The government has pledged to improve its genocide monitoring mechanism as the Genocide (Prevention and Response) Bill was read a second time on Friday.
In September 2022, the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) launched a three-person Mass Atrocity Prevention Hub in its Conflict and Atrocity Prevention Department.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, KC, director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, who introduced the bill, said she’s seeking to provide a statutory basis to the team, which is “not being adequately supported.”
The bill also seeks to have the government appoint a minister to lead the government’s work on genocide and atrocity crime prevention and response, provide annual reports on the risk of and responses to genocide and atrocity crimes, train civil servants on the issue, and establish a fund with ring-fenced budget.
While few private members bills become law, FCDO minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said, the government does “agree with many of the provisions of the bill” and pledged to work with peers on ways to bring the proposals forward.
Speaking for the bill, Baroness Kennedy asserted that instances of mass atrocity violence, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and ethnic cleansing “are not just rising but are spiralling around the world.”
She said the vast majority of today’s major and emerging foreign policy crises are driven by violent targeting of civilian groups based on their identities, including in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Israel, Gaza, Burma, also known as Myanmar, and China’s Xinjiang region.
She criticised the government over “a strategic and moral deficit” in its policy on genocide response and said her bill would move towards filling the gap.
Supporting the bill, Lord Alton of Liverpool said the duty to prevent genocide is “one of the most neglected duties under international law.”
The crossbench peer said parliamentary committees and groups found evidence last year of atrocities, including risks of genocide in Tigray, Egypt; Afghanistan; and Darfur in western Sudan, but got little reaction from the government.
Lord Alton said the bill is necessary because the work of monitoring early warning signs “cannot be left to parliamentarians and ad hoc inquiries,” and the FCDO has the capacity and resources needed to do this work well.
Under the U.N.’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signatories have a duty to prevent genocide as well as punish the perpetrators.
In 2021, the non-statutory Uyghur Tribunal ruled that the Chinese communist regime had committed torture, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Before and after the ruling, a number of legislatures around the world, including in the UK, have passed non-binding motions to declare there had been genocide or risks of genocide in Xinjiang. But Washington remains the only government that formally attached the label since January 2021.
“In the case of the Yazidis killed in a genocide by [The ISIS terrorist group], 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,” the crossbench peer said.
Lord Ahmad did not comment on whether there has been any change to the policy.
Responding to peers, the minister said the UK “has a positive record of contributing to international efforts to gather evidence of alleged genocide and war crimes” including the example of the ICJ case against Burma.
He praised the bill, saying the provisions are “highly commendable” and many are “very much aligned” with the government’s plan.
He invited peers to meet him to discuss how best to bring specific provisions forward and how to improve country-specific training for civil servants and those being deployed into conflict zones.
“So I say from the outset that the Government agree with many of the provisions of the bill—the question is how best to take them forward,” Lord Ahmad said. “While I cannot give it total endorsement and agreement, I want to very much examine the provisions of the Elie Wiesel Act to see how we can best adapt.”
