Somalia

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

They will be integrated. I have discussed that a couple of times with my Turkish counterpart. In recognition of our conference in February, the Turks have moved their conference back a little to later in the year. Both Turkey and the UK hope that that will follow on from the progress we make in London. The conference in London is largely at Head of State level—it will be hosted by the Prime Minister, and many Heads of State and Heads of Government will be coming—and will address the whole range of issues affecting Somalia. It is therefore one of the most ambitious conferences that has been held internationally on Somalia. I believe it will help to establish momentum for all the conferences that will follow, including the one in Istanbul.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for giving way on that point and I welcome the conference and all discussions that take place on Somalia. It is past time that there was detailed involvement. Can he envisage a day when a conference on the future of Somalia will be held in Somalia, which would show real movement and a real advance?

[Mr Hague]

I can envisage that day, but we are not there yet. As the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) said, there are stable areas in Somalia and some stable regional and local Governments. Based on what I saw on my visit last week, I would not say that the conditions are right to hold an international conference there yet, but the improvement has been great in the last year—I could not have visited at all a year ago. I can envisage that time if we do all the things that I shall describe.

It is because of that moment of opportunity that I mentioned that we have appointed a new ambassador to Somalia for the first time since 1991—I took him to present his credentials to the President of Somalia last week—and we are working to reopen our embassy in Mogadishu. All of that is consistent with our interests in Somalia and the increased emphasis that we place on conflict prevention as a priority in British foreign policy.

We do not take on that task lightly or without humility. The international community has not succeeded in turning Somalia around, but that is not for a lack of effort by other Governments and this one in recent years. We supported the important initiatives of the previous Labour Government, but we have not succeeded so far largely because the problems are so vast and complex, and because international policy is fragmented.

We must always be clear-sighted and realistic in setting our expectations for what we can achieve. We cannot transform any of Somalia’s problems overnight or impose a political solution on it. Britain cannot achieve any of the goals I am discussing without working with a broad range of countries across the world and Somalis themselves, but we can aim for the long-term goal of a Somalia that is more stable; that is able to meet the basic needs of its population; that can begin to build its economy with international support; that is able to govern its territory; and that can work with us to prevent terrorism flourishing on its soil. To do that we must try to change the dynamic in Somalia, from the trends of recent years of inexorable decline to an upwards trajectory of gradually increasing stability and security.

To achieve even that is an immense challenge. Our recent experiences of rebuilding states after conflict are that the international community has a tendency to set unrealistic goals that are not fulfilled, disappointing the expectations of the people we are trying to help and weakening the impact of our efforts. We must not make the same mistake with Somalia. We have a responsibility to match ambition with resources, our expectations with a good understanding of realities, and our hopes for quick results with the likely need for patient and long-term engagement.

Somalia today is a nation still at war with itself and without a sustainable peace. Its conflict has taken many forms over the past 20 years, from clan-based regional insurgencies, which overthrew the ruling regime in 1991, through warlordism, to the current violent insurgency of al-Shabaab. There have been 14 peace processes in that time, culminating in the current UN-led Djibouti peace process. Somalia’s problems are compounded and fuelled by geography, such as the fact that it has the longest coastline in Africa—it is more than 3,000 km long—and yet has no functioning coastguard or navy.

The scale of the human suffering is unimaginable and the number of victims so large as to be hard to fathom by people in this country. To put it in terms that would hit home here in Britain, more people in Somalia are dependent on emergency assistance than the entire populations of Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool put together; the number of people displaced in Somalia is seven times the population of Nottingham; and the average life expectancy in the 21st century is 48, which is roughly the same as life expectancy in Britain in 1880. An entire generation of children in Somalia has grown up with guns, not school books, knowing nothing other than insecurity and deprivation.

