Oral evidence - Sexual Violence in Conflict

Members present

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Chairman)

Lord Black of Brentwood

Baroness Goudie

Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger

Baroness Hussein-Ece

Lord Sterling of Plaistow

Baroness Warsi

Lord Williams of Elvel

Baroness Young of Hornsey

_________________________

Examination of Witnesses

Dr Chaloka Beyani, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Ms Anna Musgrave, Women’s Advocacy Manager, Refugee Council

Q89 The Chairman: Good afternoon, and thank you very much for joining us. We are very grateful to you. We are fortunate enough to have an hour of your time, for which we are extremely pleased and grateful. We have a number of questions, and will probably put forward more in writing afterwards. Could I ask you to answer any question that you wish to answer and to discard anything that you do not think you would like to answer? The session is on the record. It is being broadcast live and will be on the web, and we will send a written note for you to make minor corrections if you wish. You know who the Committee Members are. You have, I think, had a register of our interests, so you know what our focuses are. It just remains for me to say that we are looking forward very much indeed to learning from your knowledge, which is immense, on the topic that concerns all of us in this room. I wonder if I could invite each of you to give a brief introduction about your work and to say why this issue is of importance to you.

Ms Anna Musgrave: I thank the Committee very much for giving me this opportunity to provide further evidence to inform the inquiry. In particular, I wanted to thank you for your interest in exploring how sexual violence affects refugees and women once they have been forced to flee from their home. I am the Women’s Advocacy Manager at the Refugee Council. The Refugee Council is a UK-based organisation that supports both adults and children in navigating the very complex asylum system in this country. We also help refugees to rebuild their lives here once they have received protection and have been found to be refugees. We are also one of the few organisations with a long history of supporting resettled refugees; once they have arrived here we provide them with support to find their feet here in the UK. That continues to be through the Gateway Protection Programme and, more recently, through the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme.

From our experience of working with women who have been forced to flee from their homes, we know that women face a heightened risk of sexual violence once they are on the move. We are concerned that the Government’s leadership in tackling sexual violence in conflict is not reflected in other policy areas. Specifically, it is not reflected in the way in which women who have perhaps fled sexual violence and who have arrived on our shores are treated. Nor is it reflected in their ability to get to the UK—to have safe escape routes to get here.

I guess I just wanted to flag up the fact that I am obviously representing a domestic-based organisation here, so there will be some limitations to my ability to answer questions on, for example, the impact of this work overseas, but I hope that my evidence will assist the Committee in thinking about where there might be gaps and where this important work might be built on.

Dr Chaloka Beyani: May I express my sincere thanks for your kind invitation to give evidence before this august Committee? I am also delighted to see my senior colleague, Professor Chinkin, by your side, who I did not know would be here this afternoon. I am the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons and in that capacity I carry out field missions and integrate into my missions and into my reports the issue of sexual violence in conflict. I did a report on internally displaced women about two years ago, and I have carried out missions in Africa, to Sudan, South Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Kenya; in the Middle East, to Iraq and Syria, in May this year; in Asia, to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines; and in Europe, last year, to Serbia, Kosovo, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. I will also undertake a mission to Honduras next week; I understand that about 60,000 families headed by women have fled sexual violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. A report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees was recently published on this subject. I also teach international law at the London School of Economics as an associate professor, and some of my research and writings have been on women’s human rights. I also serve on the steering board of the Prime Minister’s special envoy on sexual violence, so I have been party to some of the discussions behind the Initiative that inevitably led to the setting up of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the LSE. This is the perspective that I bring and in the answers that I give I will try to be as factual as possible about what I have actually found.

The Chairman: Dr Beyani, before I ask you the first question on behalf of the Committee, could you confirm that IDPs still come under only the Bern Convention, that there is no UN convention that covers IDPs, or am I out of date?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: No, you are not out of date at all. The closest global regime there is on IDPs are the guiding principles on international displacement, which were approved by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1998. They tried to synthesise various elements of international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international refugee law. At least in Africa these were condensed into the African Union convention on internally displaced persons, called the Kampala Convention, which is the first legally binding framework. I have been to many of the preparations and consultations for the World Humanitarian Summit, and what has come out of those preparations is the call for regional frameworks on internally displaced persons, and I hope that this will be a trigger after the World Humanitarian Summit is concluded in Turkey next year.

Q90 The Chairman: Thank you very much. I wonder if I might ask you both, perhaps Anna Musgrave first, how significant the link is between sexual violence in conflict, or the fear of sexual violence, and refugee flows and internally displacement flows.

Ms Anna Musgrave: The first thing I would flag is that experiencing sexual violence in conflict may not be the only reason why a person is a refugee. A woman might have been forced to flee for another, unrelated, reason, but clearly she is at risk, so she is forced to flee. However, the fact that she has been forced to flee her home is of concern to us because she then becomes at heightened risk of sexual violence. That is the key concern for us, particularly if she has been separated from male relatives, alone or travelling with children.

