My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to propose, for your Lordships’ consideration, a statutory mandate for the prevention of and response to genocide and atrocity crimes. Instances of mass atrocity violence—war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing—are not just rising but are spiralling around the world.
I am the director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, and I have spent time with, and campaigned alongside, survivors of atrocity violence, from Yazidi women in Syria and the Uighur communities in exile from China, to the women and human rights defenders of Afghanistan, and many others. Their stories are a glaring testament to the collective failure to stand resolute in the face of atrocity crimes and hold accountable those who continue to perpetrate this kind of identity-based violence.
I have been helped in all my work by a wonderful team at the International Bar Association’s institute, particularly by Dr Ewelina Ochab, who helped in the drafting of this Bill. I have also been assisted by another great group of people, led by Dr Kate Ferguson, who runs an operation called Protection Approaches, which is concerned with foreign affairs.
Of today’s major and emerging foreign policy crises, the vast majority—from Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Israel and Palestine to Myanmar and Xinjiang—are driven by violent targeting of civilian groups based on their identities. If left unchecked, the global propellants of prejudice and inequality, climate collapse, the retreat from liberal democracy, and the great changes in technology, as we see in social media and so on, mean that identity-based mass atrocity crimes will multiply over the next decade. Of that I am sure. We are already seeing it happening.
At the same time, growing disregard for international law, for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and our collective responsibilities to prevent and protect, has ushered in an age of impunity. We have failed, time and again, in the face of these grave crimes, and as a consequence our world—indeed, our nation—is less safe and becoming less so. Impunity begets impunity.
Regrettably, these crimes have deep consequences. Perpetrators commit genocide and crimes against humanity because they work; they fulfil the dreadful political objectives of their architects. It is not a nice fact, but it is a true one. It is past time that we, and our Government, accept it. For too long, the reluctance to do so has created a strategic and moral deficit in government policy.
This Bill would move towards filling that gap. Anchored by a statutory mandate and, importantly, bolstered by political leadership and strategic vision, properly prioritising atrocity prevention could see the UK lead the world on preventing violence and protecting civilians. It would re-energise commitments to international humanitarian law and rehabilitate Britain’s battered reputation on the global stage, which has happened as a result of our pulling away from our international obligations.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and I congratulate her on her work and initiative. The Bill, as I understand it, is an important step forward which would boost His Majesty’s Government’s capabilities to implement their obligations under the genocide convention and is in line with the Government’s duty to prevent genocide.
If the Government are to implement their duty to prevent genocide, they must have comprehensive mechanisms to enable them to monitor early-warning signs and risk factors of atrocities to come. The issue of early-warning signs and risk factors of atrocities to come has been discussed in this House on many occasions. Time after time, we have raised the issue that the Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers—a message that should be ingrained in HMG’s laws and policies on genocide and atrocity crimes. However, sometimes this message is ignored, so I shall repeat it again: the Holocaust did not start with gas chambers. It started with hate speech; it started with dehumanising of Jews; it started with policies and laws that discriminated against Jews. It started with attacks on Jews—their places of worship, shops and places of work. It started with impunity for such acts. It started with all these warning signs and risk factors that may have been seen as irrelevant, but they were not—early-warning signs are never irrelevant.
How shocking it is that, today, on Friday 22 March 2024, we see on page 13 of the Daily Mail the following two headlines. The first is, “Jewish Boy mistreated by pro-Palestine nurses on NHS hospital ward in Manchester”. Secondly, next to a picture, is the caption: “Was this terrifying house blaze in east London an anti-Semitic attack?”. I repeat that this was on 22 March 2024.
Let us look at the harm that misinformation can bring about. Sadly, social media and mainstream news outlets, including elements of the UK Government, could be complicit because of the spread of lies about what is happening in Gaza. I shudder to think what Joseph Goebbels would have done with social media.
My Lords, as we have heard, having ratified the UN convention against genocide, the UK has a treaty obligation to prevent genocide wherever and whenever it is threatened. However, too often this does not happen. It is worth while examining the reasons why and seeking answers.