Even against that sober background, however, we can see a glimmer of hope for Somalia today. There are three compelling reasons why the time is right for a major push on Somalia, the first of which is that Mogadishu has been liberated by African Union Mission in Somalia forces, thanks to the skill and courage of the Ugandan and Burundian troops that form the backbone of the African Union contingent in Somalia. I saw that myself when I visited Mogadishu a week ago today. It was encouraging to see people going to the shops and markets. The road to the airport was crowded and some were looking forward to going to the beach on Friday. Those are semblances of normal life compared with what they have experienced in the past few years.

Nevertheless, it is hard to see many buildings that have no bullet holes in them, or that are not scarred by the effect of war. Today, almost all of Mogadishu is controlled by AMISOM and the transitional federal Government forces, and other regions are more stable, making it possible to make progress on Somali governance. Djibouti has sent troops further to strengthen AMISOM, and Sierra Leone is expected to provide a battalion in July, making further progress a possibility.

The second reason for optimism is that those operations and successful counter-terrorism work are putting pressure on al-Shabaab. We need to seize the opportunity to intensify that pressure and not allow al-Shabaab to regroup. Its guerrilla tactics inflict huge suffering on ordinary Somalis and it harbours foreign extremists, as I have described.

Related to that, the international community has made progress in diminishing the pirate activity that is a symptom of, and contributor to, Somalia’s conflict. There have been no successful hijacks in the gulf of Aden since November 2010. The number of vessels and crews currently held by pirate groups is at its lowest since 2009. Twenty-two ships were hijacked off the coast of Somalia between November 2010 and January 2011, but in the same period in the past year only two ships were hijacked.

The third reason for optimism is that there is an opportunity to create a broader and more representative political arrangement when the transitional federal Government’s mandate expires this summer. That gives an opening to launch a broader political process that embraces all Somalis, and that places emphasis on supporting regional governance as well as better and more representative government from the centre.

I pay tribute to the Governments and parties that have played a part in bringing that about; to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, who has made two visits to Somalia this year; and to staff from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, who have all played an important role.

Those changes on the ground give the international community a window of opportunity to unite behind a clear strategy; to support a new political process that has greater legitimacy in the eyes of the Somali people than the current elite does; to help people to return to Mogadishu and rebuild their lives there; to strengthen the African Union forces in Somalia; to put in place a plan to build up Somalia’s own security and justice sectors; to introduce more effective arrangements to tackle piracy and terrorism; and to work better to support the pockets of stability that are now emerging in parts of the country.

That is what the Somalia conference will aim to do. We have invited Government and multilateral organisations that are active and influential on Somalia; representatives from Somalia, including the transitional federal institutions; the Presidents of Puntland and Galmudug; and representatives of Aluh Sunnah wal Jamaah. We welcome the participation of the President of Somaliland, with the experience that Somaliland can provide of peacebuilding in the region.

We have secured senior attendance from the region, including from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, as well as from the United States, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Sweden, the United Nations, the African Union and the European Union. I am delighted to say that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend the conference.

We hope to agree practical measures in seven key areas, all of which I discussed on my visit to Mogadishu and Kenya last week, and which are the subject of extensive discussion with our partners all around the world ahead of the conference.

On the political track, the current transitional institutions in Mogadishu run out in August. They must not be extended. The Somali political process must become broader and more representative. That might involve a constitutional assembly drawn from all of Somalia’s communities.

On security, African Union forces have pushed al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu to create political space there, and Kenyan action has put al-Shabaab on the back foot. However, African forces have insufficient funding for UN Security Council-mandated actions. We therefore hope that the conference will consider how funding can be made sustainable for African troops willing to put their lives on the line.

The success stories in Somalia are in the regions. Puntland and Galmudug have established local peace deals and set up administrations. The conference should agree a co-ordinated international package of support to Somalia’s regions that complements work on peace and stability at the national level.

Piracy off the Somali coast is the affront to the rule of international law that I described. We must break the piracy business cycle. We hope the conference will strengthen arrangements to catch, try and imprison pirates, and continue to develop regional maritime capacity in Somalia and across the region.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

Indeed.

In my Leicester constituency I represent a significant Somali diaspora community, many of whose members will be watching the debate with great interest. I am sure that I speak for a large number of them when I pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary for the tone of his opening remarks, and welcome the fact that there is a degree of bipartisanship in the debate.

