Eritrea and Ethiopia

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, for his comprehensive and challenging analysis and assessment. I will make some general remarks and then one or two specific points.

This complex situation is partly because the region is very unstable and there is a lot of movement from both of these countries to Saudi Arabia and the Yemen, as well as to Europe. Such an unstable context requires some big picture approaches. Then there is the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has clearly explained. That complexity makes a neat solution very difficult.

We have heard something of the human rights abuses. We need to put firmly on record in this House the particular suffering of women and girls, not least through military service, through trying to avoid military service by escaping into marriage and getting married at a very young age. There is also the problem of religious freedom in Eritrea. The constitution there guarantees religious freedom but only four groups are allowed to worship—Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Sunni Muslims and Lutheran evangelicals. Any mature country in that region needs to honour the spirituality and aspirations of its citizens.

We are told that 4,000 people a month are fleeing from Eritrea into Ethiopia, which further complicates the dynamic between the two countries. Because many who flee are women and children and unaccompanied minors, they are ripe for what we call human trafficking. Many of them are picked up and exploited by labour gangs for sexual slavery and even for body parts. The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, spoke of their sheer desperation and desire to escape. In Matlock, in the Peak District of Derbyshire, you might think that you could not be further from Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, when a couple who had driven back from the continent in a campervan arrived in Matlock, out from underneath crawled a refugee. He had had a desperate experience and was shaking, crying and happy to be turned in to the police. This tragic vignette illustrates the issue.

I am privileged to be a trustee of Christian Aid, which, along with CAFOD, is working on the ground in Ethiopia. It has been there for 30 years. It started by engaging with emergency work and is now doing very important development work with HIV, malaria, maternal and child care and especially the safeguarding of the rights of women and girls and of their educational development. I tell noble Lords that in part because it is a sign of hope, but Christian Aid—and possibly CAFOD, too—does not work in the north of Ethiopia or in Eritrea. It cannot get access to do that voluntary work; often we can work with partners on the ground, growing capacity, but Eritrea and the north of Ethiopia is a no-go territory because of the chaos. That means that the partnership that government can often assume from the voluntary and faith sector is not able to operate, which is a further challenge and complexity.

The number of migrants we experience in western Europe is simply a cry for help, showing us the scale and seriousness of government malfunction and the complexity of the history we are looking at. Therefore, there has to be an approach that is not just bilateral, with these countries trying to work with their difficult histories and tensions. Rather, we have to ask our Government to work with the EU, the UN and through the Foreign Office, and to try not just to look at the political possibilities but to engage with the voluntary and faith sectors to work with the desperate need on the ground, especially in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, where there is all that suffering and no real access to giving help.

Therefore, I will be interested if the Minister can comment on the overall strategy and on how working with Europe and the UN might give some hope, besides bilateral things; on any representations on honouring religious freedom in Eritrea; and on how voluntary and faith groups might assume the partnership they often have with Governments in other needy areas to offer some offer support and development on the ground within the context of that complex political situation.