As it stands, this admirable Bill has only a faint chance of being adopted by the Government. Here, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for her unceasing efforts to uphold human rights. The Bill asks for considerable resources, and touches on economic and diplomatic interests of states parties to the convention. It puts forward some clear and doable mechanisms to detect, acknowledge and act upon the early indicators of genocide which are, by now, well researched; it is cost effective, certainly in terms of saving human lives.
It is, to say the least, disingenuous to believe that Governments are unaware of the potential for genocide or the early warning signs. Going back to the Rwanda massacres in April 1994 and Srebrenica in July 1995, there were clear indications. For example, in the case of Rwanda, the widely popular Mille Collines radio station virtually spelt out its genocidal plans in lightly coded messages, including references to the Hutus as “cockroaches”. Furthermore, genocidal tribal attacks had occurred with depressing regularity in that region of Africa. In Srebrenica, the rounding up of 750,000 Muslim men and boys and the sudden departure of the UN forces made massacres inevitable, but events leading up to this terrible development were obvious.
The UK, like many other countries, has been deeply reluctant to act. It is said that the US officials in Rwanda were ordered not to use the term “genocide”, precisely because to do so immediately implied the obligation to act. The UK Government have consistently referred any threat of genocide to the courts to determine the application of the genocide convention. More than anything else, Governments are fearful of stepping out alone, or being seen as stepping out alone, in the absence of strong support from allies and member states.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, on her speech and her tireless efforts in the area. She shines a light and that it is very important. I pay tribute to the Minister, who is also no slouch in this area; I know he makes considerable efforts to do what he can. I hope we are going to hear some very good Foreign Office reasons as to why we are going to take the legislation forward rather than why we are not going to take it forward, and I look forward to his speech.
I hope the Minister can be persuaded that this small but significant piece of legislation—small in length and minimal in cost—will help provide a massive boost to the prevention of atrocities and genocide. It will provide a laser-like focus on the efforts of His Majesty’s Government, which have consistently provided a powerful lead on such matters, as is consistent with our history, our leading international role, our status as a permanent member of the Security Council and as a leading player on the world stage.
In the US, there is a similar provision. In her opening speech, the noble Baroness referred to Elie Wiesel and the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018; that US legislation is very similar to what the noble Baroness is suggesting we have here in the UK.
That legislation has helped identify likely atrocities in a host of countries, working alongside the UK on occasion—for example, in Ukraine and in Myanmar. It has also provided the ability to highlight atrocities in the People’s Republic of China, northern Ethiopia, South Sudan and so on. The United States is committed to promoting respect for human rights and atrocity prevention, and we should be doing the same as a core national interest. Surely we can take up that baton.
My personal interest in this policy area comes from when I was Minister for Faith in what is now the levelling up department. I took an active role in this policy area, for example, in honouring the Holocaust memorial—I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Polak for his powerful speech today—but also later, as president of Remembering Srebrenica. Taking up that role, alongside Dr Waqar Azmi, who provided inspirational leadership in this area—and still does—I recall a seminal visit to Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which demonstrated to me that genocide does not just suddenly happen; its roots are deep. This is important, as is the essence of prevention and getting in early to do something.
My Lords, before I begin, I offer my great thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for introducing this piece of legislation, which is quite admirable. Given the brickbats that were being directed at her in the last debate, I hope that my words of thanks will offer some help in that moment, and also my word of congratulations on the signal honour she received last week.
I speak in support of this Bill as one deeply scarred by my experience as Britain’s Permanent Representative on the UN Security Council during the periods of the Rwanda and the Srebrenica genocides. The UN—and we, an important participant in that body—failed to do anything effective then to prevent those genocides, although we did set up the tribunals that brought to justice their perpetrators. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for what he has done in recent years to ensure that the horrible experience of Srebrenica is not forgotten. Whatever one says about those two events, we really must do better now.
