Oral evidence - Sexual Violence in Conflict

Members present

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Chairman)

Lord Black of Brentwood

Bishop of Derby

Baroness Goudie

Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger

Baroness Hussein-Ece

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead

Baroness Warsi

Lord Williams of Elvel

Baroness Young of Hornsey

_________________________

Examination of Witness

Baroness Anelay, Minister of State and Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Q157 The Chairman: Good afternoon, and thank you very much indeed for joining us. It is extremely kind of you. Before we start, could I tell you how very grateful we were to the Ambassador to the DRC, who was absolutely magnificent when the Committee visited, and to our High Commissioner for Rwanda? Could you thank them both very much for their great hospitality, particularly the Ambassador to the DRC, where we spent most of our time? The colleagues who were with me would say that very strongly indeed.

Baroness Anelay: Thank you, I will happily relay that.

The Chairman: As you know, this is on the record, although a note will come in case anything that we publish is not quite correct, which I think is unlikely. How has the work that you oversee on sexual violence in conflict become integrated into our UK military engagement for Syria and Iraq? Is it integrated yet or not?

Baroness Anelay: In terms of military operations, clearly, in Syria there is no ground operation, and the result of the vote last week does not change that. There is an aerial contribution, and of course we have always been giving technical advice to the coalition. Are we in a position on the ground to be able to say that we are currently taking part in work in Syria? Within Syria, that is not the case. There used to be training by the United States of military personnel. That was suspended. When there is the opportunity for that to be reinstated, we would very much encourage the US to see us as a partner, and indeed it does. I have already had meetings with those in the US Administration more generally about how we should co-operate better on PSVI work.

Clearly, I am able to discuss the military situation not only with the Foreign Secretary but with the Secretary of State for Defence, and attending Cabinet means that I am able to make my voice heard, particularly in the margins. It is important to see the work that we do through PSVI as core to the results of the military strategy.

The picture can be clearer in Iraq, because we have been launching projects there assisting NGOs to work within the country. For us, from the point of view of the military engagement, that has meant taking part in the training of Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq. The trainers from our Armed Forces who are there have trained 800 of the Peshmerga. We also work more generally with our coalition partners such as Norway and Italy. Overall, it means that the coalition in that area has trained 3,200, I believe.

I had the opportunity to see that at first hand when I visited Iraq just a couple of weeks ago. I spent four days there: two days in Baghdad, two days in Erbil. In the outskirts of Erbil, I was able to see the work that our troops are doing in training. I am one of those who likes people to do more. When they say, as they did there, that they are keen to do more, I hold them to that. Therefore, I will now be working out with my officials how we can make better use of their talents. Of course I realise the difficulties that they face. They do not have command and control over those whom they are training, they do not choose who they are going to train, but that still gives us a great opportunity to expand the breadth as well as the depth of that training.

We also have other ways in which we engage militarily. To give a brief example, when I was in Baghdad I went to a nearby training centre for new recruits for the Iraqi army. I was able to speak the whole of the new intake about the importance of PSVI, and explained why they, as the first people in contact with those who have suffered in conflict, should have sensitivity and why their training on PSVI would be important to them. That was a privilege, and I made the most of it.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Following that very helpful statement, do you have any more comments that you would like to make before we move on to other questions?

Baroness Anelay: Thank you Lord Chairman. I would say that the United Kingdom has been in the lead on work on PSVI since 2012. Of course, the newspapers latched on to the Global Summit last year, and I know that my colleague Baroness Warsi was deeply involved in that. That was a huge success and launched the international momentum, but colleagues across Government had already done a lot of work on PSVI by that stage.

After that, I have been picking up the cudgel. I was asked in June by the Prime Minister to be his Special Representative. That gives me a rather special convening power not only across Parliament but internationally. The work I do on PSVI fits rather neatly with my other policy portfolio: matters such as leading on Women, Peace and Security. I am also lead on human rights at the Foreign Office and I am the lead Minister on international justice, with the ICC and other international tribunals.

I find that I am able to spread the importance of PSVI across not only this Government but other governments. That sounds woolly. What does it mean? It means that I am now putting together with all my colleagues in the Foreign Office a list of our ambitions for next year. I like practical things. The ambition, of course, is to continue with the work on PSVI to make sure that people realise that it is unacceptable behaviour: it is wrong and we need to stop it.

How do we do that? We are setting out a range of targets that we can make public when we have completed our work to show how we want to do three things. The first is to break the silence. The taboo, the stigma that attaches itself to victims undermines their self-esteem and undermines society. We need to find ways in which we can do that.

We need to support the survivors. That means not just bringing justice by way of prosecutions or compensation, which can take time, but more immediately to provide psychosocial help and health services and make sure that there is community work to assist them.

