Children: Impact of International Conflict

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this important debate. I thank my noble friend Lady Anelay and align myself with the remarks made about her service in this area, both in this House and in the previous Government. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for his kind remarks.

Children matter; our debate is testimony to that. In 2023, 450 million children—one-sixth of the population of children across the globe—were impacted by conflict around the world. Some 50% of all displaced people around the globe are children. These are not mere numbers but real lives and real people; they are the children who will build the world of tomorrow. Conflicts are raging. Children are dying, suffering and being maimed. The psychological impacts are immeasurable. Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, the DRC—the list continues. Children are being killed, schools are being targeted, young children are being recruited as child soldiers and given guns to kill, not books to learn; they are indoctrinated and brainwashed to commit the most abhorrent of crimes.

In the brief time I have today, I will focus on sexual violence in conflict. I have been truly honoured to lead the UK’s efforts in tackling this scourge on humanity over the past seven years. It involves evil and inhumane acts of rape, torture and human trafficking. I have witnessed such actions, from Iraq and the DRC to Bosnia and Myanmar, and seen the deep, irreparable scars that go way beyond the abhorrent acts of violence and stay with the victims.

The UNFPA reports that one-fifth of refugees, including IDPs, fall victim to sexual violence. Yet the courage and testimonies of the survivors and the children born of rape have inspired us. They not only survive but show us all the depths of their human resilience—I have experienced this directly, as have others—to fight back, as the report says. I join in my noble friend’s calls: I hope that the Government will take forward the recommendations of this excellent report.

The previous Government launched the Murad code, inspired by and in partnership with the incredible survivor, Nadia Murad, to protect survivor testimony. They committed to tackling stigma through the declaration of humanity; mobile courts for accountability; the establishment of the International Alliance on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict; and mechanisms to ensure, as the Save the Children report says, that perpetrators are held to account. I was honoured to lead those discussions; my noble friend also played a part in the set-up of the office of the under-secretary-general focused on children in armed conflict. Yet here we are, in 2024, with the children raped, tortured and trafficked in conflicts past still awaiting justice, their pains and anxieties compounded by what we all see on a daily basis: children being killed and tortured. We witness the 20,000 children abducted from Ukraine and live cases such as that of the four year-old girl I met in the DRC; she had been raped seven times but was being helped by the incredible Nobel laureate, Dr Mukwege.

I have a final word on children. The conflicts that the world sees not only have an impact on the children in those zones but leave deep impressions on the children of our own nation. As a father of three, I know that. It is my youngest, Faris, who has reminded me of this. Through his words of innocence—inspired by that most precious of commodities, hope—his hand-painted Ukrainian flag in 2022 and his more recent plea on seeing the daily devastation in Gaza, he has given me the same consistent, poignant message: “Daddy, please do all you can to save the children. Don’t let them die”.