The Bill before us does not attempt to name any genocides, either those already perpetrated or those at risk of being so. That, in my view, is extremely wise. The term “genocide” is at some risk of being sprayed around indiscriminately, at the cost of being devalued and even discredited. Look only at Russia’s claim of the genocide of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine for an example of that. In debating this Bill, I hope we can avoid citing too many explicit examples and concentrate rather on future prevention, which is what the Bill does in a non-discriminatory way—in all directions, in fact. I hope the Government will feel able to throw their weight behind the Bill.
One possible impediment—the often deployed and long-discredited argument that it is for only courts and not Governments to identify and name genocides—is no longer the obstacle it was. Otherwise, how could the Government—rightly, if belatedly—have decided to join the International Court of Justice case brought by Gambia against Myanmar in respect of the Rohingya Muslims before the court has ruled on the matter? In the case of the Yazidis killed in a genocide by Islamic State, while there is a court ruling, the Government have again—quite rightly, in my view—treated it as genocide, even though the court in question was a German one and not an international court; it was what the Government in a different context might have called a foreign court. Since the Government are no longer as attached as they were to their earlier argument, it would surely be better to systematise the process of reaching a prima facie determination of genocide. That is what the Bill would provide the instruments to achieve.
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hannay has reminded us of the searing experience of the Rwanda genocide and the failure of the international community to act in time. The tribute he paid to the noble Baroness for the recent honour she received was well made. She was made one of 16 members of the Order of the Thistle. I note that its motto is “Nemo me impune lacessit”—no one harms me with impunity. Those words sum up the motives that lie behind this Bill, as it seeks to end the culture of impunity and the lethal harm caused by genocide.
In parenthesis, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Polak, for reminding us of the late Lord Sacks. I was privileged once to chair a lecture he gave in Liverpool. During the course of it, he said that no one should ask, “Where was God at Auschwitz?”; they should ask, “Where was man?”. It is about what men and women can do to prevent these atrocities occurring.
The noble Lord, Lord Polak, who comes from Liverpool, cited the experience of Esther at the time of Purim. She is one of the great figures in the Bible. She is told, “You have come into this world for such a time as this”. It reminds us that sometimes unlikely people who have no great power can do extraordinary things. Each of us who has the privilege to serve in this place has the chance to do extraordinary things and to be a sign of contradiction.
As the noble Lord said, the word “genocide” should not be used as a slogan or devalued. It is different from war crimes and crimes against humanity. The duty to prevent genocide is one of the most neglected duties under international law. In 2022, with Dr Ewelina Ochab, who has been mentioned in this debate, I published State Responses to Crimes of Genocide, which the Minister has a copy of. Although I know he welcomes the establishment of the hub on atrocity crimes, I am sure that he will agree that progress is slow. We are still a long way from implementing our obligations set out in Raphael Lemkin’s 1948 convention on the crime of genocide.
My Lords, I support the Bill. I have been able to visit some countries that have been discussed: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Darfur in Sudan and many other areas where there has been evidence of genocide and human losses taking place at a large scale in the past. I have noted many other areas where there are concerns about genocide taking place. Britain is a member of the UN Security Council, which is well placed to help to prevent genocide whenever there are chances of it happening.
One of the areas which I want to draw to the attention of Members is India. Gregory Stanton, chairman of Genocide Watch, who predicted genocide in Rwanda five years before it happened, is calling for the world to take note of genocide in the making in India, and he particularly mentions Kashmir. Genocide does not happen overnight. It is a process over a length of time, and steps are taken when genocide happens. Over the past couple of decades, Kashmir has been the biggest army camp, with nearly 1 million Indian soldiers there since 1990. There are widespread reports from renowned international human rights agencies such as the UN Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, and so on, that the Indian Army is involved in killing, rape, torture, missing persons, and so forth.
In 2019, India withdrew the special status that Kashmir had within the Indian constitution. It has taken a lot of rights back from the local people. Since 1990, there have been reports that more than 100,000 people have been killed and there are thousands of people still languishing in prisons. We talk about human rights in other places, and we have human rights champions whom we celebrate who have fought for people’s rights. We have people such as Shabir Shah, who has been in prison for more than 30 years in Kashmir. These are the signs which prove that Gregory Stanton may not be far from the truth in what he is saying. We must take this seriously. Britain is well placed. We have strong links with India and must use them to prevent genocide taking place in Kashmir.
