Conflict Prevention

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Thank you for calling me so early, Mr Turner.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) for proposing this debate, which is important, timely and supported by what I might call a broad coalition. The contribution of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) was welcome as well.

My right hon. Friend was right to refer to the BBC Online article, which pointed out the economics of conflict. In addition, the Secretary of State recently quoted Professor Paul Collier from Oxford university, who described conflict as “development in reverse”, and he cited some astonishing statistics:

“a civil war is estimated to cost a low income country an average of about 64 billion US dollars. In other words, the cost of a single conflict is more than half of the value of annual development aid worldwide.”

He also pointed out that

“the higher a country’s GDP per capita, the lower the risk of internal war. A typical post-conflict country with no economic growth has a 42% risk of returning to conflict within ten years. But with 10% growth, the risk declines to 29%.”

The issues of development and conflict are intertwined.

That was also my experience when working for Oxfam for some years. We saw conflict adding to poverty and destroying infrastructure in health, education and transport, often driving the most skilled people in a country into exile or displacement, or getting them killed, and disrupting the education, employment and training of everyone else. Conflict disrupts economies, normal politics and civil society, it wrecks agriculture and it destroys the ability of countries to support themselves. Clearly, we have common ground in that any money spent or effort made by the Government and other Governments internationally to prevent conflict must be well done.

Part of the question concerns how the money is spent. Most obvious is peacekeeping, but in one sense that is intervention at the point of failure. In effect, events have developed so far that we need soldiers on the ground and enormous effort to retrieve a situation. Other things help to fuel a conflict that is potential or just breaking out, and the arms trade is the single most important one. We must also look deeper, at the sources of tension and conflict, which are commonly social, religious, ethnic and political. Increasingly, especially with the impact of climate change, conflict will be over resources. I must echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, who talked about our recent trip to Israel and Palestine, where we can see every single one of those different elements of conflict fuelling each other and adding to a toxic mix, making us most concerned for the future of that region.

I therefore very much welcome the Government’s mapping out an increasing amount of spending in what is called the conflict pool budget, which has risen from £229 million last year to £256 million this year, and will reach £309 million by 2014-15. Part of the conflict pool—about £76 million—is devoted to peacekeeping. On top of that, a separate peacekeeping budget now consists of £374 million, so something like two thirds of what is being spent annually by the Government goes on peacekeeping. Yet that, in a sense, is intervention at the point of failure, so perhaps we need to look at how much of the focus ought to be on anticipating and preventing conflict in the first place.

Even if we break down the remaining money in the conflict pool, which is spent on conflict resolution, discretionary peacekeeping—yet more peacekeeping—and stabilisation activities, including the excellent work, which I strongly commend, of the cross-departmental Stabilisation Unit, the countries on which that money is focused are a list of war zones and former war zones: Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and, slightly more distant, Lebanon and Cyprus. That is right because, as discussed, the risk of recurrence is high in regions that have already had conflict, but if we are to have a theme of anticipation and prevention, perhaps there is room for exploring where else the strategy needs to go.

My noble friend Lord Ashdown’s recent report on humanitarian aid and assistance emphasised the importance of building anticipation and resilience before emergencies strike. We need the same approach, if possible, in conflict prevention. We need the tools to build resilience to conflict. I would like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark to commend Saferworld’s briefing on this debate to Ministers, including its points about emphasising the context of each country, as well as the point made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) about focusing conflict prevention efforts strongly on people’s experience.

Saferworld made those good points, and I would add that we should look for countries in which there is systematic denial of human rights and democracy, which is often the source of conflict. In his recent address to both Houses of Parliament, President Obama drew an interesting lesson from the experience of the Arab spring, which was exactly right. He pointed out that the west collectively had been supporting some tyrannical regimes that had given the impression of being stable. He said that

“repression offers only the false promise of stability”,

and that it puts a lid on conflict and often suppresses legitimate democratic, ethnic, political and even religious aspirations to the point where there is eventually an explosion. It would be good if the Government looked at a slightly more anticipatory approach with an eye on human rights and democracy.

It is excellent that the Government are developing the so-called BSOS, the building stability overseas strategy, and we must build into it and pay particular attention to institution-building, human rights, and particularly the rights of minorities and marginalised groups who are not part of the mainstream in each society. We need an anticipatory approach.

It is also excellent that in BSOS and many other policy areas that I mentioned we see three Departments—the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development —working closely together. Ministers should be commended on the extent to which there is a cross-departmental approach to many of the issues. Clearly, when there is an opportunity to join up, that is more effective and often more cost-effective. The one thing I would add is that the same lesson also applies at European level, and if we can join up and co-ordinate our stabilisation efforts with other European countries and, indeed, the European Union as a whole, we may have an even more effective and cost-effective approach. Nowhere is that more true than in the case of the arms trade, where an international approach is necessary.

It is right that the Government are pressing on towards an arms control treaty, which is vital, but it is also important to look at what environmentalists might call domestic effort. The steps that the Government have already taken are welcome in the wake of the Arab spring, or the Arab awakening as some people are now calling it. They have instituted a review of their arms export licences, and have already revoked 160. The list of licences that had been issued—sadly, that was under the previous Labour Government—is a cautionary tale. Although human rights and repression were supposed to be part of the criteria, we sold arms to almost every regime in the middle east, including the former regime in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We were selling not just small arms, parts or communications technology, but tear gas, and something described as crowd control ammunition. I cannot conceive how that could be used peacefully and democratically.

I strongly welcome the revocations, and I urge the Foreign Office to consider making the current review of the arms control and the arms trade licence regime as robust as possible. It has been done in a hurry, and although it was right to do it quickly in response to events, I would welcome a more inclusive and wider review. Various right hon. and hon. Members have made the point that if we are to prevent conflict, we need an anticipatory approach. Many good suggestions have been made during the debate for enhancing the role and profile of conflict prevention, and there is a real opportunity for the coalition to show great leadership and to gain widespread support.