Lord’s Resistance Army

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this important debate and I associate myself with what he and others said to the effect that Joseph Kony is unspeakably evil. He has been responsible for barbarity and causing human misery on a massive scale.

I would like to say a word or two about the power of the internet. The “Kony 2012” video by Jason Russell has done a great deal that is good. As others have said, it has brought the activities of the LRA and Joseph Kony to the attention of the world. It has had a substantial impact on millions of people, young people in particular, whose awareness of what has happened and interest in international politics has been awakened in a remarkable way. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that that is all to the good. However, we need to be careful because the video has undoubtedly caused some considerable offence in Africa, particularly in Uganda, because of its implication that Uganda now is associated with the horrors of what went on some years ago. The reality is that there has been great progress. The LRA has not been active in Uganda for some time. Its numbers are reduced and the northern region is now largely peaceful. It is important for peoples and government to develop a culture in relation to the internet that benefits from the increase in awareness that it brings but that is also more critical and less sensitive to internet publications. In that way, the best can be achieved and the worst can be avoided.

I join the noble Lord, Lord Bates, in calling for greater and broader support for the International Criminal Court. It is 10 years since the Rome statute established it. While the ICC has been hugely welcome, it has in many ways been a disappointing decade in terms of solid achievement. The conviction of the warlord Thomas Lubanga for coercion of children as soldiers has been its first success and is to be hugely welcomed, but it has been a long time coming.

In some ways, that has been the result of internal problems at the court and a lack of direction. It is to be hoped that the appointment of a dynamic new chief prosecutor in Fatou Bensouda will make a difference. It is also to be hoped that the ICC will widen the scope of its investigations to look at countries outside Africa, to which its attention has so far been largely directed. But the absence of important states—the United States, China and Russia—as signatories to the Rome statute has been and remains the principal difficulty facing the ICC and imperils its future success.

One reason for that is that if the ICC wishes to prosecute crimes by states not party—let us remember that Uganda and the DRC are both states party—the only route to prosecution is referral by the UN Security Council. With the United States, Russia and China as permanent members of the Security Council, such referrals are difficult to secure because unanimity is difficult to achieve. The normal route has been by the establishment of a commission of inquiry, as in Darfur and Libya, followed by a referral by the Security Council. There is room for diplomatic efforts to work on three fronts: first, to persuade non-signatories to join the Rome statute; secondly, to work within the United Nations to secure referrals from the UN Security Council; and, thirdly, to redouble efforts by the United Kingdom Government and other Governments to support the ICC in its work and to emphasise its importance.

To take two examples that I mentioned when the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, asked a Question of my noble friend last Thursday, it would, for instance, be a major step forward if we could secure referrals in respect of Myanmar and North Korea. Both countries have histories of well documented abuse of human rights by the regime. In Myanmar, where for many years the imprisonment and torture of political opponents of the regime has been routine, there are encouraging signs of progress. But that should not stand in the way of bringing the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice. In North Korea, the imprisonment of families of dissenters has led to the children of dissenters being imprisoned for the dissent of their parents.

These misdeeds should not be protected; their perpetrators should be pursued in the same way that Joseph Kony is now rightly being pursued. The role of the ICC is to work towards achieving that. Everything the international community and the United Kingdom Government can do to further that aim must be done.