My Lords, it is pleasure to rise from these Benches to support the Private Member’s Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. It is also something of a relief that the debate on this Private Member’s Bill has been somewhat more consensual than that on the previous Bill, in which I found myself in the unusual position as being on the opposite side from the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, which was a slightly uncomfortable position to be in.
This is a Private Member’s Bill to which we have heard no opposition from any part of your Lordships’ House. We heard the Minister’s noble friend Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth say that he hopes that the Minister will bring some words of comfort from His Majesty’s Government. I have been in your Lordships’ House for nearly a decade. I have rarely heard from the Government Front Bench words that lead us to think that a Private Member’s Bill is going to be warmly accepted, but on this topic, I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give some positive responses.
Over many years the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, have spent much of their time in your Lordships’ House, in ad hoc committees and in other places arguing that we need to take the crime of genocide seriously, calling on His Majesty’s Government to look at particular cases and acknowledge that they are, or could be considered, genocide. Although the present Bill is not about genocide determination, the House of Lords Library briefing for today reminds noble Lords of the words of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, in previous debates.
We have heard many times that the Government are not able to act because the issue of genocide is for courts to determine—yet, as the present Bill and the Library briefing both make clear, under the genocide convention the Government have a duty to prevent genocide. It is not simply that we need to say, “We are not happy with this”; we have a duty to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out, parliamentarians cannot do that—we cannot individually prevent or punish genocide—but His Majesty’s Government and other sovereign Governments are in a much better place, precisely because of their embassies and high commissions, to understand what is going on on the ground. The Bill, which I suggest is not as modest as some Private Members’ Bills—it is very ambitious—would pave the way for the Government to be able to do what the UK needs to do in performing its duties under the convention.
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It is commonly said that armed conflicts are a precursor to the commission of mass atrocity crimes, but in fact it is not always that way round. Indeed, during the many human rights crises of the modern age, mass atrocities often came first and caused armed conflict to break out. For example, mass atrocities drove armed conflict in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and failures to adequately respond to mass atrocities against the Rohingya in Myanmar in 2017 emboldened the Tatmadaw, contributing to their seizure of power in February 2021 and the ensuing civil war. The current conflict between Hamas and Israel follows decades of terrible conduct, by both the IDF and Hamas, before, during and after 7 October. We are now seeing the consequence of that in the current crisis in Gaza.
Members of this House and the other place have stood together in outrage, time and again, and I see those of your Lordships who have often supported those of us who have sought to put amendments into legislation. There has been a strong sense of outrage, but it is not sufficient. Outrage does not help to protect innocent civilians from deliberate attack, arbitrary detention, summary execution, sexual violence and torture, or forced starvation.
This Bill seeks to address this fact head on and focuses on what can be done. In recent years, the Government have made welcome progress, recognising mass atrocity prevention as a new foreign policy priority. That started in 2021, and I pay tribute to the Government for doing that. Following the much-needed inquiry by the International Development Committee on this very issue, a mass atrocity prevention hub was created in Whitehall, tasked with co-ordinating the UK’s approach to these crimes. Here I pause to pay tribute to organisations such as Protection Approachesand the UK atrocity prevention working group, and indeed the institute which I have the fortune of directing, all of which have worked on making changes. Despite the steps forward, it is difficult to see their impact in the inconsistent and insufficient policy responses of government to widespread, systemic and systematic violations.
This Bill’s first purpose would provide a statutory basis to elevate and leverage the important work of the mass atrocity prevention hub. It also includes the monitoring of the steps that take people, and Governments, on a trajectory towards genocide. The hub is forecasting global atrocity risks and making country- specific risk assessments, along with the development of early-warning indicators and policy-making efforts. All of that is good, but it is not being adequately supported, so we press for the changes of the Bill.
