Lord Alderdice
Main Page: Lord Alderdice (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, we are all in the debt of the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, not only for bringing this opportunity for us to debate the question of the responsibility to protect and how things have gone in the past 10 years, but for, characteristically, introducing it with a very thoughtful, impressive and passionate speech. He is very committed to these issues, but he is also extremely knowledgeable about them, and he brings creative thinking to our debate on this issue, as on others.
Sometimes when we have a 10th anniversary debate, it is a celebration of how well things have gone. My sense is that the noble Lord has not brought this debate to us today for that reason, but rather because the situation 10 years on, is much worse. Those of us who saw the “Dispatches” programme last night on the situation of the 4 million women living under the aegis of ISIS will have been troubled all night with the thought of what is happening to many young—and, indeed, older—women across the whole of the region, but particularly in the areas controlled by ISIS.
Increasingly over the past few days, we have heard of a worsening situation in Burundi, a part of the world where we had hoped up until a few years ago that things were improving. There are lots of other smaller but chronic problems all around. In your Lordships’ House, we have often looked at the situation of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. In many such situations, we cannot really look at the last 10 years and say that the situation has improved. Many noble Lords have referred to them, starting with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, himself. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, referred to the question of sexual violence and the use of rape in the context of war, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, pointed up to us that we must be not only aware of the importance of intervening but careful that we do not make things worse when we intervene.
As we look back at the question of the responsibility to protect—all of us applaud the work of Kofi Annan and of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which helped to bring all this about—we must ask ourselves whether we have been taking the right line with enough energy. If it is not possible to persuade the United Nations to take full responsibility at the level of the Security Council—the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, with his unparalleled experience of that organisation, has pointed up some of the difficulties there—let us think about how we can approach this question in a more effective way.
First, there has been a tendency to think about the question in the context of international law—a much more uncertain concept than its name suggests. When we think about international law, we think about it as an international extension of domestic law, where we have courts, the administration of justice, policing, capacity to imprison people who do not obey the criminal law, and so on. Many of those things are only partially effective or simply ineffective at international level. I was happy to see that the noble Lord had couched his Motion in terms of an international norm rather than international law. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, talked about a doctrine of responsibility to protect. That is important, because, in a sense, we are trying to establish some moral authority and precedent for the approach, rather than thinking about international law.
The second problem is that we have increasingly seen the question in terms of military intervention. It is clear that there are situations where military intervention is appropriate, but right from its beginning, ICISS said that we must be careful about taking such action. First, the intention had to be right, which is not always the case. Secondly, military intervention had to be a last resort, not a first one. The intervention also had to be proportional and have reasonable prospects for success. It is not easy to find that some of the worst problems that we face fulfil all those requirements. That is why the international commission pointed up that there were a number of components to the responsibility to protect. One was the responsibility, in so far as possible, to prevent. Much can be done beyond military intervention to try to prevent some atrocities. Secondly, there is a responsibility to react, but the reaction in terms of military intervention is often limited. Thirdly, there is a responsibility to rebuild. That can be done on a multilateral basis, but it can also be done by an individual country. I want to pick up on some of those issues.
If we take the focus away for the moment from what we can do militarily—the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has pointed out some of the positives and problems of that—and look at other ways in which we can promote the responsibility to protect, we may come away with more options, rather than simply be depressed about the fact that it has not been very effective over the past 10 years. When we look at situations where it has been invoked and we have engaged, such as in Libya, it is harder by the month to feel that all has worked out well. Of course, as noble Lords have pointed out, it was not just the intervention but the follow-up that was the problem—perhaps more of a problem.
What other possibilities can we see? First, if we are trying to express a doctrine, a norm, a moral imperative, then getting it across to the vast mass of people is very important. We want our young people to grow up with a sense of responsibility to protect others in their community, in the wider country and in the wider world, and to say that, “I am my brother’s keeper. I have a responsibility to people in other places”. This is especially important in the present climate because, with a climate of fear that extends throughout the world, people tend to turn into themselves and say, “We’ll just look after ourselves; the problems out there are too big”.
How do we get across to our young people this moral imperative to be responsible in one’s relationships with other people? It seems to me that we need to focus more not just on our ordinary educational involvement but on the use, for example, of social media—engaging young people in debate and discussion on these kinds of questions. How much time, thought and resource are being given by those responsible, particularly in the Foreign Office, for ensuring that our young people are looking at the wider world with a greater sense of how they can be responsible in their attitudes, and that this is being done not just by putting ever more burdens on our teachers but by engaging, for example, in social media?
In passing, I want to refer to the question of Latin America and, of course, as others have done, to the sterling work over many years of the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, on Latin America and other things. We are sad to see him go but we thank him for his great public service in your Lordships’ House and outside. We wish him well in his retirement and in continuing to keep in contact with us. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, said that this was not so much applicable to Latin America, one of the worrying things for me has been that some of the big countries in Latin America, such as Brazil, have not seen the need to shoulder responsibility to help in the United Nations with promoting the notion of responsibility to protect. It should not just be a reaction; it should be about developing a sense that responsibility to protect is something that as a wider community we should all share. I wonder whether some of the new conflict security fund should perhaps go to help in education.
The responsibility to rebuild seems to me also to involve how we care for the victims who come out of these situations—for example, young people from this country who have foolishly and mistakenly gone to Syria or Iraq and have come back again. My experience is that the security services are more concerned to make sure that these young people are not a danger to us than they have been to care for them and look after them when, in fact, engaging with them in a caring way could well make these young people the best ambassadors against ISIS with the sort of young people who might be most vulnerable. It seems to me that we have been too cautious rather than properly engaging in helping these folk. I know from my own part of the world that the failure to agree some kind of overarching instrument for dealing with the past has meant that we have not dealt properly with the needs of individual people whom we could have helped without any problem politically.
Finally, there is the question of the funding and resourcing of the Foreign Office. It is impossible for us to do the kinds of diplomatic things we need to do and the engagement we need to be involved in if we do not have a properly resourced Foreign Office. I understand entirely the need for efficiency, but we have come to the point where the drive for efficiency has now affected and impacted adversely on the effectiveness of our Foreign Office. Noble Lords often say what a wonderful Rolls-Royce service it is. I increasingly hear from people in other parts of the world that the Foreign Office is no longer able to do the kinds of things that the rest of the world values enormously. If we are not going to focus on military interventions, as we often should not, we have to provide proper resources not just for DfID, although that is very important, but for the Foreign Office to do the kinds of diplomatic work that we need it to do if we are to be effective in this way.
Again, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, who has given us an opportunity not only to think in this debate, but to continue to think about the engagement and involvement in our own country and with other countries in exercising our responsibility to protect others.