ISIL: Iraq and Syria

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, if I were to give such an undertaking, I would be undermining the work of our Armed Forces, the Peshmerga and the moderates who are fighting against the evil there because I would be making an assumption that further intervention of that nature was necessary, and necessary in a particular timescale, so I shall be overcautious and not do that. But I can say to the noble Baroness that my right honourable friends the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Secretary for International Development, together with the Prime Minister and those who meet in COBRA, are considering these matters almost daily. The noble Baroness has had a distinguished career herself as a Minister at the Ministry of Defence, and she will know that COBRA will look at every single nuance every time it meets, which appears to be almost every day. So we will be watching to see how this develops. However, it is not a matter of saying what we can do in one week, one month or even one year; it is going to be a very long haul, and the difficulty for all of us here in Parliament will be to ensure that we continue to engage the support of the British people in this long haul.

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

Would the Minister like to comment on whether anything can be done externally to alleviate the sufferings of women in the ISIL-dominated areas? They are all too real, although they are all too rarely discussed in the newspapers. This is a sickening aspect of everyday life under the regime.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, for raising this important issue. I have discussed this very matter with civil society groups, both in Geneva and here in London. I bear in mind the moving speeches made when we had the recall of Parliament by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and one or two others on this very point. I bear in mind that when women are attacked in war, it is rape, death, seeing your child beheaded or your partner or husband crucified. This is a weapon of war. Sexual violence is a weapon of war being used by ISIL. It signifies what barbarians they are. When people start to wane in their support when the tabloids perhaps start to take some of these stories off the front page, we need to remind them what life is really like for families and for women in these crisis-hit areas.