Many Members have described the situation facing Somalia extremely well. It is a country with no effective central Government, notwithstanding those in Somaliland and Puntland, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) pointed out; a country where the terrorist group al-Shabaab occupies much of the centre and south; and a country which, for all the reasons mentioned, has been one of the largest generators of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world. A symptom of that instability is the piracy off the coast of Somalia, of which the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), spoke with great knowledge. Let me develop some of the points that he made.

Even after the United Nations Security Council resolutions and the various multi-naval operations, piracy has increased over the last five years or so. In 2010, 4,185 seafarers were attacked by Somali pirates and 1,432 were on ships boarded by pirates. Estimates suggest that the ransom take has increased significantly: in 2006 the average ransom was $150,000, whereas in 2011 it was $4.5 million. According to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report, the total ransom amount has reached $135 million. I understand the UK’s position on ransoms, and I think that it is right, but perhaps the Minister could tell us whether other nation states think that they should be made illegal. I believe that the United States has been considering that. I agree with the Committee that it is not a good idea, but I should be interested to hear the Minister’s view.

The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) talked about the economic development of parts of Somalia near where piracy is prevalent. Those areas may well have developed economically, but inflation has been stoked and commodity prices are increasing hugely, which brings all kinds of social problems. Then there is the tragic humanitarian crisis in Somalia, which many Members have spoken about. In 2011 it experienced the worst drought for 60 years and the worst food crisis for 20 years. Four million people are living in crisis conditions, and child malnutrition rates are the highest in the world.

I welcome the fact that the Government are convening this conference, which meets at a time when there are signs of progress. The UN Secretary-General has said that

“the prospects for positive change appear greater than they have been for many years.”

The transitional federal Government are arguably in their strongest position for some time. Al-Shabaab has been driven out of Mogadishu almost entirely, and as the Foreign Secretary said, the photos of Somalis enjoying Lido beach in Mogadishu in recent weeks contrast hugely with the photos we are all used to seeing of burnt-out buildings.

Such progress has been recognised internationally. The Foreign Secretary visited Mogadishu a few days ago, and yesterday the EU special envoy for the horn of Africa was there. However, we should remember last year’s suicide bomb, which killed 70 teenagers. Just yesterday a café was bombed, and guerrilla warfare continues. So although it is right for us to be ambitious and to have high hopes for this conference, that backdrop—along with 15 failed peace processes in 20 years—is the sobering reality against which the conference is convened.

The international community should try to find a solution not only because that is the right thing for Somalia, but, as the Foreign Secretary said, because it is in our national security interest. Finding that political settlement is very important, but I am well aware that the conference is only part of the process. I should be interested to hear how the Minister expects things to develop, and what he sees as the Foreign Office’s role, post-conference.

There are a couple of issues that I hope the conference will turn its attention to in detail, the first of which is the humanitarian situation. Somalia’s humanitarian needs will never be fully met until the violence, political instability and insecurity are addressed. We can all agree that the drought and the famine were a total tragedy, and that the international community’s response was perhaps too slow, although I do praise the work of the International Development Secretary and DFID. We can all agree that al-Shabaab’s banning late last year of a number of aid agencies has not helped matters. Thankfully, the rainfall this winter has been the best in years. However, it could be argued that the humanitarian situation is deteriorating in parts of southern Somalia as a result of increased military intervention in support of the transitional federal Government.

I hope the conference discusses and explicitly promotes the protection of citizens and compliance with international humanitarian law, and that the role of children is considered. We know that, too often, children are recruited to fight in these conflicts. Although we should welcome the TFG’s commitment to working with the UN on this matter, more needs to be done to convince them properly to monitor the use of children in their forces. Perhaps the Minister can touch on that issue.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am sure my hon. Friend, like me, will have read of Amnesty International’s concerns about child soldiers in Somalia. Does he not think that a very useful outcome of this conference would be a specific, in-terms declaration, signed up to by all parties, that no more children will be involved in any conflicts by any party?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I absolutely agree, and I hope that the use of children in these conflicts will be explicitly referred to in any communiqué resulting from the conference.

