Written Evidence from REPRIEVE  (GL0024)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. Reprieve is a legal action charity which seeks to uphold the rule of law and the rights of individuals around the world. Over the past 20 years Reprieve has provided legal and investigative support to hundreds of prisoners on death row; the families of innocents killed in drone strikes; victims of torture and extraordinary rendition; and scores of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Reprieve welcomes the opportunity to submit to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s inquiry into the FCO’s Global Britain policy.

2. Reprieve supports the commitment by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) that human rights will play a central role in “Global Britain”. This position was most recently expressed in a statement by Foreign Secretary on December 10 2017, which stressed that: “Standing up for human rights is not only the right thing; it also helps to create a safer, more prosperous and progressive world. This is what Global Britain stands for.”[i]

3. However, Reprieve is concerned about a lack of specificity in the Government’s statements regarding the role of human rights in the Global Britain policy. Without clarity about the policy’s objectives with respect to human rights, and a tangible reflection of these objectives in UK diplomacy, there is a risk the FCO’s commitment in this area may be seen as more rhetorical than substantive. This concern is exacerbated by the Government’s notable failure to raise human rights concerns in recent diplomatic engagements.

4. In light of these concerns, Reprieve is particularly troubled by the recent news that the FCO’s new Global Britain Fund – a fund which the FCO admits “does not have its own focus, objectives, programme strategy, or bidding criteria” – will be drawn on for continuing UK assistance to the Government of Bahrain’s security apparatus. Bahrain has been identified by the FCO as a human rights “country of concern”, and the UN Committee against Torture has warned of “widespread torture and ill treatment” in its detention facilities.[ii]

5. The Global Britain policy risks being undermined by continued UK funding for foreign law enforcement bodies which are known to be involved in human rights abuses. The Global Britain Fund is just one of the opaque funding vehicles by which more than £1bn of UK taxpayers’ money is allocated to overseas security agencies, and Reprieve investigation has shown that many agencies receiving such assistance from the UK are known to be engaged in torture, the death penalty, and arbitrary detention of British nationals. 

6. If Global Britain is to advance the UK’s reputation as a champion of human rights, the FCO should not engage in overseas cooperation which ends up contributing to abuses. Unfortunately, the Government’s policies to assess the risks of such cooperation have been criticised as “not fit for purpose” by Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee; while the Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI) has warned that flaws in the FCO’s risk assessment policy could result in UK assistance “enabling or legitimising” abuses. 

7. Reprieve’s submission sets out three areas in which the Global Britain policy should strengthen the UK’s leadership on human rights issues:

1. Global Britain should stand up for human rights and the rule of law;
2. Global Britain should not contribute to abuses we oppose;
3. Global Britain should be backed by transparent policies and systems.

GLOBAL BRITAIN SHOULD STAND UP FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RULE OF LAW

7. Reprieve welcomes the Foreign Secretary’s statement that “standing up for human rights” is “what Global Britain stands for”. However, no further detail has been provided which would demonstrate that this commitment represents more than the “continuation of the FCO's current activities”, as the FAC put it in its initial report.[iii] Indeed, with respect to human rights the Government has in fact demonstrated an increased reluctance to make interventions to prevent grave abuses by UK allies.
8. Reprieve is concerned that despite the Foreign Secretary’s commitment that “standing up for human rights” is a key part of the Global Britain policy, the Government’s recent approach looks more like a retreat than a re-engagement on international human right issues. This pattern of behaviour bears out the Foreign Affairs Committee’s assessment in 2016 that “the FCO has become more hesitant in promoting and defending international human rights openly and robustly”.[iv]

9. A striking example of this hesitance to condemn UK allies’ abuses is the Prime Minister’s failure in July 2017 to publicly intervene on the cases of 14 people facing imminent execution in Saudi Arabia, including two juveniles and a disabled man who was rendered fully deaf in one ear by torture at the hands of the Saudi police. Despite calls from a cross party coalition including the former Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell and the former Opposition Leader Ed Miliband, the Prime Minister remained silent.[v]

10. The Prime Minister’s failure to speak out stood in stark contrast to the many individuals and organisations who publicly raised concern about the executions, including the US State Department,[vi] the Archbishop of Canterbury,[vii] and ten Nobel laureates.[viii] It also differed significantly from the approach of her predecessor David Cameron, who in 2015 made a public intervention which helped prevent from Saudi Arabia beheading three young men also convicted as juveniles.[ix]

11. The UK’s reticence to take a stand in cases of grave human rights abuses is particularly striking when those abuses are perpetrated against British nationals, to whom the FCO bears a consular responsibility. One such case is that of Andy Tsege, a British father of three who in June 2014 was kidnapped and rendered to Ethiopia, where he now languishes under a politically motivated death sentence imposed in absentia. More than three and a half years after Mr Tsege’s kidnap, the FCO has failed to secure his release.