Evidence shows that a substantial proportion of the numbers of refugee women in the UK have been affected by violence or sexual violence. An interesting study, which I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to, was co-written by the Scottish Refugee Council, our partner, which co-wrote our submission to this inquiry. It interviewed women in Scotland and found that 70% of the women they interviewed had been affected by violence during their lifetime, and just under half the number of women they spoke to had been affected by sexual violence. What was interesting about the study was that it was then replicated in Belgium and Italy. While the responses to other questions about services, for example, were quite different, when it came to the prevalence of violence and sexual violence, it was very similar, whether they were talking to women in Italy, Belgium or Scotland.

It is because we know that women are affected by sexual violence that the Refugee Council has set up a very specific therapeutic service for refugee women, which has been running for a number of years now. I asked my front-line colleagues to give me some data in preparation for this, and they told me that 78% of the women who accessed the service between August 2014 and August 2015 were survivors of sexual violence and rape.

Dr Chaloka Beyani: My experience is that most refugees would have been internally displaced persons before fleeing across international borders to third States. There is very often a lack of effective internal protection for IDPs in IDP camps, where there are very bad living conditions. No agency of the UN looks at the needs and the protection of IDPs—multiple agencies do that. However, once they cross an international border, at least there is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a single entity. I found that this link has occurred very times. Even as we look at the migration flows into Europe at the moment, my analysis was clear, that there is an absence of clear and effective internal protection in the countries of origin. However, you also see that the pattern of sexual violence would have started from the time when persons were displaced. Sexual violence, as you know, has been weaponised as a means of conflict and as a driver of displacement, to destroy communities and women, because women support the well-being of their societies, and by destroying women, their societies are also destroyed. This effective link has been going on and on in almost every place I have been to. The only exception, where I found no evidence of sexual violence, was in Ukraine, but that was in 2013. I made inquiries, my team spoke to many women and others, and they said that there had not been an incident yet. However, everywhere else, in all the countries I have mentioned, the pattern is similar during flight and it continues in the refugee camps as well.

Q91 Baroness Goudie: A lot of attention has been given to attempting to end impunity for sexual violence in conflict. However, at the same time, refugees who are victims of sexual violence in conflict, and displaced persons, also become victims of sexual violence even though they have left a country because of what is happening there. They may have escaped forms of sexual violence as well as other situations, then when they go to the camps or another country they are subject to sexual violence. What are the mechanisms through which they can access justice and wider support?

Ms Anna Musgrave: I do not feel that I can speak on efforts to end impunity. However, I can best respond to you in terms of this question on women’s ability to access support services once they have arrived here in the UK. Is that useful?

Baroness Goudie: Yes, definitely.

Ms Anna Musgrave: There are three principal concerns around women arriving in the UK and claiming asylum, particularly those who have been affected by sexual violence: how the needs of survivors are identified and addressed by this Government, whether or not they are able to get protection—so, problems with decision-making on women’s asylum claims—and the extent to which the asylum support system offers or does not offer a safety net for women and protects them from violence once they are here in the UK, having claimed asylum.

What is perhaps of most interest to the Committee is identifying and addressing the needs of survivors of sexual violence. The Refugee Council is able to speak to that because we did a specific piece of work with the Home Office and our partners, the Scottish Refugee Council and the UNHCR, to try to support the Home Office to improve its response to women who disclose that they have been affected by sexual violence. What has been very welcome is that there has been significant engagement from the Home Office on this issue, which has led our organisations to train 100 asylum screening staff on how to respond to a disclosure and on what specialist services they can signpost women to. It has been frustrating that progress has been extremely slow. I was going to say that there have been two years but I think it is probably more like three years of work now, and the culmination of that—the physical product of that work—has been six training sessions, which is the result of endless meetings. That has been quite frustrating, and it is basically the result of funding and capacity limitations with the Home Office.

We wanted to do one thing, which in fact the Government committed to doing back in 2013 in their strategy to address violence against women. They committed to a referral mechanism so that women would be formally referred to a specialist service. In order to make that action a reality we have been talking to the Home Office about setting up a specific pilot project to explore how that might happen. It has been extremely frustrating that, after hours and hours of meetings, that has stalled, really because of the Home Office’s inability to find what is quite a small amount of money in relative terms. That is certainly one of my key messages to the Committee, that for us, the Government’s commitment to support survivors of sexual violence needs to extend to those women who make it to our shores and seek protection here. This was a very clear way in which they could support them to facilitate that access to specialist services. However, as I say, progress has been very slow.

