Select Committee on International Development

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Stephen Twigg

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his passionate advocacy of the Rohingya cause. I know that his constituency contains a significant Rohingya diaspora community, on whose behalf he speaks. I agree that the Government’s approach needs to place greater emphasis on the protection of the Rohingya, and indeed other minorities in Burma—that was what we alluded to when we said that there was “over-optimism” about the pace of democratic reform in that country. I also agree that conditions simply are not yet there, and—to put it bluntly—are unlikely to be there in the foreseeable future, to allow any significant voluntary return of the Rohingya to Burma.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s report—he is a good friend—and I thank him for continuing the work that many of us have taken up on the Rohingya cause and for the work of his Committee in broadening out into various different areas. Does he agree that there are a series of problems in Burma, not least the multiple insurgencies involving different ethnic groups? Focusing on the Rohingya is essential not just because it speaks to Burma, but because it speaks to the wider problem of diaspora and refugee populations. Getting this right is essential, not just for solving the problems in Burma, but for addressing many of the other problems that arise in refugee situations around the world.

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank my hon. Friend, the hon. Gentleman who Chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I pay tribute to that Committee for the report it published late last year. We sought to develop and supplement that report, rather than repeat it, and the work of that Committee in describing this crisis as a crime against humanity was an important contribution to the debate. He is right: this crisis is important in its own right, but there are enormous lessons for situations in other parts of the world, including in parts of Africa where there is a massive displacement of people, and the world seems incapable of getting its solutions right.