Key to that is something that I have just been mentioning: to make sure that those in the military both here and overseas are trained on how they should respond on their first contact with survivors. That was brought home to me particularly as I was about to leave Iraq. I was talking to our Armed Forces, who are delivering the training, on the day that the offensive against Sinjar was launched. I knew then what it meant to have trained personnel going into places such as Sinjar, where they would meet horrors among the suffering of people there.

Q158 The Chairman: Thank you very much, and many congratulations on the breadth of your responsibilities and what you are doing.

Will you comment on the impact of PSVI not sitting under a Cabinet committee? Would it be beneficial for it to sit under the National Security Council? It does not seem that it is precisely pegged down departmentally within the FCO. Given the value that you correctly place on PSVI, how will you secure it more effectively for the years ahead?

Baroness Anelay: I am always rather cautious about bureaucracy overtaking activity. I like to deliver. The advantage of being the Special Representative of the Prime Minister is that people know that I am directly responsible to him and make reports to him, and therefore they can be held to account as well. He has made clear his ambitions, which are fully supported by the Foreign Secretary, particularly on focusing our attention on Syria and Iraq, but also on other countries such as Yemen, South Sudan, Sudan and Somalia. So we are looking at how we concentrate efforts there without losing our focus. If one has a Cabinet committee or sees the work subsumed within the NSC, it loses its focus. I think that we need to have the structure that we have now, which is more nimble. As colleagues may know, when I am determined—when I think that it is the right thing to do—I do not give up.

The Chairman: Would you say that PSVI therefore retains its position as a core element of FCO policy?

Baroness Anelay: The fact that it was in the Conservative manifesto ensured that it would. At our very first Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister said to camera that we should all go away and look at what was in the Conservative Party manifesto, if we had not already done so, see what the promises were and keep them. PSVI is in there, and we are keeping our promise. Yes, it is core to our work, but it has always been seen as complementary to the work of winning peace and security more generally and to the work of human rights, which are embedded across the whole of the work of the FCO, not only here in London but across our 260 posts around the world. And it is there that I hear some of the most ambitious projects suggested and where so much work is done.

The Chairman: I have a final supplementary on this question. As there is now no Whitehall ministerial group on PSVI, how are the Government’s objectives on sexual violence being co-ordinated across these different agendas? How is it remaining a really important issue without some form of back-up?

Baroness Anelay: I have back-up in the form of the team in the FCO—it may be small, but it is perfectly formed, I would say. Some of them are behind me, but I say that because it is true, as well as because they are there. The real point is that my job is to co-ordinate work. I therefore work closely with my colleagues in the MoD, such as General Messenger, who I know has given evidence to you—and I have valued the work he has been doing. I have also worked closely with the Minister for the Armed Forces, Penny Mordaunt, and with Baroness Verma and Justine Greening at DfID. So it is a matter of being able to co-ordinate that and to ensure that, when we have projects, we complement each other’s work rather than overlap it.

Q159 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Can I ask you about your responsibilities for international justice, where there is a connection with what we are discussing this afternoon? So far, we do not seem to have managed to get much of a grip on the impunity that people in eastern Syria and Iraq have when they commit these appalling crimes, with which are all, alas, far too familiar. Are you giving any active thought to ways in which that impunity could be undermined? It has been suggested to us in evidence that the Government could more actively try to get Iraq to sign up to the Rome Statute, which would immediately bring jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court into any crimes committed in Iraq, even by Syrians, and by Iraqis anywhere. If that were too big a jump, are you giving any thought to how we might press Iraq to use the provision in the Rome Statute—I think that it is Article 12.3—which would enable them to ask the International Criminal Court to take up cases, in this particular instance, without yet accepting full applicability of the Rome Statute? Are you giving any thought to either of those two?

Baroness Anelay: The first answer is that I am looking at how we can work better with existing judicial systems to deliver impunity, which can be such a long-term project, of course. I will talk about some of the more immediate matters in a moment. Also, there may be other ways in which one can address that. There may be ways in which there can be prosecutions without having to have a new tribunal. There are lots of ideas coming forward. Over all this, my main concern is to find out what the victims want. When one talks to the survivors who have been victims, justice can mean a very different thing to them from that which we see as politicians on the international scene. It may be, as many say to me, “I want to be believed”. Being believed may mean that they want to see a prosecution, whether it is brought at the ICC or in international terms. For example, for Syria we have been making it possible for the human rights defenders there—very brave people—to gather information for the commission of inquiry, such that if we are able to have a referral to the ICC, there will be sufficient and substantial enough evidence to be able to bring a prosecution. I know that at the moment the chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has taken the decision not to take up the cases herself, as she believes that it is not appropriate at this time, but I shall keep talking to those at the ICC, as I have in the past, on these very matters.