Dr Chaloka Beyani: I will try to disaggregate the question into three elements. The first is further risks of sexual violence once women have been displaced. The second is what can be done to mitigate these aspects. The third is access to justice, as it were. The evidence tends to show that women, and some men, are subjected to sexual violence in the course of displacement and after displacement, because the original cause of displacement continues to exist; it has not actually died. It takes other forms; it is underground, it targets women who have been targeted previously for a variety of reasons—because of their identity, because they care for their families, or because they are enterprising in the IDP/refugee camps and they have money. For those reasons, they become victims. There is insecurity and a lack of safety during flight. Many are taken advantage of by smugglers and traffickers, who subject them to sexual violence or see that as payment in kind. In terms of mixed migration flows, the evidence tends to show that most of the women from east Africa—Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya—who have gone through FGM actually cut themselves before fleeing in order to avoid rape and other sexual violence, to put it bluntly to make it less painful. They anticipate that this is going to happen, and they do that as a precautionary measure.

There is also survivor sex in the refugee/IDP camps, especially of young girls who put themselves under the protection of men, and the men then take advantage of this relationship. I have come across both extortion and exploitation, where a woman is repeatedly raped by the same man and the man eventually says, “Look, I don’t have to do this, so if we have a relationship and an understanding it becomes normal”. It might become normal for the man, but it is not normal for the woman. But women are subjected to those kinds of situations. They take extreme risks to protect their husbands and children. They say, “We can go out to get water and firewood. We will be raped, but we will survive”. If the men—the husbands or male children—go out, they will be killed, they will not come back, so women calculate when taking these specific risks.

Baroness Goudie: Can I just ask you a supplementary question on women going out of the camps? If the men or the boys were to go out, you say that they would get killed—or would they be raped as well, because I know that a number of young boys, and some men, have been raped in these situations?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: Yes, some men and boys would also been raped and subjected to sexual violence, but in addition to that they will most likely be killed, because men are the fighters.

Baroness Goudie: Of course, but so are women now.

Dr Chaloka Beyani: Yes.

Baroness Goudie: So everyone is at risk, really, in one way or another.

Dr Chaloka Beyani: The risk affects everyone, in that sense, but the women bear the brunt of that risk on both sides in any case.

Single female-headed households are usually at risk because there are no men to protect, and because they have no voice in the IDP/refugee camps you very often find that they are in the periphery of the camps in dangerous areas that are not linked. They do not have proper accommodation, so they become easy victims to pick at.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on and on, but in the interests of time I will not. What, then, can be done to mitigate this? The first thing is what we call preparedness—having gender-sensitive approaches and policies in protection in the emergency phase, in humanitarian early recovery, and the development response through and through—and I find that these are lacking in most of the countries that I have been to. Enhanced physical protection for women is very important, both during flight and in places of displacement. Secure flights are also important—the patterns of flights or routes that are used. People do not simply run any old how; their flight will tell you their calculations about where they are going to find safety and which routes they are going to use, and these routes will be known to smugglers and traffickers. The security forces and others should also know that these routes are used by these elements, so they should secure them. Better shelter for women in more secure and safer location in camps would be important, as would more preventive approaches to SGBV, which happens within families as well: men become disorientated, take it out on their wives and female children most of the time.

In terms of rule of law issues and access to justice, here I find some rule of law programmes and legal aid provisions that are trying to provide access to justice, run very often by the UNDP and some of the European-based NGOs—the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council—but they are usually never enough; they are piecemeal. Setting up special investigation and prosecution teams that are sensitised to SGBV is of extreme importance in these areas, as well as special courts and tribunals that are properly trained as well as sensitised. The use of mobile courts and clinics in some places is also important. This was tried in the DRC. The lack of infrastructure meant that it was not a wholly successful programme, but many see it as one of the ways in which impunity can be addressed, because the courts actually go to where women are as refugees or IDPs and address their concerns.

Psycho-social counselling is very important for the victims, and this is always missing as a service. So is awareness among the public as a whole that this is a vice that should not take place, and that the perpetrators have to be punished but also have to be rehabilitated. The rehabilitation of victims is also lacking very often; they are left to their own devices with no proper medical care or medical facilities. Sometimes the offenders are known and are simply left. When I went to the Central African Republic, women were pointing to men and saying, “Those are Anti-balaka, these are the Seleka. They carry out sexual assaults in these camps, but no one does anything about them”.

So I would point at least to those aspects. They are not comprehensive, but they are small measures that over time could perhaps make a difference in relation to camps and settlements where refugee women and IDP women are.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Baroness Hilton, did you want to enlarge upon the question that you were going to ask, which has just been touched on?

Q92 Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I think you have covered most of what I wanted to ask about what you thought one could do in the refugee camps, but I do wonder about the administration and management of them. There must be some responsibility on the people who actually run them to try to protect women better. Is that an area that can be addressed, or not?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: I think it is an area that can be addressed. One small positive aspect has been, for example, the appointment of women as heads of households in refugee and IDP camps, so they, rather than the men, run the affairs of the camps. But I think that should also extend to making sure that the camp administrators are women who are effectively trained and secured, and that we should have more peacekeeping women. South Africa was considering establishing a brigade of women as peacekeepers, an initiative that did not find much attraction from the DPKO. But women protecting other women not in conflict situations but in peacekeeping post-conflict would be equally important.