The second provision of the Bill addresses and seeks to enshrine the need for senior political leadership and ownership of the UK’s moral and legal obligations to prevent and protect. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, is in his place, and he holds ministerial responsibility for UK atrocity prevention. I know he shares my deep concerns about these matters, but I would welcome his thoughts as to what can be done to repair our damaged reputation, as a state that has strayed from the bounds of international law in recent months under this Government.
Thirdly, the Bill addresses the urgent need to support and train embassies and country teams on the dynamics and warning signs of modern atrocities, and the trajectory towards genocide in some cases. The Government have already committed to doing this, but are yet to deliver on it. UK country teams in fragile or violent states have to be properly resourced to embed atrocity prevention thinking and strategy within their policy and programming.
The Bill is ambitious. I make no pretence about the fact that we want to see a growth in accountability for upholding and delivering on this mandate. As your Lordships will see, there is a section in the Bill which requires a Minister to lay an annual report before Parliament. Such a report would enable proper scrutiny of the United Kingdom’s contributions to prevent, protect and punish, and allow us all to advise on their development.
One of the final provisions in the Bill seeks to establish a fund with ring-fenced budget lines that guarantee consistent resourcing for mass atrocity early-warning systems, strategic policy-making and effective implementation.
This is not an expensive set of changes, but I urge them on the Government. The hub that exists is full of really good people doing good work, but it needs to be strengthened. We need proper leadership from politicians and from the Secretary of State. We want to see some real building on this, in the way that has taken place within the State Department in the United States on atrocity crimes and genocide prevention.
It is evident that any meaningful development of a strategic approach to preventing and responding to mass atrocities must bring together senior representatives of government departments—No. 10 itself, the intelligence agencies and multilateral representatives, from the UN to NATO. Atrocity prevention has been a core national security interest for the United States since 2011, supported by a clear atrocity prevention strategy launched in 2022. I knew and was a huge admirer of Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor, who was very much at the heart of persuading the American State Department to take these steps and to create a hub that was about genocide prevention and atrocity crime prevention.
I hope that there will be support in government for this Bill. I know that the hub exists, but we need to strengthen it and put it on a statutory footing. I beg to move.
In this Chamber, I have raised the issue of genocide several times. I did so in relation to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, with the 30th anniversary coming up on 7 April. Would it not be appropriate if those perpetrators who are living freely in the UK are either tried immediately here or sent back to Rwanda for trial?
I have spoken about the situation of the Uighurs. The atrocities seen in recent years did not start with the forced indoctrination camps for whole populations; they started with narratives presenting the Uighurs as extremists. It started with things such as the Xinjiang regulations and blatant discrimination against members of the community, which flourished without impunity. As the early warning signs of the atrocities against the Uighurs were circulating in international media, we did not have a hub on atrocity crime, but even if we did it would not have had the capacity or resources to conduct the kind of monitoring of early warning signs that would be needed to enable us to prevent them.
All these issues can be rectified once and for all by this Bill. I end by referring to the late, great Lord Sacks. As many noble Lords will know, we will celebrate Purim tomorrow night. Purim was to be the first genocide; the whole Jewish population was to be murdered. In looking for what I wanted to say, I found a “Thought for the Day” on BBC Radio 4 from 22 February 2002 by Jonathan Sacks. If I may, I will share his teachings about Purim with the House:
“It’s a joyous day. We have a festive meal; we send presents to our friends; and gifts to the poor, so that no one should feel excluded. Anyone joining us on Purim would think it commemorates one of the great moments in Jewish history, like the Exodus from slavery or the Revelation at Mount Sinai. Actually though, the truth is quite different. Purim is the day we remember the story told in the book of Esther, set in Persia in pre-Christian times. It tells of how a senior member of the Persian court, Haman, got angry that one man, Mordechai, refused to bow down to him. Discovering that Mordechai was a Jew, he decided to take revenge on all Jews and persuaded the King to issue a decree that they should all—young and old, men, women and children—should be annihilated on a single day”.