There are other ways of bringing justice, too. It can be achieved not only through work with the Iraqi government themselves—I have had discussions with the Justice Minister there about how we can do that—but locally, or regionally; one can talk in terms of how local legislation can be changed. I know that the Kurdistan regional government has been looking at that in detail, too. For example, in Iraq when talking to the national government, one can discuss the National Action Plan and what that involves, and, yes, we can look for different ways to deliver justice. Above all, it has to be the survivors who tell us what justice means to them. It may not be a court case or compensation. It may be something as difficult, but most important of all is to be believed and to be received back into their community.

Q160 Bishop of Derby: I applaud your ambition and emphasis on activity. The National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence Review says that the Government is going to expand its PSVI reach and implementation, focusing on Iraq and Syria. I can understand that. What will the implications be for other areas where there is PSVI? What is the balance between ambition and activity and limited resources? What will the implications be for other areas?

Baroness Anelay: In every walk of life we have to balance the resources available, but we also have to make judgments about what is achievable, and of course those decisions will have to be considered. We are not walking away from anybody. This may sound corny, but it is something that I think of every day. When you look into the eyes of somebody who has been a victim and is now a survivor, you know that you are not going to let them down, and you know that are you are seeing one out of many thousands when you go to any particular area. So the focus in particular will be on Syria and Iraq, not only because of the importance of the individuals but because of the importance to the region of stability thereafter. We are also looking at focusing, of course, on developing our work in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen. The work in South Sudan and Somalia fits in with the commitments given by the Prime Minister most recently in New York at the United Nations ministerial group, UNGA, that, for the first time in quite some while, we would take part in peacekeeping operations.

The Chairman: Does the UK support a UN-appointed tribunal for Syria, particularly to try those who have committed sexual violence in the conflict, and perhaps for Iraq, following Lord Hannay’s point?

Baroness Anelay: I am certainly open to investigating what more the United Nations can do. The idea of a UN tribunal could be blocked in the first instance. In practical terms, we have clearly already seen China and Russia block any attempt by us to refer the Syria conflict to the UNSC, so I think there could be difficulties there. The most important thing of all is that we should use our position on the United Nations as one of the P5 to be able to raise these issues at each and every opportunity to be sure that PSVI is considered in all discussions. Of course last month, in November, we had the presidency of the UNSC and were able to focus in particular on the security of individuals and on international humanitarian law, so we were able to raise these issues. That does not mean that we are going to stop; it is something that we can raise at other international fora throughout the year.

The Chairman: Might it be possible for HMG to propose a General Assembly-appointed tribunal, which might be easier to get?

Baroness Anelay: The first difficulty is that I am not sure how I would see that structured. I think there would be a problem with how some of the countries would see that and whether, indeed, it would be blocked. That is one of the greatest problems with having vetoes. I am not proposing the removal of the veto—it is something that we guard very closely indeed as a member of the P5—but clearly it has to be used in extremis. It is a difficult organisation to envisage as one that could deliver justice and that could be structured in a way that would engage all the countries involved.

The Chairman: Thank you so much. I turn to Baroness Kinnock.

Q161 Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead: Thank you very much for coming to share with us your expertise and the commitment that you are making to all these issues; they are very clear to us.

The section of the Strategic Defence and Security Review on PSVI is quite short and lacking in the kind of detail that we in this Committee would like to have. Could you expand on what the focus on Syria and Iraq looks like? That would be very helpful. The Review talks about peace and security and about women’s rights being taken “fully … into account in our overseas counterextremism work”. I raised this earlier. I am not clear what this means, and I am not very comfortable with that description of what it stands for. Is it—an awful word— securitisation: putting women’s rights into that box? I just wondered what you thought, because for me it does not bode well for women’s security or women’s rights.

Baroness Anelay: First, with regard to the section on PSVI, I do not think that one needs pages to be able to make the point, and this makes the point: that this is core to the work that we do, and it is a commitment for the whole period that is covered by the Review. It means that colleagues and I can ensure that the Government continue to focus on it. Small is not necessarily insignificant; that is what I would say in that respect.

You raise the important issue about what we mean. I will come back to Syria and Iraq in a minute, and focus now on the two paragraphs to which you have just referred. Are women’s rights being put into a security box? No, they are not. Here, of course, we are talking about human rights as they have impacted on the work that we are doing on Women, Peace and Security, but that does not mean that it is through the prism of security. I grew up at a time when women’s rights were seen for what they are, which is that they are of value in themselves because women are of value in themselves. One should not say that women should have equal rights because it is going to prevent bombs falling; women should have equal rights because women should have equal rights, because they are an equal part of humanity. When we look at policies and think about how we look at our policies, one then wants to say, “Women’s rights are good in themselves, but when you, in the UK or elsewhere, are designing policy, just think about what would go wrong if you did not take women’s rights seriously. Just think, at the end of conflict, if you ignore women’s rights, about how you might go back into conflict again”. It is the right thing to do, but it is what you need to do, too. That is two pieces of work. The “what you need to do now” is something that one can persuade people of at the end of conflict, but that gives you the opportunity to say, “And that’s what you should be doing in any event, because that is the underlying value”.

