Lord Bishop of St Albans
Main Page: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020
Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts
The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]
My Lords, I too agree that there are occasions when these Magnitsky sanctions may be the best available option to us. However, the increased use of such sanctions is a worrying sign that the organs of international arbitration such as the UN or the ICJ may be losing their effectiveness. These were the very institutions established in response to the tit-for-tat foreign policy that defined the 19th and early 20th centuries, with all their resulting catastrophes.
Our Government are a big advocate of the concept of “Global Britain”, an ambiguous phrase that sometimes means leading as a force for good in the world but at other times is simply a declaration that Britain is open for international business. My concern is that these conflicting visions of global Britain are sometimes mutually exclusive, and that when dealing with human rights abuses there may be a tendency to take the route of least domestic economic disruption.
Magnitsky can even play into this tendency, allowing us to feel that we have acted morally without incurring any costs and often failing to improve the situation. For example, I am not aware of any evidence that the sanctions placed on Chinese officials linked to Uighur human rights abuses have improved the situation in Xinjiang province. Our annual £80 billion total trade with China remains undisrupted. Harsher sanctions were placed on Belarus for the forced landing of a flight and subsequent arrest of a journalist—compared to China’s systematic programme of sterilisation, detention and re-education of the Muslim Uighurs. It is not insignificant that Belarus accounts for less than 0.1% of UK trade, compared to 6.8% for China. Is it not time for the Government to be honest and admit that the pursuit of global trade and investment opportunities can sometimes clash with their obligation to protect human rights? In other words, when it comes to global Britain, the Government cannot have their cake and eat it too.
Magnitsky sanctions will remain a useful tool, but I believe that they should be used selectively. If they are to be really effective, we need to work with allies continually, monitoring the effectiveness of these sanctions and ensuring that they are both based on transparent and objective criteria and applied absolutely thoroughly, not simply when it suits our economic interests. At the same time, the Government must do all they can to reboot the ICJ and support international law, backed up by all sanctions available to us.