The Chairman: Could I ask a quick question before coming to a supplementary from Baroness Hussein-Ece? You mentioned a number of initiatives on justice. How do you rank the truth and reconciliation commission as it was working in Rwanda, for example? Was that of value?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: I look into truth and reconciliation commissions. I have held joint sessions with them in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan and elsewhere, but in relation to issues of sexual and gender-based violence they are very weak and almost blind on those issues, so sensitisation is an important issue. Secondly, they appear to be friends of the system until they begin to operate, and when they begin to operate effectively they are immediately side-lined. Resources are withdrawn and they have no means of carrying out their work unless they get international support. South Africa was different, but sometimes they are led by people who are compromised, or prone to be compromised, so they are actually agents of the system rather than looking into the plight of the victims and the survivors in carrying out corrective measures. There is always this lack of clarity about what happens in the course of their work or after they have finished their work. Some attempt to make recommendations for prosecutions that are never, ever carried out. Some perhaps argue that they should have powers to prosecute, but when they attempt to prosecute, officers of the director of public prosecutions who carry out prosecutions are not interested in prosecuting those kinds of cases.

Baroness Hussein-Ece: Just as a supplementary question to the question from Baroness Hilton, do you think that enough account is taken in this country and elsewhere in Europe of people who leave the camps—women and girls—who feel that they are not safe places and flee? They leave the country, whatever that is, although they have perhaps been in those camps for many years. Perhaps as their girls get older there is a fear that they are under threat or vulnerable to sexual violence. There is an impression that those in the camps are pretty safe and okay, and those who seek sanctuary or asylum in Europe need to be taken care of—which of course they do. There is this perception that somehow those in the camps are okay and should stay there, but there is a big issue about vulnerability. Do you think we are taking that into account with regard to those fleeing and seeking asylum?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: It is not taken into account very much. I remember a decision of the European Court of Human Rights which said that deporting persons who were migrants to IDP camps in Somalia, where they came from, was inhuman and degrading and contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention, because the conditions in the camps are horrible, and instances of sexual violence go on all the time. There is this perception that because it is a camp there is protection. However, the protection is ineffective and all forms of harassment go on at the hands of either the camp administrators, other IDPs or some of the armed elements that infiltrate the camps and target those they have identified previously. Those who seek asylum do so from two perspectives. One is that they cannot bear the conditions in the camps anymore, so they have to find some other methods of accessing safety. Others may already have been admitted as refugees in a neighbouring country such as Jordan or Lebanon. However, even there, the incidents continue, therefore they have to be resettled by the UNHCR and other countries, identified on the basis of need and vulnerability and taken away completely from this fear of risk and threats.

Ms Anna Musgrave: I think they are often the same women; the women who feel vulnerable in refugee camps will then feel compelled to make that journey—possibly a very dangerous journey, possibly with smugglers—because of the security threats in the country that they are in. It is an important consideration as regards the response to the refugee crisis. It cannot be a response that people should remain in countries such as Lebanon, Turkey and Ethiopia, which are home to the largest refugee populations in the world. What is of particular concern to the Refugee Council is that when those same women make that journey, they are put further at risk. They are put further at risk because there is no legal way for them to make that journey, so they are forced to travel irregularly, with smugglers, which in itself puts women further at risk of sexual violence.

Q93 Baroness Young of Hornsey: You have already partly answered this question, Ms Musgrave, but I wondered if you want to add anything else to this, which is on the UK’s domestic response to refugees who suffered sexual violence in conflict. Do you think that our Government’s reaction or response is proportionate and effective? I know that earlier you mentioned some other issues about building capacity, doing training and making funding available. Do you have anything to add to those responses?

Ms Anna Musgrave: I would like to flag two particular points; I have already touched on them but I will expand on them a bit. The key issue is whether women are able to get their protection needs recognised once they arrive here—that is absolutely fundamental. We are talking about decisions that are lifesaving, or life-threatening if the wrong one is made. There are many problems with the asylum system, and particularly the decision-making system. We know that women sometimes struggle to get their protection needs recognised. The Home Office has done quite a lot of work on improving its decision-making, including on women’s claims. However, the overturn rate of Home Office decisions by the courts is still quite sizeable. It is around 30%, but for women it is higher than it is for men—about 33% of decisions by the courts on women’s cases are an overturn of the Home Office decision, and it is 28% for men.

Baroness Young of Hornsey: Sorry to interrupt you. Is it worse for women from some countries than from others, or is it relatively uniform?

