Daesh Crimes: Accountability (JCHR Report)

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Joint Committee on Human Rights on its detailed and courageous report, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on bringing this debate. With others, I am sorry that he cannot be with us today. I, too, received the graphic photographs of his serious injuries.

The memory of the horrific crimes of Daesh, including genocide, is now fading from public consciousness. There have been so many challenging situations in the world in the past decade. However, the report makes clear that there is substantial unfinished business in respect of Daesh and the perpetrators. It has to be of widespread public concern that so few of the British citizens who perpetrated these atrocities have been brought to justice. I recognise the complexities of seeking to hold them to account before the law, as noble Lords have articulated, but the UK Government’s engagement does not compare well with prosecutions brought by other Governments and jurisdictions. I hope the Government and the new Foreign Secretary will be able to act on the clear recommendations in the report. We collectively need to find more effective ways of being alert to the risks of genocide, and responding to past offenders and bringing them to justice must be a key part of that.

Reading the report, I was particularly struck by the plight of the significant numbers of children who are detained with their parents in refugee camps in north-east Syria. The report identifies the serious risks to these children caused by the poor living conditions, as well as the risks of trafficking and radicalisation. We clearly have insufficient information about these forgotten children—their numbers, their whereabouts and the risks to them—but they are UK nationals, and they are surely innocent of any crime their parents have committed. Their plight is ongoing, and they deserve our attention and care.

Better information is a key next step here, so will the Government take steps to publish updated data on the number of Britons estimated to be detained in north-east Syria, with information disaggregated by age and gender, if that information is available? I ask the Minister: will the Government now support the call for more urgent fact-finding about the numbers and plight of these children? Will the Government be able to support more proactive attempts to repatriate these children, alongside continuing to seek to bring those who perpetuated the Daesh crimes to justice? What resources and energy are the Government prepared to commit to the task in the coming year?