Conflict Prevention

Debate between Simon Hughes and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Turner, for calling me to speak. Through you, I want to thank Mr Speaker for giving us this opportunity to debate the Government’s policy on conflict prevention. I also welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), to his place on the Front Bench today.

In the briefing that the House of Commons Library prepared for this debate, there is one particular article that summarises why I wanted us to have this debate, and my view is shared by the colleagues from other parties with whom I have the privilege of co-chairing the all-party group on conflict issues. I welcome the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) to the debate. Our third co-conspirator, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), cannot be with us this morning and sends his apologies. This debate is very much a cross-party initiative, rather than a personal one.

The particular article in the Library briefing that I want to start this debate by referring to is a BBC Online article from 11 April this year, headlined, “Aid spending should target conflict, World Bank urges”. It states:

“Poverty rates are 20% higher in countries hit by violence, so aid should target violence, the Bank says. The World Bank is recommending a major difference in the way aid is spent. A quarter of the world’s population live in states affected by conflict. In a report released on Monday, the World Bank says that there should be far more focus on building stable government, and on justice and police, than on health and education. The report says if there is not a major refocusing of aid in this direction, then other targets on poverty, health and education will not be reached. There is far more spent on alleviating the effects of conflict than preventing it from breaking out, and conflicts tend to be repeated. Ninety percent of recent civil wars occurred in countries that had already had a civil war in the last 30 years. The report found that cycles of violence were hard to stop, for example in South Africa and Central America. In Guatemala, twice as many people are dying now at the hands of criminals than died in the civil war in the 1980s. Poverty rates are 20 percentage points higher in countries affected by violence, but up to now, the World Bank found, there had been too little focus on ending corruption or reforming state institutions and justice systems. For instance, reform of justice was not one of the Millennium Development Goals...The report’s author Sarah Cliffe says this is the greatest development challenge facing the world. “It’s much easier for countries to get help with their militaries than it is with their police forces or justice systems, and much easier for them to get help with growth, health or education than it is with employment,” she says. “Our analysis would indicate that that should change.””

That is where I begin today and I am very grateful that, since the last election, the Government have made it clear that they give a great priority to conflict prevention. I am also very grateful to the Foreign Secretary who, when I have raised this specific issue with him on two occasions since the general election, has also made that clear, both generally—as a matter of strategy—and in relation to the initiative that he took recently to extend our diplomatic presence around the world. He said that those diplomatic missions would see conflict prevention as a key part of their work. So this is not a debate that has been called in order to rap the Government over the knuckles, but to encourage the trend in government, which began under the previous Government, to place a greater priority on conflict prevention for us as a country and for all the relevant partners in Government that work together on these issues. That means not only the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence.

A few years ago, at the prompting of people from outside this House to whom I now pay tribute, the all-party group on conflict issues was formed. I hope that it has already been effective, if only in a modest way, in bringing issues to the attention of the House and in opening up debates. Indeed, in Westminster Hall we have had debates on the legacy of Northern Ireland, and debates between representatives of Russia and Georgia. Recently, we have had two sessions involving young people from Israel and Palestine talking about their vision for the future.

The themes of those debates and sessions are recurrent. It is all too easy to respond militarily when something goes wrong and then to try to pick up the pieces. It is much more intelligent and much cheaper to intervene to prevent a country, community or part of the world from falling to pieces in the first place.

About a fortnight ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) and I were part of a delegation that visited Israel and the west bank. If ever anyone wanted an example of a legacy of desperate failure to prevent conflict, they only have to go to those places. Whatever the good work that we, DFID and the FCO do to try to reconstruct community and civil society in the west bank or in Gaza, it is—bluntly—a much taller order than it would have been if there had not been the years of conflict in the first place.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman for securing this debate and for examining conflict prevention in the round. I support the aspiration to achieve the aid target of 0.7% of Britain’s GNP. However, does he share my view that, just as aid is very important in promoting conflict prevention, so is the role of our armed forces? They could play a much greater role in conflict prevention. In fact, their role is to prevent conflict and not to engage in it. However, if they are under-resourced they will be less able to play that role.