Ms Anna Musgrave: If you really interrogate the statistics, you will find some particular trends. I do not have the statistics to hand, but I know that recently we noticed that there was a particularly high overturn rate for Albanian women. It is not women-specific, but of late we have noticed a massive change in the overturn rate on Eritrean claims, which links directly to changes in Home Office information about the situation in Eritrea. We were deeply concerned when we discovered that this was happening and were therefore unsurprised when we saw a massive jump in the percentage of Eritrean claims being overturned by the courts. That was really quite noticeable. Therefore, if you interrogate the statistics, you will see certain themes.

As I say, the Home Office has made efforts to improve its decision-making, but women continue to struggle to get their potential needs recognised and are disadvantaged. They are disadvantaged because in many cases due to the nature of the violence they have experienced, they will struggle to provide documentary evidence. As a result, the decision-maker will be heavily reliant on the women’s oral testimony. As you can imagine, this is problematic. We have already talked about the fact that women who claim asylum are very likely to have been affected by violence and sexual violence; this may well form part of their claim, so they will need to speak about these issues. As I say, the decision-maker will be relying on what they say, but, of course, it may be very difficult for them to talk about the violence that they have experienced.

If you take into account the fact that they will face what will feel like quite a hostile system, it is quite concerning. Straightaway they will be expected to tell an immigration official—a stranger—about the details of the violence they have experienced. They will face a barrage of questions at every turn, which creates the sense of a hostile system that is looking to trip the woman up, therefore making it more difficult for her to disclose details of what she has been through. Add to that the fact that she may not realise that it is important for her to talk about the violence she has experienced and it starts to become easier to understand why Home Office decision-makers are getting it wrong.

That is one point that I would make: while quite a lot of attention has been given to improving the decision-making overall and on women’s claims, it is concerning that it tends to be in isolation, so there is a lack of awareness of how the wider asylum system might impact on a woman’s ability to get her protection needs recognised—an ability or a lack of awareness about facing that barrage of questions at your first encounter with the Home Office, from what schools you went to, to the address of your local police station. I remember sitting in a meeting and looking at this form that had been completed, and thinking, “I couldn’t answer half those questions”. From a woman’s perspective, does this engender a sense of trust and an ability to open up about very difficult questions?

There are myriad ways that the decision-making system and the wider asylum could be improved, but I will flag a couple of basic ones, which we know the Home Office is working on, although there is still some way to go. One is that they should be guaranteeing that a woman who wants to speak to a female decision-maker and a female interpreter is able to.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. May I call Dr Beyani to speak please?

Baroness Warsi: I am sorry, Chairman.

The Chairman: I am just asking Dr Beyani if he would like to comment before coming to Baroness Warsi on the same question.

Baroness Warsi: I think Anna was midway through her testimony and I would like to continue to hear it. Were you midway through your testimony?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: I am happy to pass over.

The Chairman: We have only a certain amount of time, and we have a lot of questioners, so I am quite keen to keep going. Baroness Warsi, do you want to comment? We have a number of questions still to ask, so we cannot spend too long on any one question or we will not get through them all.

Ms Anna Musgrave: I have one final point. My two areas for concrete improvements are guaranteeing female interpreters and decision-makers and guaranteeing childcare for women when they are at their screening and their substantive interview. Those are two key things that the Government should be providing.

The Chairman: Did you want to comment?

Q94 Baroness Warsi: I have just a quick question. Thank you for your testimony. It almost feels as if nothing has changed over the past 20 years from when I was dealing with asylum claims from the other side in terms of how we were dealt with through the asylum process. The question for me is: is the way in which we are dealing with immigration and asylum cases relating to women who have been subjected to sexual violence domestically in conflict with the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative which we are championing internationally? Is our reputation on one impacting on our reputation on the other?

Ms Anna Musgrave: I think there is certainly a mismatch between an international commitment by the Government to address sexual violence in conflict and what happens in this country when those women come here and claim asylum. Certainly the women I speak to do not understand that mismatch, and, yes, I think you are right. Certainly in response to the wider refugees crisis, it somewhat tarnishes the Government’s reputation in the sense that you have what seems like really a ground-breaking initiative in addressing sexual violence in conflict but then measures taken by other government departments are perhaps unintentionally limiting the ability of those same women to access protection here in the UK.

The Chairman: I am going to jump to Baroness Hodgson, who has a question but has to leave in a few moments, and then I shall come back into the sequence.