12. The FCO has in fact demonstrated a sustained reluctance to challenge the Ethiopian Government’s actions in Mr Tsege’s case, including where Ethiopia has reneged on promises made to UK ministers. In one such example, during a trip to Ethiopia in March 2017, the Foreign Secretary announced that he had secured a commitment from the Ethiopian Prime Minister that Mr Tsege’s family would be allowed to visit him in prison. The family swiftly made all the necessary arrangements to travel during Easter of that year.

13. However, a year later, Ethiopia continues to refuse to issue the required documents that allow Mr Tsege’s family to travel. The Foreign Office has stated that it is not within their power to secure travel permission for Mr Tsege’s partner, and she has been forced to take responsibility for engaging with the Ethiopian authorities regarding this matter.[x] A promise by the UK Government that Mr Tsege would be allowed to call his family anytime he wanted has also been refuted by Ethiopian prison authorities.[xi]

14. If the FCO is to deliver on the commitment that “standing up for human rights” is “what Global Britain stands for”, it must reverse the impression that it has shrunk from engaging where UK allies may be implicated in abuses. While there is no doubt that some human rights issues are best tackled through private engagement rather than public criticism, there are many instances in which the UK’s voice can make all the difference in preventing abuses; and indeed, where egregious acts should not be allowed to pass without comment.

15. In light of the concerns above, Reprieve recommends that if and when the FCO develops the “Global Britain” strategy which the FAC has recommended it should publish, the Department clearly sets out how it will advance its opposition to abuses such as the death penalty and torture in a way which goes beyond the “continuation of the FCO’s current activities”.[xii]

GLOBAL BRITAIN SHOULD NOT CONTRIBUTE TO ABUSES WE OPPOSE

16. If “standing up for human rights” is to be a tangible element of the Global Britain policy, it is not sufficient for the Government to maintain its longstanding categorical opposition to abuses like the death penalty and torture; it must also ensure it does not end up implicated in such practices by providing ill-judged assistance to foreign law enforcement bodies which employ these tactics as a matter of course. While assisting overseas security partners is a necessary part of UK foreign policy, it is entirely possible to place practical safeguards on this assistance to avoid inadvertent involvement in abuses we oppose.

17. The FCO recently disclosed in response to a FOI request from Reprieve that it is piloting a £141 million “Global Britain Fund” for the financial year 2017-18, but[xiii], declined to disclose a breakdown of how the fund would be allocated, and in a separate FOI response admitted that the fund “does not have its own focus, objectives, programme strategy, or bidding criteria” and that it “can be used in support of any of our foreign policy priorities”.[xiv]Despite this ambiguity around how the fund will be spent, the Government has separately disclosed in Parliament at least one focal point for the Global Britain Fund: the continued provision of the UK’s ongoing security assistance to the Government of Bahrain.[xv]

18. Bahrain has been identified by the FCO as a human rights “country of concern”, and the UN Committee against Torture has warned of “widespread torture and ill treatment” in its detention facilities.[xvi] Reprieve investigations have previously revealed that UK funding for Bahraini security bodies risks enabling torture, forced confessions, and the death penalty – all abuses to which the UK is categorically opposed. The prospect that the Global Britain Fund may be used to maintain UK support for bodies engaged in torture and the death penalty clearly the FCO risks undermining the claim that “standing up for human rights” is “what Global Britain stands for”.

19. Bahrain provides a powerful example of how UK support to overseas security and justice institutions can undermine the UK’s standing as a champion of human rights and the rule of law. In recent years, UK support to Bahraini institutions has included the provision of training to hundreds of prison guards at the notorious Jau Prison, where individuals on death row are held and torture is routinely alleged. More than a dozen UK funded experts worked with Bahrain’s prison staff at jails where systematic torture took place, and as many as 400 guards at Jau Prison were trained under this programme.[xvii]

20. In a separate example of recent UK support to Bahrain’s security apparatus, the FCO provided £400,000 for a ‘Public Order’ project in the country, despite increasingly draconian bans on public protest in the capital, Manama, and an intensifying crackdown on legitimate dissent, including several killings of protestors in 2017.[xviii] In addition, the FCO funded training for Bahraini police in “community intelligence” to be used ahead of protests,[xix] along with “Combined Operational Training with a Focus on Public Order”[xx] – training used by the Bahraini regime to further violate rights.

21. FCO funding channels have also funded the work of an Ombudsman for the Bahraini prison system that has repeatedly declined to investigate torture allegations and false confessions leading to the death penalty. In one case, this Ombudsman appears to have deliberately misled the FCO as to the existence of one victim’s complaint so as to avoid investigating the allegations of torture and false confession, and later investigated his wife for ‘conspiring with foreign NGOs’.[xxi]

22. The Global Britain Fund is just one vehicle through which the FCO and other Government Departments channel more than £1bn of taxpayers’ money to overseas security and justice bodies, and the Fund’s budget represents only a small fraction of UK assistance to such partners. Increasingly, assistance is being provided through secretive funding channels such as the Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) – a £1.1bn pot of money dedicated to finance programmes in areas of conflict and instability.

23. Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) recently warned that the CSSF is at risk of becoming a “slush fund” for projects which could carry “the potential to make the situation worse; inadvertent complicity in human rights abuses…and damage to the reputation of the UK and of the Government.”[xxii] The Committee expressed concern around the lack of transparency around this funding, and stated that “[w]e agree with the human rights group Reprieve [that] the Government has not yet struck the right balance between security and transparency in relation to the CSSF.”[xxiii]

24. CSSF money has also funded support for abusive security forces in Ethiopia, a country which Human Rights Watch judges to be in a “pervasive human rights crisis”, with “atrocities committed by security forces to suppress peaceful protests and independent dissent”.[xxiv] Just last year, the UN called on the Ethiopian Government – who still refuses to allow access to UN investigators – “to end the ongoing crackdown on peaceful protests by the country’s security forces”, who reportedly killed “more than 140 demonstrators and arrested scores more” over a nine-week period.[xxv]

25. Reprieve’s analysis of Government disclosures around the CSSF indicate that the vast majority of spending from this fund has not been publicly documented, and almost £800 million is unaccounted for – nearly three quarters of the entire fund. Whilst some of this money goes to the UN’s peacekeeping budget, a great deal of this further money is said to be used for “other conflict-related activity”,[xxvi] without specifying how this allocation is made or how recipients are to be vetted. This category of secret spending towards programmes may well have serious human rights implications, and yet Parliament and the public know little about it.

26. Of course, details of some programmes may need to remain secret where to publish them would seriously threaten national security. But as the Joint Committee said, “[w]e agree with the human rights group Reprieve” that a blanket policy to leave secret vast swathes of CSSF funding cannot be right.[xxvii]

27. In the interests of transparently demonstrating that the UK is not providing support for foreign agencies involved in abuses, Reprieve recommends that the Government publish a full account of all UK aid and assistance to overseas security and justice bodies, including but not limited to projects funded through the Global Britain Fund, the Conflict Stability and Security Fund, and the Integrated Activity Fund. 

GLOBAL BRITAIN SHOULD BE BACKED BY SAFE, ACCOUNTABLE, AND TRANSPARENT POLICY

28. To avoid any perception that the UK is enabling the kinds of human rights abuses it categorically opposes as a matter of policy, it is vital that officials accurately assess the risks that UK aid could contribute to outcomes such as the handing down of a death sentence. Unfortunately,  the Government’s policies to assess the risks of such cooperation have been criticised as “not fit for purpose” by Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee; while the Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI) recently warned that flaws in the FCO’s risk assessment policy could result in UK assistance “enabling or legitimising” abuses.[xxviii] 

29. The main risk assessment policy in question is the Overseas Security and Justice Assistance Guidance (OSJA),  which was introduced in 2011 after revelations about UK support to secret police in Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen, with the intention of proving the UK’s commitment to “tackling issues related to human rights in an open and transparent way”.[xxix] Under the policy officials responsible for approving an overseas assistance project sets out a clear four step process officials must follow in assessing the risk a particular assistance programme poses, presenting a range of steps which may be taken in light of this assessment.

30. Although the Government made a series of changes to the OSJA risk assessment process in January 2017, these changes failed to resolve the fundamental flaw at the heart of the policy: a near-blanket refusal to disclose officials’ OSJA assessments, which leaves a vacuum of accountability for flawed or inadequate assessments. Where OSJA assessments have been published after lengthy litigation they have often demonstrated major errors of fact and judgment, and in at least one case a public body (the National Crime Agency) has admitted acting unlawfully by failing to effectively follow the policy.[xxx]

31. In a recent inquiry covering UK assistance to foreign policing bodies, Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee found that the FCO’s refusal to disclose even basic information about UK support to foreign law enforcement projects overseas was “totally unacceptable” and questioned “whether the OSJA guidance is fit for purpose” in light of this secretive approach.[xxxi] These findings have been amply borne out by subsequent assessments from Reprieve and other groups, including reviewers such as the Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI).

32. In its March 2017 inquiry into UK spending through the CSSF, ICAI offered a damning indictment of the OSJA assessments conducted for the projects it reviewed, noting that: “Several OSJAs were produced after programming had commenced and some OSJAs were incomplete or of low quality (typically with a stronger analysis of the UK’s reputational risks than of the risk of CSSF support aggravating human rights violations) or had not been conducted at all. The human rights assessments within our sample always gave the green light for the proposed activity, without requiring any design modifications.”[xxxii]

33. The OSJA policy only provides protection for human rights if it is applied correctly. Without any transparency or oversight, monitoring the OSJA policy is impossible. It is now clearer than ever that the UK needs a transparent, robust risk assessment process which is consistently applied across all government agencies when providing assistance to regimes with questionable human rights policies. The Government should ensure that these programmes are doing what they promise, are providing value for money, and that lessons are learned when mistakes are made.

34. With these concerns in mind, Reprieve recommends that the Government amend the OSJA policy to establish a presumption that all OSJA assessments will be published so that decisions around UK funding to foreign security bodies can be subjected to public and parliamentary scrutiny.

April 2018

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