Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Wakefield Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Wakefield]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate. In my maiden speech in this House I spoke on the United Nations doctrine of responsibility to protect. As the debate proceeded, it was clear that human rights stand at the centre but never in an individualist sense of that word. In other words, we are talking about not my rights but rather the rights of all humankind seen in social solidarity.

Some 15 years ago, with the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, I remember looking with others for ways of safeguarding entire communities at the height of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. That is, of course, still a part of the world where these tensions remain latent. More recently, in September I delivered to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a letter addressed to the Prime Minister and signed by a coalition of some 30 Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops, and by Jewish rabbis. The initiative was taken by Vava Tampa and the Save the Congo Campaign. Those of us with long memories will know that the Congo has been a human disaster area for more than half a century—ever since independence. The situation in the Congo amounts to a permanent state of crisis with ever renewed spates of atrocity. It requires concerted international effort to counter this.

In the light of those issues, and particularly with the comments of the Foreign Secretary on a foreign policy with conscience, this debate is timely. That concept of a policy with conscience has a long history, under different names. It brings into focus both national enlightened self-interest and a concern that the more powerful nations have a responsibility to defend those who are weaker, especially when human rights are flagrantly ignored or even despised. In his recent book reviewing a selection of British Foreign Secretaries in the past 200 years, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, pointed to two contrasting approaches. The first was rather more swashbuckling and interventionist and the second was more reactive or responsive. My instinct is that in the context of this debate we are looking for a responsive approach, tempered by both conscience and a proper political pragmatism. It echoes that stamp of Christian realism established by the American theologian and political theorist Reinhold Niebuhr.

The Congo focuses that dilemma most sharply at present. In his reply to the coalition of religious leaders that I led recently to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Prime Minister stated unequivocally that,

“human rights abuses, sexual violence and impunity continue to threaten civilians on a daily basis in the DRC”.

He outlined some of the efforts that Her Majesty’s Government are making at present. These crucial efforts have, happily, continued throughout both the present and previous Administrations in Britain.

This debate also follows closely on from the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, focusing world attention on the endemic levels of rape and violence against women in the Congo. The use of rape to punish, displace or destroy women and communities in times of conflict has been well documented in recent conflicts around the world. The catastrophic abuse of an individual’s body is used to discipline or consistently undermine the social body. Fear produces control. The rape of women allows for the rape of a country and the taking of its easily appropriable natural resources by destroying the social fabric. The question is one of education and of teaching people to lay hold of their rights. Women human rights defenders are, as the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission’s recent report Supporting Women Human Rights Defenders says, some of the most effective campaigners, and they need our support.

I welcome the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission’s recommendations based on the doctrine of the responsibility to protect. It is a responsibility placed not only on Governments and international bodies but requiring something from every one of us. It is a common responsibility based on a common humanity.

None of this is easy, of course. Indeed, it cannot be transformed immediately into a foreign policy which is both effective in combating brutality, human rights abuses and genocide without direct military intervention. Earlier I referred to a responsive approach tempered by both conscience and a proper political pragmatism. This will require initially intelligent and politically targeted diplomacy. It will also mean similarly targeted approaches to aid.

The situation in the Congo makes it only too plain that the continuing catastrophe is made worse by the collusion, and even intervention, of some neighbouring states. Her Majesty’s Government are clearly aware of this and I would press for an even greater recognition of the need to put pressure on other states. I am glad to pick up the image used by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich—that of stick and carrot. The stick will, I hope, be diplomacy and not military intervention; the carrot will be careful placing of aid programmes. Ultimately, there may tragically be the need for a military intervention, but that can happen only when it is prosecuted by an internationally legitimate authority. In most cases this will be the United Nations following through its responsibility to protect—the place from which I began.

Looking back to the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson reflected:

“During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what”,

Great Britain,

“would do on every occasion. It was to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived”.

I hope that is not a comment that a statesman should ever make of Britain today.