Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 26 November (HL11347), whether they will now answer the question asked, namely what representations they have made to the government of Iraq about the finding of the report of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Unearthing Atrocities: Mass Graves in territory formerly controlled by ISIL, published on 6 November, that that the Mass Graves Directorate has an insufficient number of experts to meet current needs.

The UK is unable to independently and accurately verify the United Nations’ assessment on numbers of civilian deaths, injured persons and mass graves in Iraq. However, we believe that the task of locating mass graves and holding perpetrators to account is not an issue for Iraq alone but one of global concern, which is why the UK led on UNSCR 2379 to establish a team (UNITAD) to collect evidence of Daesh crimes in order to hold members of Daesh to account for their actions.

We have not made an assessment on staffing in the Iraqi Mass Graves Directorate, but we are pressing the Government of Iraq to work closely with the UN’s Investigative Team for the Accountability of Daesh, as well as non-governmental organisations and other bodies working on this issue. The issue of mass graves in previously Daesh held territory was also discussed in my recent meeting with Karim Khan QC who is the Special Advisor to UNITAD. He informed me that both UNITAD and the Iraqi Government will be visiting the first of these sites shortly.