Q95 Baroness Hodgson of Abinger: Is it possible to distinguish between individuals who are refugees and victims of sexual violence in conflict and those who are migrants leaving a country of their own volition? It can be very hard to identify people who are victims of sexual violence. Do you have any views?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: Thank you very much. First, refugees have a well-founded fear of persecution. That is one of the grounds stated in the 1951 convention. It may be based on religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinions. They have an objective, demonstrable fear. Migrants are supposed to be voluntary, or involuntary as the case may be. They may be documented; they may be undocumented. Equally, some immigrants who may have arrived lawfully may subsequently become undocumented migrants because their papers have expired and they have remained in the country. You also have those who are victims of violence in armed conflict contrary to the laws of conflict that must be identified and dealt with more specifically. Migrants are usually not at risk of persecution, as it were. None the less in the course of migration they are subjected to smuggling and trafficking. That changes the situation because there are international obligations relating to victims of trafficking in particular, none of whom we are sending back to their countries of origin because the traffickers are still actively involved. What is required here is to make sure that there is an investment in legal channels that people can pursue to come to the UK and other countries. The legal channels must make a distinction between migrants and asylum seekers. For the most part, the tendency is to say that everyone is a migrant until the contrary is proven by the ordinary immigration system. Throughout the western world, this seems to be a problem, whereas if you go to other parts of the world, in Asia and Africa, the two regimes are very separate and the administrative apparatuses to deal with migrants and refugees are also separate.

The Chairman: Do you have another question, Baroness Hussein-Ece? It was your turn. Or do you, Baroness Hodgson, have a follow up?

Q96 Baroness Hussein-Ece: My question is not related now, but I wonder how effective are schemes such as the UK’s Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, which started earlier this year receiving the most vulnerable and prioritising victims of sexual violence—the elderly, disabled people and victims of torture. Some have started to arrive. Ms Musgrave, presumably the Refugee Council has dealt with these people. How effective or successful do you think the scheme has been, or is it too selective?

Ms Anna Musgrave: A resettlement place is life-changing. It is absolutely transformative and in some cases may be lifesaving. The Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme began in March last year, I think, so 20,000 is a very significant expansion, which is extremely welcome. To be clear on what we are taking about, refugee resettlement is very different from the asylum system, as I am sure the Committee is aware. It involves the selection and transfer of refugees who were already outside their home country and in a neighbouring country. It involves their transfer to a country where they will have the chance to rebuild their lives because they are not safe or still at risk in the first country in which they sought protection. As such it creates a safe and legal route into the UK or another country. For those who benefit from resettlement, it really is the chance of a new life. It is very different from the asylum system. There is far more planning and care. In this country, it involves local authorities and service providers as well as organisations such as the Refugee Council to plan an arrival and then to support resettled refugees and help them to find their feet in the UK and access the services that they need. As you rightly point out, women and girls at risk, as well as survivors of torture and violence, are one of the resettlement submission categories. They are groups that might be entitled to a resettlement place.

I would flag up the fact that the number of available settlement places is dwarfed by the need. About 1 million refugees have been identified as in need of resettlement places and there are around 80,000 places a year, most of which are provided by America. The Government’s commitment to expand the Syria resettlement scheme is extremely welcome and means that the UK will now start to resettle much more substantial numbers of refugees. The Syrian scheme is modelled on the Gateway Protection Programme, which was the existing programme prior to the Syrian conflict. For the past few years, that has been taking about 750 refugees a year, just to give you an indication of numbers. My main point would be that as such a Syrian resettlement programme cannot be the answer. It cannot be the Government’s response to the crisis. It can be only a small part of the answer. Part of that is because there are refugees all over the world. There are refugees in other countries in need of resettlement, and at the moment the number of resettlement places available to them is limited to around 750 a year. Neither will the Syrian resettlement programme help women who are in Syria. In order to qualify for a resettlement place, you have to have crossed a border and be in a third country. The response to the crisis needs to be much wider and more comprehensive and fundamentally involve the creation and expansion of other safe and legal routes, which I hope we will get a chance to talk about during this session.

The Chairman: Thank you. Dr Beyani, do you wish to say something on that question? If you do, we would be delighted. Otherwise, I will come to Lord Black.

Dr Chaloka Beyani: I will be very brief, because I agree with everything that has been said. But the fact that it is a resettlement programme and it identifies the correct needs of those who need to be protected—survivors, essentially—means that it actually ignores the problem at its source, i.e. those in Syria and who need direct access to and protection from other States, and have not yet left Syria, but who would leave Syria if they knew that there were legal avenues for doing so. I think that is the blind spot of it.

Q97 Lord Black of Brentwood: Could we move on to PSVI and a view as to how effective it has been in addressing the needs of refugees and IDPs who suffer sexual violence in conflict and, as important, in preventing them from being exposed to subsequent sexual violence?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: At least I sit on the Initiative, and I have had an opportunity to contribute from that point of view. I think it has helped to shed light on the issue internationally and globally, and the UK has done more than any other country. I think there is applause everywhere I go for the nature of this Initiative. The conference that was held in London helped a great deal to publicise and bring to the consciousness of many what the problem is—a problem that people usually ignore. The establishment of a centre at LSE to study the phenomenon, understand and analyse it, led by Professor Chinkin no less—the world’s leading feminist scholar in human rights and international law—is a great boost, not just to the UK but to the LSE and the Initiative as well. However, a difficulty still remains, which is that, as was pointed out, it is an international initiative so the effects must be felt within the UK as well, in relation to refugee women seeking asylum who are victims of conflict in the places to which they come.

