Sexual Violence in Conflict (Select Committee Report)

Lord Bates Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, like many Members who have spoken, I attended the global summit in 2014, convened by my noble friend Lord Hague. I attended a seminar hosted by the charity War Child. There our host, who led the proceedings, was a very impressive, well-spoken, British young lady. She began by sharing the fact she was born on Christmas Day 1992. I could see that people were flicking through the pages of the agenda and checking their emails. I confess I was one of them. She continued, “That was in Sarajevo in Bosnia during the war. My mother had been subjected to repeated sexual violence in a concentration camp. I was the result of this”.

She later went on to explain how her mother said she could not bear to hold her when she cried. “She wanted to strangle me,” she told others later, “so much was the trauma that lived on so long after the violence had passed”. She then explained how she had been adopted by a wonderful couple of British journalists who raised and educated her here in the UK.

As she sat down there was stunned silence. I remember thinking why that was. We had heard that all these things had happened; we had seen the videos and read the reports. That was why we were there: because we wanted to do something about it. Perhaps it was that we felt not just sympathy, but empathy with her, because this was someone who could have been our daughter, our sister, our granddaughter. It seemed to personalise the crime in a way we had not anticipated, but it also showed how sexual violence in war is a different category of crime that reached into future generations to destroy lives.

Moreover, where some victims of conflict—especially those involved in military organisations—may be regarded as heroes when they are injured, with sexual violence there is an insidious stigma and shame that perversely and bewilderingly falls on the victims rather than the perpetrators, as so many have said. Surely the first step to changing behaviour is therefore to ensure the perpetrators are labelled with cowardice and shame for such acts, and that victims and survivors are given the support they need to rebuild their broken lives.

This is why it is so important that this report has been prepared. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Nicholson, to all members of the committee for the thorough work they have done, and to my noble friend Lord Hague for courageously bringing this out of the shadows and shining a light on it to the international community. I also recognise the immense and ongoing work in this area by my noble friend the Minister, who is the Prime Minister’s special representative on preventing sexual violence.

I have just three comments or questions that I hope may add in some way to an outstanding report and to the encouraging response from the Government that we are debating this evening. First, it is very clear from the moving testimony of survivors in chapter 8 of the report the importance they attached to being able to talk openly about their feelings on what had happened to them and to overcoming the misplaced stigma, shame and so-called victim-blaming that often accompanies these crimes. The Department for International Development has done some important work on this, yet paragraph 82 of the Government’s response suggests that such services should be provided on a voluntary basis and only through informed consent. That raises a question as to how people were able to receive information to allow them to make an informed statement about consent and access to such services. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister could say something on that, not in the winding-up speech, but perhaps in a letter following the debate.

Secondly, there is a need for justice to be done and to be seen to be done. The recent prosecution of the Congolese MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo at the International Criminal Court in March was a major step forward. Interestingly, the committee focused on one particular country—Iraq—to ask the Government to urge it to accede to the Rome statute, which the Government say they will do. But why stop there? What about the three permanent members of the UN Security Council—Russia, China and the United States—which have yet to ratify the Rome statute? What about other major influential states such as Turkey, India and Saudi Arabia? Should not pressure be placed on them, too? The best hope for reducing the level of violence is to have international systems of agreed laws with agreed justice systems to uphold them. It is deeply disappointing that countries are prepared to sign up to UN Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888, 2242 and 2272 condemning sexual violence in conflict and then to withhold support from the very institution charged by the UN with investigating and upholding them.

The report sets out for the Government the clear and bold long-term aim of ridding the world of the scourge of sexual violence in conflict, yet surely the best way to stop war crimes is to stop war, under whose dark cover such acts are carried out: to end the scourge of sexual violence in conflict by ending the scourge of violence in conflict itself. Instead of spending our time picking up the pieces of broken lives, we can do more to help keep them intact. The preamble to the Charter of the United Nations, presented to its first General Assembly across the road from us in Methodist Central Hall, sets out the determination,

“to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war … and … to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women … and … to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations … can be maintained”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hague, said, we have all the words and the protocols—we even have the institutions—but the question is: do we have the will?