I was asked about Iraq and Syria and what I mean by focusing on that. In Iraq, it means looking more closely at projects that we can fund through NGOs and the way in which we work with UN and other groups, many of which I met when I was in Iraq. I want to look more closely, for example, on the funding that we can provide for education, whether it is training for better understanding of the importance of combatting religious intolerance, whether it is looking at how we can provide help for education for young people so that they do not get into a mindset whereby religious intolerance becomes a way of life. We have already launched such a project in Iraq, and we are looking more generally now at another project to assist Syria, which obviously cannot be in Syria because of the difficulty there, and other parts of the Middle East, which will be launched in the new year so that we can look more closely at what we in the Foreign Office refer to as freedom of religion or belief but which is more commonly seen as combatting religious intolerance. There are specific projects on that. I have been very fortunate indeed in that I have been able to meet leaders of all faiths and none to discuss this both in Iraq and here. At the beginning of this year, we held a conference at Lancaster House to which we invited faith leaders from across the world. As a result of that we have been able to do further work with the Archbishop of Canterbury, too, on these matters, and I pay tribute to the work that he is doing on that.

Q162 Baroness Hodgson of Abinger: Thank you very much for coming this afternoon, and congratulations on all the work that you have done so far and that you will be doing.

There are no formal mechanisms for monitoring the commitments made by States on sexual violence in conflict. Are the Government in favour of a formal monitoring or reporting mechanism? If so, would this be a new instrument or an existing process, such as through CEDAW or the universal periodic review?

Baroness Anelay: I am certainly a great supporter of the universal periodic review—the UK, of course, makes sure that instead of waiting for four years we have an update every two years to keep us on our toes—and I am certainly a supporter of CEDAW. I want to ensure that any way in which we monitor the work on PSVI is going to encourage others to make progress and not discourage them. When people signed the Declaration, it was a voluntary act, not an intergovernmental agreement. Therefore, I would be reluctant to look at some formal monitoring mechanism and who would control it. We should use international events all the time to be able to hold ourselves to account. Germany, having recently presided over the G7, published an up-to-date report of where people are on their pledges. We do that too. We keep a tally of where the pledges are. In the new year, for example, I am inviting the ambassadors who represent the champion countries that made their pledges at the Global Summit to come and meet me and set out where they are now, whether they are as far as they should be, whether they have met their targets, and where we go from there. Also, of course, it is a matter of keeping going with the pressure. I mentioned the G7. Japan will preside over it next year, and I met its Minister of State yesterday and discussed with him the importance of PSVI being a continued part of the G7 maintaining that overview.

Having a bureaucratic system for doing would not quite fit the way in which the project and the drive were born; it was a voluntary agreement. We have the tools of what is now commonly called soft diplomacy for having a very hard determination to deliver.

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Could I follow on from that, because I very much welcome what you say about taking advantage of upcoming international meetings to push this agenda forward? However, we have been trying to grapple with the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, on which, I have to say, our indication so far is that the Government’s priorities are dominated more by generality than by specificity. Since you have announced yourself as a champion of specificity, which I applaud, could you say a bit more about what objectives we will be pursuing in the run-up to the Summit, and whether we are taking steps to influence the Secretary-General, who is, I think, gathering material for a report which hopefully we will make some input into? If so, in what sort of areas do you think we could make progress?

Baroness Anelay: The World Humanitarian Summit is of course one of many significant events next year. We are working with DfID; DfID is the co-ordinating department on that. I shall be feeding in the objectives that I would like to achieve on PSVI. I find that working with DfID is productive, and we channel work through it, but I was also aware when I looked at the World Humanitarian Summit website a couple of weeks ago, that it has been changing not only the date but some of its websites, so it is a bit of a movable feast at the minute. DfID has been focusing very carefully on what it will deliver, and we will feed our ideas into that.

With regard to other summits, there will be a peacekeeping summit here in London next summer, for example, and there will naturally be a PSVI element to that. Tomorrow, I go to Geneva for the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent’s four-yearly conference. Not only do I have the UK statement on PSVI to deliver that to that conference, the ICRC membership has also allowed me to co-host a PSVI side event to concentrate on it.

There are other international events next year where we will always carry these ideas forward, because one needs momentum. It is a voluntary declaration by States, but that does not mean to say that we just let it go. Momentum keeps concentration on delivery.

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Could you let us have a list of the upcoming events in 2016 at which we will be making an input on PSVI?