If I may add my own thoughts to the earlier discussion, the responses have evolved. In the 1990s, there was a refusal to adopt guidelines on gender-based persecution modelled on those in Canada, Australia, the US and others. We came much later to do that. Then the battle was won much more in the courts than in the asylum determination processes, such as in 1988 with women from Pakistan, where there was the first victory here in the House of Lords. Then we have had some other cases from Sierra Leone and elsewhere. But a tiny proportion of cases come through. The majority of cases are still being held back in the tribunals and immigration processes and are not being allowed to go forward for the reasons that have been mentioned—that is, unless they have human rights elements to them. I think we could have a more robust response to this.

Q98 The Chairman: Before Lord Black comments, could I just ask a quick follow-up question on that? You sit, as you told us, on the UK Foreign Secretary’s advisory group on human rights. What is your view on the comments made by the new head of the Foreign Office, Sir Simon McDonald, to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons recently that human rights are now one of the FCO’s lower priorities?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: I think it is a great pity and a great loss, largely because human rights are in the interests of everyone. The obligations are owed between all States, and every State has an interest in making sure that human rights are properly protected. The second aspect is that many countries look to what happens in the UK. If they see that the UK’s foot is off the accelerator in terms of human rights, they say, “Don’t blame us—this is what the UK is also doing, so this is not a priority for us any more”. But this is part of a global push-back on the gains made on human rights, including by leading States such as the UK. It is very important to put human rights back up front. The Secretary-General’s initiative on putting human rights up front is a good example and indicator of that. We see regimes that were trying to be democratic in Africa now becoming autocratic and inward-looking. In the 1990s, they faced a great deal of pressure on democratisation and human rights, but now they do not feel that pressure any more. Burundi is now on fire. The President can just say, “I will extend my term of office”, and no one comments or says it is wrong. Those are not a very positive indicators, from my point of view.

The Chairman: So how did you on the advisory committee allow this to happen?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: First, there has been a change of office and, since then, I think I missed the one meeting that was supposed to be there. At the same time, the human rights aspects of that body looked at selected countries’ foreign policy and human rights. I think the committee should put this back on its agenda at the next meeting and see how human rights have to be an important aspect of UK foreign policy. That is where they belong.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Lord Black, I am sure that you have much more to ask.

Lord Black of Brentwood: I think that answers the question. I was going to ask what the one thing is that we could do to send a signal that we have put human rights back up front.

The Chairman: I wonder if I might ask Lord Sterling to comment next, and perhaps ask Ms Musgrave to answer him first, as I skipped you off this one.

Q99 Lord Sterling of Plaistow: I think this question is only for the doctor. Listening to you carefully, it seems you have spent a lot of your life going to many places and it is quite interesting that time and time again you told us what does not work, what is not working and what we should be doing. It is quite sad that, with all the energy that you put into this, very little anywhere is apparently getting to the standard that you want. Many of the refugee camps—I have been to many—are like concentration camps. They are run not by NGOs but by people further down and the refugees are almost treated like inmates. The sooner that people can get out of the refugee camps the better. There is one specific thing you have been involved in where this Committee would be very interested in what really happened. I think I am right in saying that you were involved in negotiating and drafting the Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region, and in particular the Protocol on the Prevention and Suppression of Sexual Violence against Women and Children. There are so many resolutions, protocols and conventions all over the place, and the United Nations running off in all directions, but here is something very specific. It having been implemented, are you able to tell us whether it is actually working and there is an improvement? Are you in a position to be able to demonstrate and see the improvement yourself?

Dr Chaloka Beyani: The first thing I would say is that sadly it is not being implemented adequately and is not working well at all. The Pact was adopted in 2006. It took some three years from 2003 to elaborate it and to get States to agree what were the root causes of conflict and what was to be done to address the consequences of conflict. It was an error of optimism. Conflicts in Burundi, the Central African Republic and, to some extent, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were ending, so it was designed as a post-conflict mechanism. However, some of those States have now receded back into conflict: the Central African Republic, Burundi, as we speak, and the DRC. This has affected the momentum that was needed to push the Pact forward.

The protocol on sexual violence, which I think was the first of its type at the time, still receives some attention. A centre has been established in Kampala, Uganda. It is a regional facility, training and bringing awareness on sexual violence during conflict in the Great Lakes. However, it is mostly a public sensitisation training facility. Again, it does not get to the root of the problem. I think that the first training seminar it had last year was for the military, and the idea was for military justice to address issues of sexual violence in relation to soldiers, members of the armed forces and armed elements who they may come across in the command structure. That is still on the table and is the only significant thing that has happened. In August, I went to Uganda to visit the centre to see what is happening. The envoy of the Secretary-General has adopted a framework agreement with the conference to push forward the protocol specifically on sexual violence, and hopefully the involvement of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to the Great Lakes will move forward on this issue to activate the structures under the protocol. We discussed a whole agenda related to the deferment and surrender of accused persons, the means of collecting evidence and making sure that judicial structures work. However, whether that will work is yet to be seen.