That is the day of Purim that we celebrate. He went on:
“Only the fact that Esther, Mordechai’s cousin, was the King’s favourite allowed her to intercede on behalf of her people and defeat the plan. Purim is, in other words, the festival of survival in the face of attempted genocide. It wasn’t until way into adult life that I realised that what we celebrate on Purim is simply the fact that we’re alive; that our ancestors weren’t murdered after all. Like many of my generation born after the Holocaust, I thought antisemitism was dead; that a hate so irrational, so murderous, had finally been laid to rest. So, it has come as a shock”—
this was in 2002—
“To realise in recent months that it’s still strong in many parts of the world, and that even in Britain yesterday a cleric appeared in court charged with distributing a tape calling on his followers to kill Jews. What is it about Jews—or black people, or Roma, or foreigners—that causes them to be hated? The oldest explanation is probably the simplest: because we don’t like the unlike. As Haman”—
the wicked figure in the story—
“put it, ‘Their customs are different from those of other people.’ And that’s why racial or religious hate isn’t just dangerous. It’s a betrayal of the human condition. We are different. Every individual, every culture, every ethnicity, every faith, gives something unique to humanity. Religious and racial diversity are as essential to our world as biodiversity. And therefore, I pray that we have the courage to fight prejudice, of which antisemitism is simply the oldest of them all. Because a world that can’t live with difference is a world that lacks room for humanity itself”.
Perhaps the way forward might include the setting up of, or greater co-ordination between, existing early warning mechanisms and units across Europe and North America. The specific task of these networked systems would be to both monitor signs and issue timely alerts to all participating member states, with a view to concerted action. Difficult as it might be to get countries to agree on such vital actions, a scheme such as this might reduce the paralysing reluctance to declare the risk of genocide and to act according to the obligations of the treaty.
The mechanisms and the tasks of a proposed genocide monitoring team set out in the Bill provide an excellent blueprint for other similar units. The UK human rights community, which has steadfastly pursued the prevention of genocide around the world, is well placed to encourage such an international network and achieve its ultimate aim.
I recall the momentous moment I met a doctor who had been a young man at the start of the conflict. Before the conflict, he was to have been a doctor—I suppose like a GP in our own country—working in a quiet rural community called Srebrenica. He looked forward to his new life, an almost idyllic life. Then came the conflict, the war—the genocide—and his life altered. He was called on to do things that a doctor is not normally called on to do, and his life changed. He became a hero when he had wanted a relatively quiet, ordinary life.
I met many other people who talked to me of friendships they had across religion in Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina: people they had grown up with, living next door to them, who suddenly disappeared, leaving the flats that they lived in to go and live in another community. They never saw these people again. They had been lifelong friends until this moment, and suddenly this community was split, divided, and what had been perfect harmony led to conflict and genocide—yet these people had been living together in perfect harmony for generations.
It is disappointing that against this background, the Minister cut back funding for Remembering Srebrenica. That is regrettable. We should be encouraging and promoting the Bill. It is in our country’s and the world’s interests that we do something on this. I commend the work that the noble Baroness has done on this and look forward to the Minister wanting to take this forward, to ensure that Britain’s role is highlighted and that we can do something powerful as a leading member of the world community.
Britain cannot on its own prevent an act of genocide, of course. It can act only as part of an international collective effort to do so. The Bill, which largely replicates what is already being done by the US and which also could be followed, if we give a lead, by the EU and its member states, would be a significant step in that direction. I hope that, at the end of this debate, we will hear from both the Government and Opposition Front Benches that they will support this effort.
On other occasions, I have spoken about the Rohingya, the Yazidis, Armenia, Nigeria and the Uighurs. Today, in my brief few minutes I will focus on three particular cases that underline why a Bill of this kind is needed: Tigray, the Hazaras and Darfur.
