Conflict Prevention

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) on securing this very important debate and the other hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber who participated in it. I refer the House to my relevant entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I congratulate the all-party group on conflict issues on its work, which has been discussed during the debate. From the Labour Front Bench, I very much support the suggestion of an annual debate in the House on conflict issues and conflict prevention and I welcome the suggestion of a seminar organised by the Foreign Office, which was made by a number of hon. Members.

I want to reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said about the current crisis in Sudan. After decades of conflict in that country, the comprehensive peace agreement—Britain played a central part in bringing that about—was designed to bring an end to the civil war and to prevent a return to conflict. As my hon. Friend graphically described, we have seen in recent weeks reports of up to 500,000 people being displaced as a result of fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and rebel groups in South Kordofan. That is a real and pressing example of the issues that we are dealing with in the debate. I will return to the issue of Sudan at the end of my speech.

The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark referred to the responsibility to protect. That is a very important principle, and we should remind ourselves where it came from. It came out of the horror of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The concept was developed by Roméo Dallaire, who was the UN commander in Rwanda in 1994. He is now a Liberal Senator in Canada, and Canada was at the forefront of the move for the UN to adopt that principle. A great deal of further work needs to be done to turn what is a fine principle in theory into something that can be made to work by the institutions of the world today.

As the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said, the Government will soon announce their building security overseas strategy. Today’s debate gives us an opportunity to consider some of the challenges and opportunities and to discuss the requirements of that pending strategy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) spoke about the causes of conflict. He rightly placed poverty and inequality at the heart of those causes. Therefore, development is clearly a central way in which we can prevent conflicts. I am very proud of the record of the previous, Labour Government in setting up the Department for International Development and starting us on the path towards finally achieving the 0.7% requirement. I welcome the present Government’s reaffirmation of that commitment. It is clearly vital that we all make the case for it in the face of the onslaught from sections of the media opposing that very important commitment, of which we as a country can be proud.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North spoke about the Congo. Last month, I had the opportunity to visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the first time and also to visit Rwanda with the all-party group on the great lakes region of Africa. The aim was to learn more about some of the challenges that my hon. Friend described. A feature of our growing aid programme is that the United Kingdom is an increasingly important contributor in that country. Some of the work that DFID is doing there is exactly the type of work that should prevent conflict in the future. It involves reconciliation and disarmament; addressing some of the horrific tales of rape and gender-based violence to which my hon. Friend referred; and dealing with the challenges in relation to natural resources. It also relates to how we can promote women’s participation. One of the most striking features of how we deal with conflict issues is that women need to be at the centre of the solutions, because women have so often been the victims of some of the worst extremes in the conflicts to which hon. Members have referred.

Others have described the importance of the conflict prevention pool, which the previous Labour Government created in 2009. I welcome the fact that the present Government have maintained it and, indeed, given a commitment despite cuts elsewhere to increase spending from £229 million—the figure for the previous financial year—to more than £300 million by the end of this Parliament.

The other place recently debated soft power, and the concept is clearly of central relevance if we are to prevent conflicts in the future. I am keen to hear from the Minister what role the Government see institutions such as the British Council and the BBC World Service playing in the promotion of conflict prevention tools. In February, I visited Jerusalem as part of a visit to Israel and the west bank, and I learned of the excellent work that the British Council is supporting with the Palestinian Authority to promote English language training throughout the west bank. I also met the brilliant organisation OneVoice and talked to young Palestinians in Nablus and young Israelis in Tel Aviv who were working together to build the two-state solution to which this country is committed, but which seems such a distant prospect.

Another important innovation in recent years has been the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, whose work I have seen in a number of countries. The foundation grew out of the end of the cold war and the need to support the development of democracy in central and eastern Europe. The Foreign Secretary has spoken about the foundation’s important role in supporting the development of democracy and human rights in the Arab world, and I would be interested to hear from the Minister what plans there are for the foundation in terms of preventing future conflicts.

One issue that has not been addressed is the importance of international justice in preventing conflict. The creation of the International Criminal Court has been an important achievement in recent years. Pursuing prosecutions at an international level of those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide can send a strong deterrent signal and prevent such acts from happening in the future. In Sudan, ICC indictments are currently directed at the current President, al-Bashir, as well as at Ahmad Harun and Ali Abd al-Rahman, who have so far evaded trial. What are the Government doing to support the indictment process so that a real emphasis can be placed on prosecution as a conflict prevention tool?

Is the Minister aware of the gap in the international legal system in terms of the prosecution of suspects accused of crimes against humanity? I would like to draw hon. Members’ attention to the work of the crimes against humanity initiative at the Whitney R Harris World Law Institute at Washington university, which seeks to address that gap. Currently, only 55 countries have domestic legislation covering prosecution for crimes against humanity, compared with more than 140 countries that have domestic laws against genocide and torture. Although the ICC is important, it has a narrow remit and it is limited by the number of countries that have not signed up to it. Will the Minister set out the Government’s thinking on the proposal to adopt an international convention on crimes against humanity?

Several hon. Members have emphasised the importance of arms control, and I support what they said. The hon. Member for Cheltenham rightly highlighted the serious shortcomings in the UK’s export licensing policy, which have been exposed by events in the middle east and north Africa. I welcome the Government’s decision to review arms export licensing policy, and I look forward to seeing the results shortly. What discussions have the Government had, however, on replicating that review at European level and, most importantly, globally? We can do a lot through domestic and European Union controls, but as my hon. Friends have said, we need global progress. The then Foreign Secretary under the previous Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), lobbied vigorously for commitments to a binding and comprehensive arms trade treaty. Since taking office, the present Government have sent delegations to the UN’s preparatory committee on the treaty. Will the Minister update us on the progress that has been made towards securing the goal of a binding and effective treaty?

Finally, I return to the issue that I started with: the crisis in the Nuba region of Sudan. In the past 24 hours, we have heard that the leaders of the north and south struck an agreement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, yesterday, and I cautiously welcome that. The agreement allows for the demilitarisation of Abyei and proposes a contingent of Ethiopian peacekeepers. Will the Minister outline the Government’s response to this latest development and their strategy for addressing the deep-rooted crisis in South Kordofan? On the basis of our experience in Darfur, there are real questions about the commitment of the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum to a genuine peace and reconciliation process. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said, there are immediate and pressing concerns about humanitarian access to the region. There is a fear that we find it hard to concentrate on a number of different crises at the same time. The Arab spring has rightly focused our attention, but the international community has perhaps taken its eye off the ball in Sudan. Let us hope that the agreement in Addis Ababa signals a positive move forward, but we need some serious reassurances if we are to accept that that is the case.

Again, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark on securing this important and wide-ranging debate. I echo what colleagues on both sides have said: clearly, it is better to prevent conflict than to end up spending large amounts dealing with its consequences. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points raised in the debate.