, and people from Nigeria and Kenya. All those people together have made this nation great.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be brief.

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and his point is very well made. If we teach our history with a migration narrative, everybody in our society can understand exactly the diversity of which he spoke so well.

Our Migration Story challenges us to rethink British history by capturing the histories of ordinary and otherwise marginalised Britons; by charting histories of welcome and inclusion, as well as those of rejection, exclusion, inequality and violence; by placing histories and conditions of global connectedness at its core; and by making mainstream British identity inseparable from 2,000 years of migration and settlement. The site connects its content with the national curriculum, and it has received several awards. It adopts a rigorous and academically recognised approach; in fact, it reflects the way that history is already often taught at universities.

Even in some of the most diverse communities, such as those in my constituency, our understanding of the history of migration is often limited. Lambeth Archives has just opened a fantastic exhibition at Lambeth town hall called “Before and After Windrush: 350 years of Black People in Lambeth”. It has been curated in response to the assumption that many people made during last year’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush that there had been no black people living in Lambeth prior to 1948, and it charts the area’s history from the first record of a black person living in Lambeth in 1661 to the present day. That longevity is so significant for our current community. We have always been diverse; people from across the world have always contributed to community life in Lambeth. People from everywhere belong here. As the Windrush anniversary logo, which was designed by young people from Brixton, reflected, the Windrush generation are part of our DNA, but long before 1948 our DNA was international.

My plea to the Minister today is not to dismiss this research, as he did back in January, but to engage with it. In our society, which is both diverse and riven with divisions, we need the teaching of history to be inclusive, we need everyone to be able to find their place in it and we need our definition of “British”, based on our understanding of history, to be inclusive. That means not only making migration content available, but signposting it effectively and considering making more of it compulsory. It also means making additional training and continuing professional development available to teachers to equip them with the confidence to teach new material. To return to where I started, it means working to realise a vision in which everyone in our diverse country, whatever their heritage, can say with pride and confidence: “Our history is British history.”