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[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

We live in a time when one can feel the tectonic plates of geopolitics move. In and out of this Chamber, Parliament is rightly engaged in debates about our nation’s role in the world. The demands on our armed services in Afghanistan, where we are working with our allies, and in countries around the world are increasing. Our diplomatic and humanitarian effort is being stretched even further. With so much going on, it would be all too easy to forget Somalia, and to think it less important than it is.

I think that it is essential to work with nations around the world to continue to provide support for Somalia. Many of my constituents ask me why that is so. Fundamentally, it is because it matters to the security of the UK. More than 350,000 Somalis live in the UK and we ignore Somalia’s problems at our peril. We should heed the words of the mayor of Mogadishu, who said to the BBC that disaffected young British Somalis were leaving to train in the al-Shabaab terror camps before returning to the UK with “revenge in their hearts”. In 2010, the MI5 director, Jonathan Evans, warned that it was

“only a matter of time”

before terrorists trained in Somali camps inspired acts of violence on the streets of the UK.

Points have been made about the importance of keeping our shipping routes open and free from pirates.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am interested in what the hon. Lady is saying about the Somali community in Britain. She is correct that there are at least 350,000 Somalis living here. Will she for a moment pause and reflect on the hard work and contributions of that community in developing businesses and opportunities, and on the positive role that a lot of young Somalis play within their community and the education system? We should not allow a message to go out that denigrates an entire community of ambitious and hard-working young people.

[Sarah Newton]

I do not believe that my point reflected negatively on the vast majority of Somalis living in our country, who make a very positive contribution. That point has been made well by Members this afternoon and I concur with it. However, we must not put our heads in the sand and ignore professionals who are accountable to this Parliament and the professional advice that they give us.

I welcome what the Government are doing to re-establish an embassy in Somalia and the efforts of the UN to re-establish its base in Mogadishu.

In the weeks around the forthcoming major conference on Somalia, hosted by the Prime Minister, I hope that our media play their part in helping people up and down the country—especially people in places such as my constituency, who do not have day-to-day contact with the Somali community—to understand why it is important that they support Britain’s continued involvement in Somalia. As we are all in the Chamber today, it is clear that all parties understand that, but a large percentage of the people who have sent us here do not really understand it and have reservations about why we are continuing our support. That is quite understandable, because people are often susceptible to compassion fatigue, especially when their standard of living is being squeezed and some people are losing their jobs. Many fear that good money is being wasted. With so many conflicts erupting around the world, they might tire of even trying to keep up with what is going on. As taxpayers’ money is being spent, it is vital that we all do our bit to make the case for support. I believe that people will want to support our efforts in Somalia if they understand the risks to our national security and believe that we are really making a positive difference on the ground.

Today, I want to share with colleagues the positive difference that humanitarian aid is making to thousands of people in Somalia, who, we must not forget, are among the poorest and longest-suffering on the planet. I have mentioned ShelterBox in the House before. It is a great Cornish emergency humanitarian aid charity that provides boxes containing shelter, basic cooking equipment, water sanitisation equipment and tools. Its ingenuity in responding to different situations has enabled it to deliver a remarkable array of services in Somalia in its sturdy boxes. The boxes are all packed in and distributed from Cornwall, and enabled by donations and volunteers. Over the past few years, several thousand boxes have been sent to Somalia, and nearly a further 500 boxes, including 50 classroom boxes, are currently en route. That shipment of direct aid is enough to provide shelter for about 1,000 families.

