Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-15
Topic: International Affairs
David Chidgey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on his presentation. He has second-guessed that I would want to speak about the implications of the amendment for countries in Africa. I agree with him that the amendment is important. It provides for the Secretary of State, on being satisfied that a developing or least developed country has committed human rights abuses, to remove it from the trade preference scheme. Specifically, with regard to preferential trade agreements for developing countries, at Second Reading of the Bill in the other place, the Secretary of State for International Trade, Liz Truss MP, said: "Fundamentally, free trade is humanitarian and we will maintain preferential margins for developing countries, helping businesses lift millions out of poverty. As a Government, we have committed to going further than the EU has in terms of trade for development".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/5/20; col. 613.] It is perhaps inevitably the case that the most extreme examples of state-sponsored human rights abuse tend to occur in least developed countries—not all but an awful lot—particularly where state institutions and governance are weak or non-existent. The African continent as a whole received close to £2.5 billion in ODA from the UK in 2018-19, thereby helping to address a wide range of poverty, development and human rights issues, and to tackle them head on. I shall give three examples of horrendous difficulties faced as a result of human rights abuse The countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa and their neighbours have suffered military incursions and civil wars for decades. Massive investments in peace-making and peacekeeping intervention by UN and AU forces, together with national armies, have barely kept the violence in check. The Lord’s Resistance Army, led by the self-styled prophet Joseph Kony, roamed across northern Uganda, kidnapping, mutilating and butchering tens of thousands, and creating 2 million internally displaced persons. More than 20,000 children were killed, and many more used as soldiers, porters and sex slaves I had the opportunity to lead an all-party delegation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I travelled to Goma, in the north-eastern region of Kivu. It was accessible only by plane. My plane was piloted by expatriate Bulgarians—no disrespect to the pilots, who were excellent, but it just shows the diverse nature of the exercise. They were on contract to the UN. In a local church, we were met by a small group of women and children, with some village elders. The women were determined to tell us how they had been attacked by armed men in uniform. They wanted their story to been seen by the rest of the world. One woman described how she was raped after her baby was torn from her arms and brutally killed. Her nine year-old daughter was then raped in turn by the soldiers. We were witnessing the results of sexual violence used as a weapon of war On a separate mission, in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, we witnessed the plight of thousands of refugees, displaced from the north by the Bashir regime. They arrived on huge barges on the River Nile with just the possessions they could carry. The fortunate few were being met by relatives and taken to safety and shelter. The least fortunate—the orphaned children—found their way to Juba central market, where they could shelter under the stalls. The girls were destined to be pimped into prostitution. The boys faced enslavement. As of 3 October, the Juba peace agreement has brought together the warring parties marginalised during the Bashir era. It could change the face of the transitional Government and see the establishment of a single, professional army and the return of two million Darfuris to their villages. It could build on the £350 million of UK ODA provided between 2016 and 2019 and at least £75 million more allocated to consolidate the peace agreement in conjunction with the World Bank. The introduction of trade preference eligibility could well be an incentive for the new settled state to curb the almost endemic state-sponsored human rights abuses My third and final example is that, in another development, on 11 October, Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, announced that Uganda, the DRC and South Sudan have agreed jointly to develop road infra- structure to boost trade between those countries and the region. Uganda has received more than £600 million in UK ODA since 1986 and currently has a rolling 10-year ODA programme of more than £50 million a year. Uganda, understandably, is considered a strategic priority by the UK. President Museveni emphasised that building roads that will connect Uganda to eastern DRC and South Sudan would tremendously increase connectivity within the region and unlock its growth potential. We must remember that access to the eastern part of the DRC is possible only by air because there are hardly any roads and it is traversed by river after river. President Museveni makes the point that a good road network connecting Uganda with eastern DRC would go a long way to help solve the question of insecurity and that movement of personnel and equipment to pockets of insecurity would be eased, as it is the territory where the remnants of Joseph Kony’s LRA still lurk, kidnaping and killing with impunity. Yet while these trade opportunities are emerging, Bobi Wine, the prominent opposition leader of the National Unity Platform party, claims his presidential candidature is threatened by human rights abuse and impunity in Uganda. Could this be a test case for this new legislation The former Foreign Office Minister, Rory Stewart, reflected recently that while on mission in the DRC, where he intended to discuss human rights and the illegal postponing of an election with President Joseph Kabila, the summit passed largely with Kabila—and I quote— "laughing at me about Brexit" I support this amendment and suggest to Liz Truss that while, fundamentally, free trade is humanitarian, there is still some way to go before human rights abuse eradication is part of the trade preference package, particularly in Africa.