In September 2023, the APPG on International Law, Justice and Accountability published its Tigray report. Our inquiry received an unprecedented amount of data, including testimonies from victims and witnesses from Tigray. We found evidence of atrocities, including mass killings, sexual violence, and starvation, which continue to this day and for which no one has been brought to justice. On numerous occasions, I have brought the dire situation of the Tigrayans to the attention of the Government. There are more than 100 references in Hansard, and letters and emails to the FCDO. I asked for a JACS—joint analysis of conflict and stability—assessment. Close to two years after the beginning of the war in Tigray, the Government finally commissioned a JACS for Ethiopia, but they have refused to make it available to Parliament. Why on earth are parliamentarians denied the right to see information that is crucial to our duty to prevent genocide?
Afghanistan’s Hazaras were referred to in our own International Relations and Defence Committee report on Afghanistan in 2021. Later that year, I was approached by Hazara human rights defenders concerned about the lethal targeting of their community. With colleagues, I established the Hazara inquiry. Our report, launched here by me and the noble Baroness, found that Hazaras, as a religious and ethnic minority, are at serious risk of genocide at the hands of the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan Province. Under the genocide convention and customary international law, this finding should have engaged the responsibility to prevent—but it did not. The return to power of the Taliban has included brutal acts of violence against the Hazaras and a return of terror, including the bombings of Hazara schools, places of worship and other centres—atrocities that continued throughout 2023 and now into 2024. On 18 December 2023 in an Oral Question, I asked whether a JACS report could be initiated, not least because Pakistan had begun mass deportations back to Afghanistan—I have never had a reply.
Finally, I will mention Darfur, which I visited during the genocide 20 years ago. Some 18 months ago, people on the ground warned that a new genocide was likely. In response, all I have received from the FCDO are statements about deadlines for transitional justice being met and that progress was being made. Dissatisfied with those assurances, the APPG on Sudan and South Sudan decided to establish the Darfur inquiry, which I chaired, and we collected evidence from victims, survivors and experts.
In 2023, as the situation in Khartoum deteriorated, we published our Darfur report warning about the very clear early warning signs of atrocities to come and the danger of yet another genocide. These warnings were not listened to and were not acted on. The catastrophic situation in Sudan has led to 9 million displaced people, thousands dead and now an impending famine. In Darfur, the RSF continued the genocide begun by the Janjaweed. Who is being brought to justice or held to account?
The work of monitoring early warning signs cannot be left to parliamentarians and ad hoc inquiries—that is why the Bill is necessary. The FCDO has the capacity and resources needed to do this work well. We have a Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who understands that and works hard on these issues. The prevention of genocide and atrocity crimes is a duty that the noble Baroness’s Bill might ensure is treated with the gravity and urgency it deserves, and I support it.
We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Polak, a reminder that the Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers. The same has been true of other genocides. Something does not happen at the point where hundreds of thousands or millions of people are being killed or potentially fleeing for their lives; there is a much more insidious process. Recently, for our debate for Holocaust Memorial Day, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust reminded Members, in a very helpful briefing, of the stages of genocide.
By the time your Lordships’ House talks about genocide, it is usually at a point where we are saying that there already is or has been genocide—in Darfur, of the Uighurs or of the Yazidis. We need to raise issues and find a vehicle for exploring the potential for genocide before it happens—before it is too late. We heard from my noble friend Lord Hussain that His Majesty’s Government need to look at the situation in Kashmir, and maybe the Foreign Secretary, for example, should be talking to his opposite number in New Delhi. We need to be thinking and exploring issues ahead of time, and the Bill gives us and the Government the opportunity to do that.
We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the situation in Darfur and how he has been told that there is further potential for a new genocide there. If one goes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, one finds that “remember Srebrenica” is not just a slogan; it is an everyday injunction. There is still concern there about Republika Srpska and concern on the ground about the situation. We should never be complacent as a Parliament or as a country.
The Bill offers His Majesty’s Government the opportunity to act, and it would hopefully empower the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, to do many of the things from the Front Bench that he has often said he wished he was able to do—but these things were for courts to decide and for other people to do. I am not sure I expect the Minister to accept the Bill as it is enshrined today, but perhaps he could give us some suggestion of the Government bringing forward their own proposals that would have the same purpose as this eminently welcome Private Member’s Bill.