Due to the security risks of working in Somalia at the moment, ShelterBox does not actually have any volunteers on the ground there. It is instead working with a partner agency, a French medical charity called Women and Health Alliance International, which has a long history of working in Somalia. At the main displacement camp in Mogadishu, it has already set up a health centre, where there is a hospitalisation facility using the disaster relief tents donated by ShelterBox. It is providing primary health care consultation rooms, a delivery suite and even a small hospital. The ShelterBox tents not only provide a clean, sterile area for the medical staff to work in but allow patients to be hospitalised while staying with their families rather than being separated. Pregnant women also have privacy while they are having their antenatal consultations and giving birth. The facility has been described by the doctors on the ground as having made

“a dramatic difference to the well-being of hundreds of Somali families in dire need of assistance in Mogadishu.”

ShelterBox’s success in helping people in Somalia is a result of having worked around the world for many years building effective working relationships with local organisations that do not have the bureaucracy and inefficiency of some of the multinational agencies. Wherever it works in the world, it works with locals and, in doing so, it tries to build capacity in those nations to deal with future disasters.

Working in partnership with other countries’ aid efforts and with people in the countries that we are supporting, so that they can develop their own capacity, is rightly at the heart of the Government’s humanitarian aid response. That theme was echoed in a recent report published by Oxfam, which stated that the UN and international non-governmental organisations provided only part of the answer to crises from Haiti to the horn of Africa.

When the Minister responds to the debate, I would appreciate his reassurance that the Government’s admirable plans to publish information on how taxpayers’ money is spent in Somalia will be implemented so that all can see it, just as donors to ShelterBox can go online and see how their money is being spent so well. Publishing that information would go some way towards reassuring my constituents that their money was being well spent and, as a result, build public support for the essential work that Britain needs to continue to do in Somalia.

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[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am pleased that we are having this debate on Somalia. It is the first debate on this subject for a long time—if not, the first ever—on the Floor of the House, although there have been Adjournment debates. It is a major step forward and I welcome it.

There is a clear need for peace, reconciliation and social justice, which I hope the London conference will help to provide. As I said in my intervention on the Foreign Secretary, I hope that instead of lots of international conferences all over the world, we will witness, observe and hear reports of proper, open political dialogue in Somalia by all sections of the community, indicating the development of a democratic and free society. That is what we want.

I represent Islington North, which includes the Finsbury Park area, where a large number of Somali people have made their homes. They have a strong, vibrant and hard-working community, with ambitious groups of young people trying to achieve. My intervention on the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) was not intended to be critical of the points she was making; it was intended to ensure that we get the message out that there is a big Somali community in Britain that is making a great contribution to our society, with young people—just like young people anywhere else—who want to achieve the best in life. We should support them and applaud what they do, rather than allow an entire community to be denigrated, which is what some of the media have unfortunately done to Somali people over a considerable period.

This morning I chaired a large meeting at the Finsbury Park mosque that, I am delighted to say, the Minister attended as the guest speaker. We had more than 70 people present, with many questions asked about what will happen at the conference and how things will develop from there, and also about support and recognition for the community in Britain. I thank the Minister very much for being prepared to come along. It was much appreciated by the mosque and by the community that we had that open dialogue and debate. I hope that such dialogue and debate can be held in other communities, because the point that we all made this morning was that there is a big diaspora community and a lot of links between the communities in Britain and in Somalia. Much money is sent home, and also people go back and forth, to exercise their skills and pursue their wish to see the development of their society. We should see that as an asset and a contribution for the future. Also, the local community in my area has raised a great deal of money for famine support. Interestingly, One True Voice, the Somali women’s organisation, organised an evening concert for famine support in a Catholic church, to emphasise that participation in the local community, which is something we should all applaud.

We are dealing with the consequences of a colonial past, the cold war and, in many ways, the history of Africa—all those straight lines between countries drawn on the map to describe boundaries that were utterly meaningless to the communities, except that in Somalia things are slightly different, because it is the only country in Africa that is linguistically unified and where only one language is spoken. Every other country in Africa has a multiplicity of languages—[Interruption]—although I am about to be corrected by many Government Members. However, if they can just contain themselves, I will be brief and then they can speak. Let us say “one of the few countries in Africa”, okay?

Saferworld has sent an interesting briefing for today’s debate, which says that

“it will only be through addressing the factors that underlie Somalia’s conflicts that the country will ever move from repeated crises towards lasting peace and prosperity.”