[Simon Hughes]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about that point. I have a brother who is still working for the MOD and who has been in the Army in various parts of the world. However, it did not take him to remind me that it is more useful for the Army to stabilise a situation and to teach the skills of conflict avoidance and so on, than it is for it to engage in conflict. Sometimes conflict prevention is not perceived as being the dramatic work by the armed forces for which we pay our taxes, but it is both the most productive role of the armed forces and—frankly—the way that we can save not only the lives of people in faraway countries, such as Afghanistan, but in countries such as our own, including the lives of our service people who would otherwise pay a very high cost.

I also share my hon. Friend’s view that we not only need to have an ambition about the share of our national cake that we give to overseas development but that we need to have our armed forces fully committed to conflict prevention, as they want to be and as they increasingly have the skills to be.

I want to give one or two examples of how successful conflict prevention can be, if it is got right. They are examples of the work of the United Nations Development Programme which, since 2002, has assisted fragile countries to build resilience by strengthening what the UNDP calls “infrastructures for peace”. I commend the work of the UNDP’s Chetan Kumar, who has shown how extraordinarily efficient and effective very small financial contributions can be in transforming difficult situations. Let me give some examples of the UNDP’s success.

In Ghana in December 2008, there were rising tensions between different regions. Chieftaincy-related conflicts in parts of the country and the discovery of oil led to new tensions as the country approached national elections. When the elections were held, there was the narrowest margin of votes recorded in an African election—only 50,000 votes separated the winner and the loser. With tensions rising still further, the National Peace Council of Ghana, an autonomous and statutory national body that was established with assistance from the UNDP, helped to mediate a peaceful political transition. As part of Ghana’s peace infrastructure or peace architecture, regional and district peace councils are also being established.

Then there is the example of Togo in 2005, which shows that all this is not past history; it is very recent history. There were about 250 deaths in the 2005 national elections. However, in 2010 the establishment of a platform for political dialogue prior to the national elections and the ability of civic actors to conduct a sustained peace campaign led to a reduction in tensions and to peaceful elections, as well as to a stable post-electoral period. A code of conduct for political parties and a public peace campaign were developed and implemented with UNDP assistance. Further development included consolidation of a national peace architecture as a priority in 2011.

In Timor, between 2007 and 2009 the peace process that had followed the establishment of East Timor as an independent state nearly collapsed, after a massive return of refugees and internally displaced persons. With UN assistance, a network of community mediators was established; the mediators were trained and deployed; and other conflict resolution efforts enabled the return and resettlement of 13,000 families by 2010. The Government there are now working with the UNDP to establish a new department for peace building so that the country has its own standing internal mediation system.

In Kyrgyzstan, the UNDP facilitated dialogue between civil society, the electoral commission and security agencies.

In Kenya just last year, there was a constitutional referendum without a single violent incident, in contrast to elections just three years previously when 1,500 people were killed and 300,000 displaced. I am very conscious that the Foreign Office Minister here today, who has responsibility for Africa, takes an active interest in these matters. One reason for what happened last year was that, in advance of the referendum, the UNDP provided support for national efforts to reach a political agreement on the new draft constitution and helped to implement an early warning and response system that prevented violent incidents from cropping up, and local peace committees were strengthened in all districts of the country.

I could go on with examples, but we do not have the time so I shall give just two illustrations of the cost-benefit, which is also a consideration in times of straitened finances. Kenya’s leading business association assessed economic losses from post-election violence in 2008 as being $3.6 billion. In contrast, the 2010 constitutional referendum, which was plagued by similar tensions, did not see any violence, and the supported prevention effort cost only about $5 million. In Kyrgyzstan, the recovery costs from the inter-ethnic violence in mid-2010 were estimated to be $71 million, but the regional UN efforts to restore political and inter-ethnic confidence cost approximately only $6 million. I could go on, but I think that people understand my point.