Lord Sterling of Plaistow: So, much to your disappointment, nothing much is happening.

Dr Chaloka Beyani: Nothing much is happening, but its greatest use is as a forum for heads of states to meet directly, and those meetings are quite open and frank. Other stakeholders also participate and take the heads of state to task, so you will see Kabila and Kagame arguing about why Rwanda is in the DRC or not. It helps to understand the situation better, at least to that extent. The summit meets almost every year now; it is something which brings about discussion and debate to mitigate what used to happen before, which was outright conflict.

Lord Sterling of Plaistow: In 1960 and 1962 I lived there, and it was the most wonderful combination of peoples and interrelations. To hear the way it has gone is extremely sad. Thank you, Chairman.

Q100 The Chairman: A final question, if I could, for Ms Musgrave. Could you comment briefly on the expansion of safe legal routes? Can you identify briefly what they are?

Ms Anna Musgrave: Yes, with pleasure. It is worth understanding why women are embarking on dangerous journeys across north Africa, the Mediterranean and once they have arrived in Europe. It is obviously conflict, persecution, fear of sexual violence that are forcing women to flee their homes and leave their home countries, but the reason why they embark on dangerous journeys, often in the hands of smugglers, is that there is no legal way for them to make that journey. That is very explicit. I shall read one line from a PQ. The Immigration Minister said, “We cannot undertake to consider requests for asylum from Syrians who have taken refuge in neighbouring counties. It is not our practice to grant visas or to in any other way facilitate the arrival in the UK of foreign nationals for the purpose of seeking asylum”. That is part of the problem, and that is where we need to look in terms of finding some answers.

We would like to see the Government creating new routes and expanding existing ones. Creating new routes through the creation of an asylum visa is something that other countries are exploring and are using to limited effect. We are particularly keen to see an expansion of existing routes. I use my time here to flag family reunion. At the moment, a time of unprecedented forced displacement across the world, family reunion, the possibility of coming to the UK to join a family member who has been granted refugee status, has been closed down. We are seeing an increase in the percentage of family reunion applications by Syrians and Eritreans to join relatives here in the UK. This has particular implications for women and children, because they are likely to be in Lebanon or Ethiopia, probably in very precarious circumstances, hoping to join a—probably, in reality, male—relative who has made that dangerous journey. They are the ones who are waiting, often in dangerous circumstances, for that decision. We would like to see an expansion of that route, the opposite of what is happening, by widening the criteria for family who are able to come and join relatives.

I shall give an example based on the facts of a case I am aware of, as I am in touch with the lawyer, concerning a Syrian woman who is now 19. Her father made it to the UK, was granted refugee status and applied to bring his family. His family had to make a dangerous journey, which is one of the points to flag, out of Syria to go to a British consulate to make the application, which is one of the problems at the moment with family reunion. To the father’s dismay, the family were granted the ability to join him but his 18 year-old daughter was not because she had turned 18. It was considered okay for her to stay in Damascus with her 80-plus year-old grandmother. This family are in a real dilemma now. The family has come to join him, and the young woman is very at risk. Do they pay for that woman to make an extremely dangerous journey to come to the UK?

I would highlight this kind of thing as where there is a real need to look at how some of our immigration policies are undermining important work that is being done in terms of the Initiative to address sexual violence in conflict. The way we manage our borders is putting women at risk, as in the case of that young Syrian woman. I am aware of similar cases of two young Afghan women who have been told they cannot travel with their family to the UK and who have been left behind and have already received threats.

The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Baroness Goudie.

Baroness Goudie: I just want to ask a very quick question relating to that. Would it help if we could get our consuls or representatives of the embassy or the Foreign Office to go to the camps? I know that some do. Would that make it easier to get requests when people are being left behind or who have finished their education here and have been sent back? I know they are two different questions, but you know the answer I am trying to get.

Ms Anna Musgrave: Yes. Creating a humanitarian visa that would allow people to be able to apply would be a great thing. Similarly with family reunion, seeking ways so that women do not have to make that dangerous journey to a British consulate would be very welcome. To be honest, the cases that I talked about are in their country of origin, so in that example it would be a Syrian family within Syria.

I would point to a slightly different solution, which there is a precedent for. At the moment the emphasis is on the family in the region to make the application. For Somalis, between 1988 and 1994 a sponsor in the UK was allowed to make the application. We would like to see that replicated so that people do not have to make those dangerous journeys in order to make the application.

Baroness Goudie: Thank you. That was the answer I was looking for. That is very helpful to us for our discussions.

The Chairman: Thank you both very much indeed. I am sorry that we have run out of time, but we have kept you a long time. We are most grateful to you. It was a great pleasure to hear your testimony separately. Thank you for all you have told us.