Baroness Anelay: I can certainly give the Committee a list of the international events where I shall be making submissions about the need to have a PSVI contribution. To give an example, even six months ago I could not have told the Committee that I would be hosting a side event at the ICRC conference, because it is run by the membership. It is rather like the United Nations Association, as opposed to the United Nations. I cannot pre-empt what the organisers of an event will do, but I can certainly say what I would like to do.

Q163 Baroness Goudie: Baroness Anelay, I would like to thank you very much for all the work that you have done since you have taken over from Lord Hague. There were some who thought that this would not be continued. I believed that it would, and we are all very grateful. It is about talking about it not just here at home but around the world, where our reputation and yours have risen on this issue, which has made us a world leader.

Coming on from that, I want to talk about the effect of the participation of women in peace negotiations and, even more so, the transitional arrangements going on in Syria, Iraq and other places around the world. I mentioned this earlier to your colleagues from the Foreign Office and DfID. I am very worried about the United States’ attitude—and some others, but the United States in particular, because it always wants everything done yesterday, no matter how it turns out. How can we influence the United States at those peace negotiations? I can feel and see from the public image of Secretary of State Kerry and others how their behaviour is: “We want it finished today, because we have had enough of this”. They do not want to take into consideration what it is like afterwards or the transitional situation for health, education or women. Women have to be at the peace table, because they bear the brunt of war at every level. There are women there who can be part of this. There are also women trained to be around the peace table from other countries and diplomatic posts. How can we influence that, because if we do not influence it now we will never make that change? The momentum to make that change is here.

Baroness Anelay: I entirely agree. When the 1325 event was held in New York earlier this autumn, in October, we set out our ambition to ensure that women play a substantial part in peace processes. In 15 years’ time, we should not look back and think that we missed the opportunity, because we would be letting down half the population of those in conflict—half the population of the world.

What do we do? How do we exercise influence? First, it is important, and we have pledged, that whenever we are hosting peace talks, we ensure that women are not only there but are seen to be there as participants. We use that as a vehicle to be able to say to others that that is the right thing to do. The work being carried out by Staffan de Mistura in Syria has always been influenced by our view that women should be part of that process. I met his deputy, Mohamad Ramzy Ramzy, this summer and made very clear that that would be an ask from the United Kingdom. It is something that needs to be pressed.

I have to refer back to last week’s vote on the action against Daesh in Syria. I think that was a turning point not only in the effect that I hope it will have in reducing the number of days or years for which people have to suffer under that tyranny but in putting the United Kingdom firmly back among those in the lead for determining what happens at the Vienna negotiations. The Geneva negotiations had faltered, and Vienna had a difficult start. It is gathering momentum, it is a very delicate matter, but that decision now puts us very much among the leadership of those who have influence. For me, if women are not part of peace negotiations and delivering the peace afterwards, it will not be sustainable.

Baroness Goudie: It is very important that we bring in expertise, but it must also involve the local women’s groups. We know that if that had not happened in Northern Ireland and Chile, we would not have the peace that we have managed to sustain. When there have been skirmishes, the women have managed to keep it down.

Baroness Anelay: Exactly. I was reminded that this is as relevant in every continent as it is within the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland when, in New York, I hosted an event where the Namibian representation made the very point that you have just made, Lady Goudie. The women who had been involved in NGOs and as human rights defenders for so long, who had been against the government for so long and who knew what the country had been through were involved in the peace process. Hearing the precise description of their determination through the peace process was very encouraging, and a model to be followed, perhaps, for never giving up. That showed how, in every continent of the world, women taking part in the peace process means that there can be not only the end of conflict but stability that lasts.

Baroness Goudie: Because we, through the communities that we work with globally, know those women in those countries of conflict, when it is said that there are no local women available, we know that they are there because we are all speaking to them in different ways through our networks.

Baroness Anelay: When I hear words such as that, I always say, “It just means you haven’t looked hard enough”.

Baroness Goudie: Exactly. They never look.

Q164 The Chairman: What will the UK do to ensure the participation of women in the peace process, the post-conflict process, particularly in Syria? Will Her Majesty’s Government consider using their political strength within the coalition? Will that be a priority?

Baroness Anelay: We are already doing that, I must say, because of the work that we carry out not only through the FCO’s human rights and democracy department work and PSVI but through DfID in strengthening women’s organisations and human rights organisations generally. For example, when I visited a refugee camp in northern Iraq, I met the women, who of course have a strong voice and are able to represent their views, but do not necessarily have an outlet.

Our work across Syria and Iraq—Syria when it is possible for the NGOs to operate there safely—can replicate the work that we have carried out elsewhere. I am thinking of Afghanistan, where we have encouraged women to gain a political voice. We have assisted and trained them so that they can become local councillors, some of whom I met last year at a conference for the empowerment of Afghanistani women. What works in one part of the world can often work in another, but one needs to take account of local nuances and, above all, to listen to the people there—not dictate but listen.