Saferworld outlines a whole lot of issues surrounding that instability—lack of political cohesion, corruption, the power of warlords, the fear that many people feel, and, of course, the ready supply of arms and guns—and the inability of any effective civil society in much of the country, although not all of it, to do anything about it.

I have also received an interesting briefing from the National Union of Journalists about the killing of journalists. Indeed, I tabled early-day motion 2638 on the issue. The latest to be killed was Abdisalan Sheik Hassan, who was shot dead on 18 December 2011, although I listed a number of other journalists who were killed in 2011. “Lives and Rights of Journalists Under Threat”, a report by the National Union of Somali Journalists, goes through, in gruesome detail, the number of journalists who have been killed for trying to report what was going on or have been harassed by officialdom, in all parts of Somalia, for trying to report the “unreportable”—the things that it did not wish to be reported. We want to know what is going on in Somalia, so I hope the Minister will assure us that one outcome of the conference will be a reference to the right to know and protection for those who are reporting, because if authorities of any sort—I am talking of illicit authorities, as well as legitimate authorities—kill journalists, they do it for a reason: they do not want the news to get out. We have to recognise that and be as supportive of journalists as we can be.

The issues of children’s rights and child soldiers were raised earlier. Amnesty International’s recommendations on those matters are important. They state that all elements should verify that children are not among the Government forces and that no person under 18 is recruited into any such forces. They also stress the importance of the demobilisation and reintegration of child soldiers. This is not some esoteric liberal argument being pursued from afar; if we do not do anything, or encourage something to be done, about the use of child soldiers and the brutalisation of children in that conflict, they will grow up, post-conflict, into adults who know nothing other than the use of a gun and the assertion of force to get their way. That would result in all the horrors of criminal gang cultures such as those experienced in post-conflict societies in Guatemala and El Salvador, and in parts of South Africa after the end of apartheid. It is in everyone’s interests to ensure that the rights of children are respected. I fully endorse the point made earlier that the United Nations convention on the rights of the child should be recognised by the conference; I hope that it will be.

The conference is being held in a former colonial capital. There are some awful European traditions, and one involved the congress of Berlin in 1884, which decided most of the borders in Africa. I hope that this is the last time that this kind of thing happens. I want to see progress in Somalia and the development of an open and democratic society. I also want to see a recognition of the poverty among many of the people there, and of the deaths from wholly preventable conditions and illnesses. I also want to see a recognition of the way in which a great deal of aid does not reach the people that it should, because gangs, corrupt officials and others get hold of it, so that no benefit whatever is derived from it.

In a briefing that I have received, I note that the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has published an assessment of the situation in Somalia. That assessment is a couple of months old, but I suspect that the situation is not very different now. It echoes what the Foreign Secretary said. Based on food supply figures, it is estimated that 4 million people—53% of the Somali population—are in crisis, countrywide. Of those 4 million people, 3 million are in the southern region of Somalia, which represents an increase from last summer, and 750,000 are seriously suffering in the famine, which has worsened.

Yes, we must provide food aid and support for those people who are suffering, and let us also recognise that the situation has become very bad in Somalia. The rest of the world has finally woken up to that fact, and to the need for aid and recognition. Fortunately, so far in this debate and the others that I have heard, no one is talking about an Iraq-type or Afghanistan-type western military intervention. People are talking about a process to bring about political change, recognition and respect for all the different traditions in Somalia.

I am proud to represent a large Somali community in Britain. It breaks my heart when I hear about my constituents’ relatives being stuck in refugee camps for years on end, or about people being killed on the streets of Mogadishu and their relatives here being unable to go home to attend their funeral. That is not the future that my constituents want for Somalia; they want a Somalia that is based on political recognition and democratic institutions, and on an understanding that we have a responsibility to do our very best to end this crisis and help the people to realise the dreams that we all have, for a long life, for fulfilment for our children and for a fair and secure society. That, surely, is what the aim of the conference should be.