Baroness Hussein-Ece: Thank you very much for your interesting and useful contribution today. Following on from that point, and recognising how much value and weight you put on women’s participation, do you think—to take it a step further and focus minds in countries that do not seem to think that it is important—that the Government should take a lead on this, given how important we know it is, and make it a condition of their engagement that there should be women representatives in peace and reconstruction summits and processes? For example, as was highlighted earlier, at the Vienna summit there were no women. People said that it was an absolutely horrifying sight. As Baroness Kinnock said, there was a woman at the back taking notes. Such a situation is surely no longer acceptable.

Baroness Anelay: These are two issues that I looked at carefully before Women, Peace and Security, a major event, earlier this autumn in New York. On women’s engagement, I wanted to ensure that women were part of the process. I do not want to dictate which part of the process, but what I was trying to get across in the pledges that we made was that if you have a peace process where the only people who are engaged happen to be men—they may be the most expert people that one can talk to; they may have great ability—it is not persuasive overall if one does not have an input from women, too. That has to be achieved through a reaction, a discussion, for each and every conflict, which will have its own stresses and strains.

The other aspect was whether, if there are no women involved in the upfront process—the team photograph, the family photograph—we should not engage at all? I would say then that to muffle the voice of the United Kingdom would be to undermine a peace process. The respect that we have because of our diplomacy around the world means that we can have an effect. Therefore, although I do not want to encourage anybody to think that it is right to go ahead in peace processes without a female voice—because if they do, they risk instability—I do not want to risk being absent from the table, because then we cannot tell those uncomfortable truths that sometimes those whom we work with need to hear.

Q165 Baroness Warsi: Thank you very much. It has been an impressive evidence session today. I am really grateful for all the work that you are doing. Your commitment and passion in this area are visible to all of us in the Committee. I have a question about short-term funding and long-term engagement. To really deal with the issue of preventing sexual violence in conflict, there needs to be long-term local engagement, but, of course, given the way in which government spend works, it is a short-term funding cycle. How do you square that circle?

Baroness Anelay: Baroness Warsi has highlighted one of the greatest tensions in government funding. I suppose that I am poacher turned gamekeeper, because I spent my life before politics in the NGO world. One of my greatest complaints was the short-term availability of government funding, so I have seen it at the sharp end. It is a serious matter, because PSVI demands long-term commitment, and changing attitudes happens over generations—there is no quick fix; it is simply not possible. Therefore, for me, the important change during the past year has been not only the creation of the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund but the commitment by the Government in the past week in the Security Review to extend that. I have been able to take advantage of it already and have seen at first hand how flexible it can be—I will give an example of it in a moment. However, the specific answer to Baroness Warsi’s question is that the fact that the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund can now go on for four years gives any Government department the opportunity to plan for that length of time. It is important not only that we plan for it but that those with whom we work see our commitment over that period and then know that they can work to a longer timescale.

Perhaps I may give a brief example of where I found the conflict fund extremely helpful. I was in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo formally to launch the International Protocol and was explaining how it was now translated into Swahili. “Ah”, they said, “but here in Kinshasa we speak Lingala”. So I was able through the conflict fund within about an hour to say, “It’ll be translated into that, too”. There again, when I was in Iraq, in the Kurdistan region, I was happily talking about the Protocol having been translated into Arabic but was then asked, “What about Kurdish?” I was able to say, “It will be translated into Kurdish”. So it has already had an impact for short-term funding; now we have the option of four-year funding to give more certainty to the brave people who do the work in the field.

Lord Williams of Elvel: Minister, one of the problems we have in this Committee is to understand quite what the impediments are. We are told that if national law on this whole subject is robust, there is no doubt that people who commit such acts are committing criminal offences. There is obviously a fund of good will, United Nations resolutions, film stars and former Foreign Secretaries, yet there have been no successful prosecutions. When he came before us earlier, your former Permanent Under-Secretary said that there were projects in Iraq and Syria—I come back to Iraq and Syria—where they were collecting information. I asked him whether he was confident that there would be prosecutions, and successful prosecutions, as a result. He replied, “That is our intention”. Can you do better than that?

Baroness Anelay: Perhaps I can give the answer in two halves. Lord Williams is referring to the International Criminal Court. At the moment, we are enabling human rights defenders within Syria to gather evidence that can be submitted to the commission of inquiry. After there is a political resolution, one could then be in a position for having a successful prosecution brought. The difficulty is that the ICC has proved itself although a determined court, one that faces significant political difficulties. Therefore, it will not be the only solution. It also depends on a situation being post-conflict as well. Other prosecutions have been successful. I referred briefly earlier to the importance of working with local justice systems. Perhaps I may give an example from the western Balkans, thinking of the work that has been carried out in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the law has now been changed and compensation has been awarded to victims of violence. In Croatia, the government have brought forward a law which will provide not only compensation but a pension to the victims of sexual violence in conflict. It was very controversial, because those who had been the protagonists, the fighters, in the conflict said that it was wrong for those who suffered sexual violence to be treated on the same level as those who had fought for the freedom of their country, so it was a brave act by the Croatian government. In Kosovo, they have been looking at how they can bring successful prosecutions. So other regional, local prosecutions can be brought. In Iraq now but in Syria for the future, we need to look at how prosecutions can be carried forward. However, we should always remember that, whenever one seeks a judicial resolution, the important thing is to protect the victim through the judicial process, because otherwise you can see that person being victimised all over again, and to me that has to be key: what does it mean to the victim?

Q166 Lord Williams of Elvel: Thank you. Would you agree that in order to raise the whole profile of PSVI, successful prosecutions are necessary and should be publicised?

Baroness Anelay: Absolutely. That is why I do my best to focus on what has been happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Croatia. It helps if one can at least give specific examples of cases, because that gives hope to those who are victims. It is only if you give that hope that victims are going to be prepared to take that risk of coming forward. You listen to the stories of those who said, “I’ve waited 20 years to tell my family, my husband, my children about this and I wasn’t sure that it was the right thing to do, because I was terrified of what others would say”. When you hear that, you know that you have to be ready to support those people through the whole of the judicial process and to work with communities to ensure that after a conviction has been upheld, as has been the case in some parts of the western Balkans, there is no victimisation of the victim or their family. Support has to be continued.

The Chairman: Thank you. We have two more questioners, whom I would like to get in if we can, although I know that time is running short. We have Baroness Hussein-Ece and Baroness Young, so I hope that they can be relatively short.

Baroness Hussein-Ece: I will be quick. What are the Government’s long-term objectives for the UK-based Team of Experts and for the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict, and how will these be realised? I think that you started to answer that already.

Baroness Anelay: The Team of Experts is a group that assists and advises. They do not take action, they do not set policy, they do not monitor, they do not criticise. They are there to give assistance—for example, in psychosocial health. It is almost like training the trainers in some circumstances. They are enablers. They are a very important resource for the work that we do. When necessary, we advertise in the UK to invite people to apply. I have recently been able to respond to somebody and say, “Yes, we’d like you to be one of the experts on the team”. That does not mean that they will be asked to take part in each and every piece of work that we do, because by the very fact that they are experts we call on them only when they clearly fit in a particular country at a particular time with a particular expertise. They certainly have an important future for us.

Q167 Baroness Young of Hornsey: Good afternoon. I, like others, appreciate your commitment to this issue—it is sorely needed. I would like to ask you two quick questions. I was struck by what you said earlier in response to Lord Hannay’s question about impunity and the fact that sometimes the survivors of this criminal act were not necessarily interested in either compensation or going through a prosecution process; they wanted to be believed. I just wondered whether there was any kind of provision or interest in ways in which those experiences could be documented for the record, not necessarily for criminal prosecution, because that obviously demands a different level of quality. Perhaps you could comment on that or take it away.

The main question is about UN peacekeeping forces. Obviously, there have been huge problems of sexual exploitation and assaults, which have not been illuminated by any means so far. What action would the UK be prepared to take if the current initiative does not prove to be effective? Would we consider, for example, pressing for an international tribunal to deal with these matters?

Baroness Anelay: First, with regard to the matter that a lot of survivors say that it is not about the money but about being believed, yes it is possible to take people’s witness accounts and then help them with psychosocial care and healthcare, and help them to find economic help so that they do not have to go through a judicial system. I am thinking particularly of a project that I visited in Kosovo itself. There, the ladies concerned did not want anyone to know that they were going to a centre that victims attended, because they did not want people to know that they had been a victim. So the very fact that we were able to help an NGO financially to set up a place where the victims could go and learn a trade meant that they could meet other survivors and discuss their experience in the secure knowledge that people did not know why they were there. They knew that they were there to learn a trade, and they did. I came away with some of their embroidery too, by the way, which was very impressive. They were learning something that brought them economic benefit, but they also found a way of discussing an experience that they could not discuss with anyone else.

On sexual violence and peacekeeping, it is a cancer of the system. That is what Ban Ki-moon has said. He has made it clear that there is zero tolerance of illegal behaviour by peacekeeping personnel, and I absolute support him in that. This summer, I had a meeting with Hervé Ladsous, who is the director in charge of peacekeeping operations, and certainly our focus is to ensure that we continue training not only our own troops but African Union troops to ensure that they are aware that that kind of activity is not only illegal but that as peacekeeping officers it is simply not acceptable. Before any country deploys its troops in a peacekeeping scenario, that country should make sure that its troops are trained and that they are trained again when they get in-country. We will have the chance to be able to demonstrate our leadership on that when we are able to commit our forces and technical help, as the Prime Minister set out in New York, in South Sudan and Somalia. We will lead the way and make sure that we hold others to account, as I will continue to do at the United Nations on exactly that point.

Baroness Young of Hornsey: But if that voluntary code does not work, what then? What about prosecution through an international court of some kind?

Baroness Anelay: I think there are different ways of carrying out prosecutions of those who have carried out sexual offences. One of the difficulties, of course, has been in getting evidence that will be fully proved in court. That is the first stage. I know that an investigation is already being carried out at the United Nations. We will wait to see the result of that. I have already discussed those issues too with Prince Zeid, the Human Rights High Commissioner. Having had Ban Ki-moon’s declaration of zero tolerance, the United Nations and its members—because only its members make the United Nations—need to show that they mean business.

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: But all the evidence that we have had over the years, and it is still continuing, is that zero tolerance sounds wonderful but does not mean anything, because the commission of sexual offences by peacekeepers continues. There are very strongly-backed allegations—of course, we have to see whether they can be proved in a court—in the Central African Republic, and this continues year after year. After all, Prince Zeid wrote a report in 2005—10 years ago—when he said that if this could not be stamped out, consideration would need to be given to some form of international justice that could be brought to bear, because, as I am sure you know, the problem is a kind of a catch-22 situation. The troop-contributing State is the one that exercises jurisdiction. It tends to put somebody accused of such a crime on an aeroplane back home, and that is the last you ever hear about it. That has happened again and again in the past. On the other hand, you cannot ask that these people be tried in the country where the peacekeeping operation is going on, because almost certainly its justice system has collapsed, and in any case there could be very great prejudice against a peacekeeper from the local community. So there is a gap. Nobody seems to want to fill that gap. It has been suggested to us that you could do it without a fully fledged new international tribunal but with a kind of international tribunal-lite that would have available people who could gather evidence in these cases and actually prosecute somebody against whom there is enough evidence to justify a prosecution. I would like you to comment on whether we can really hope to eliminate this, which is the quis custodiet ipsos custodes question. How can we hope to do it if there is really no way of bringing people to justice?

Baroness Anelay: Lord Hannay asks, basically, how we can afford not to do it. I think that is absolutely the case. There has to be international pressure to ensure that people, if they have committed crimes, face some form of justice. I say “some form” advisedly, as there can be military courts or courts within the home country. Lord Hannay also rightly raises concerns about what happens if somebody is simply returned to their country of origin. I would also ask what happens if they are then redeployed. There are more issues here than the important one of how we carry out a prosecution; there is also the question of how the troops are deployed. I would give two answers. First, the wider the pool of countries that are prepared to provide troops and to become TCCs—troopcontributing countries—the better, because the more one will then have a choice as to which countries shall provide them. Since a troopcontributing country can gain because of the payment to the troops, this becomes a financial incentive, so there is an incentive for better training. That is long term.

The shorter-term question is how we deal with the matter of the impunity of the peacekeeping troops. As Lord Hannay clearly set out, the United Nations States parties have not yet got this right. I think there will still be continued pressure on that. That does not take away from the importance of individual countries looking at their own judicial systems or the importance of the soft power of the United Kingdom and others being used to see that there are prosecutions where they can be brought, whether in the Democratic Republic of Congo or elsewhere, so that we can make sure that those who are carrying out the peacekeeping operations are there to keep the peace and not to cause more victims to suffer.

Q168 The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. You have been amazingly kind. I have a final quick question for you, which really just asks for a yes or a no. Do you have a five-year strategic plan in place for PSVI?

Baroness Anelay: My ironic answer is that no politician plots their own course for five years; it would be most unwise. But I would say that my commitment to PSVI is embedded across the Foreign Office. The way in which I have found work with colleagues in DfID and MoD—and across the Cabinet—means that, under this Government, I know that the work of PSVI will be taken forward. As I mentioned at the beginning, I am now working on how we can set out what next year’s work could be. I do not want to overpromise and underdeliver. It is not a case of a politician being scared; it is a case of a politician not wanting to let down the victims, because they are the ones who matter, not us.

The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for your personal commitment and for the leadership and vision that you have given others. Thank you very much indeed also for the enormous amount of work that you and your team have put in. We are enormously grateful. You have given us just over an hour, which is really kind of you.

Baroness Anelay: Lord Chairman, thank you. I was delighted when the House of Lords decided to set up this Select Committee, because the voices of the House of Lords can ring loud around the world and not just here, because of the contacts that Peers have from their previous and current lives. I want those voices to be used to make sure that the work of PSVI is not just UK-led but heard around the world.

The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.