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An arms trade treaty would provide a code reflecting existing obligations of UN member states under international law, including the UN charter, UN embargos, human rights principles and international humanitarian law. Within the UK, we need an interdepartmental commitment by trade, industry, the Treasury, FCO, DfID and, of course, No. 10 itself. The arms trade is lethal. In Africa, it fuels a brutal nightmare. In the dangerously volatile world in which we now live, it is absolute madness not to give priority to the control of this dreadful business.
12.15 pm
Lord Luce: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Alton has performed a service in raising this issue of conflict in Africa and set out clearly the scale of the devastation that conflict causes. I would pick only two facts: first, 50 per cent of the states that have emerged from conflict lapse into conflict within five years and, secondly, at least 32 per cent, a third, of the population of Africa are affected in their countries by conflict or emergence from conflict. However, I wish to concentrate on another angle.
If the House would bear with me, I would like to start with my recollection of an experience as the last British administrator—later, when I was a Minister, President Mubarak described me as the last British imperialist—when I was a district officer in Kenya. There was a crisis and a policeman reported to me that there was fighting over a water hole some 70 miles away. I went straight there with an escort and, probably rather patronisingly, summoned the two tribes who were fighting to sit under a baobab tree while I lectured in very bad Swahili that they should not fight wars. If they were to share the water hole they would find that they could all get some water. Whereupon, a man put up his hand at the back. “Bwana,” he said in Swahili, “could I ask you a question?”. I said, “Yes, of course”. He said, “You tell us not to fight, but how is it that you in Europe have fought two world wars this century?”. “Of course”, I said, “you win”. They went away rocking with laughter and shared the water.
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I came to the conclusion, probably subjectively, that the time had come for Britain to leave Africa and her empire. I am in full support of Mbeki’s approach to the problems of Africa: that there must be African solutions to African problems. It is no good anyone in Europe or Africa blaming the past. The cobwebs of the empire have now gone; colonialism is now dead and independence means taking responsibility for your own country. It is worth reminding ourselves that Mugabe obtained independence as the first leader of Zimbabwe 27 years ago. He takes full responsibility for the condition of Zimbabwe today. Ian Smith may have been the other major contributor, but Mr Mugabe carries the responsibility for the condition of his people today.
Africans themselves say that what they need most is leadership from Africans. All of us who know Africa can see that it is capable of producing great leaders, from Kenyatta to Mandela to Kofi Annan to Bishop Tutu. The people of that continent no longer need outdated leaders who are leaders of anti-colonial liberation wars. They need leaders who can develop their countries and can develop democracy in their countries. African leaders do great harm to our perception of them from outside the continent when they fail to condemn brutal dictators like Mugabe or Omar al-Bashir of the Sudan. It is always the people of Africa who suffer from it, not the former colonial masters.
The key is how Africans solve their own problems. What do they most need and want to do? Here I must commend a very remarkable book published by the British Council called Under the Tree of Talking: Leadership for Change in Africa. It gives African views rather than European views on how they can and want to best solve their problems.
The Commission for Africa’s executive summary report of 2005 highlighted two weaknesses in Africa over the past 50 years. The first was the capacity of African states to prevent and manage conflict and their ability to design and deliver policies. The second was accountability—how well a state answers to its people. In my view, there is much that we can do—either multilaterally or bilaterally—to help these countries, and to help them help themselves; our experience through the Commonwealth is one illustration. However, the growing competition between China, the United States and the European Union to trade in Africa is producing dangers for its people because, if the issue of governance, accountability and human rights is forgotten in this competition, it will do the biggest possible disservice to the people of Africa—it is they who will suffer.
Our approach must be to help the African nations build on success. In Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Liberia and South Africa, strong Administrations are emerging with success stories. We should encourage that and through the African Union and other nations we should demonstrate to the people of, say, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sudan, the Congo and the Ivory Coast that it is possible to have African leaders who can lead their countries back to a better and happier condition.
I end on one particular area. We need, both in the European Union and the African Union, a positive approach to reconstruction and peace building. This
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12.23 pm
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury: My Lords, I am glad to speak in this debate instigated by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, and the noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Luce, in what they have to say, with almost all of which I entirely agree.
It is about the Sudan that I am competent to speak in your Lordships’ House at first-hand. I too know what the sound of an Antonov bomber is like and when you need to dive for the hole. In January 2005 the comprehensive peace agreement was signed between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the ruling National Congress Party in Khartoum to try to end 21 years of war in southern Sudan. It granted southern Sudan a degree of autonomy for six years, followed by a referendum about independence. In January we shall reach the half-way mark of that timetable.
However, this agreement did not mark the end of conflict in southern Sudan. It was only the beginning of a process to settle the most contentious outstanding issues; issues of wealth distribution in Sudan, territorial boundaries between the north and the south, and, perhaps critically, the issue of the identity of the state and its national character, divided as it is between a lower and upper Nile area and an African people. If there is to be a sustainable peace, these issues have to be addressed in a way that can at least promise a continuing dialogue, supported by international pressure for resolution.
At the moment, as noble Lords know, there are fears that the Government of Sudan are seeking to divert attention from those issues by continuing to allow, if not actively to encourage, the situation in the Darfur region to escalate and the Lord’s Resistance Army to continue to maraud across boundaries in southern Sudan. This draws international attention away from the crucial work of the boundary commission and the question of the proper distribution of wealth derived from the mineral resources which lie along the north-south boundary.
My colleague the Bishop of Sherborne has recently returned from a visit to Sudan in his capacity as the chair of our link organisation. He was able to meet and talk to representatives of the Government and the church, as well as our ambassador in Khartoum. He
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More alarmingly, Bishop Thornton was informed about the reality of the non-implementation by both parties of the comprehensive peace agreement. In the words of Anthony Poggo, the Anglican Bishop of Kajo Keji in southern Sudan, who I am happy to say is my guest in the House today,
The comprehensive peace agreement is the best hope for continued peace and stability in Sudan, and I believe that Her Majesty’s Government must intensify their efforts to support its implementation. Pressure and support may be brought to bear in the most measured and efficient way through neutral intermediaries, such as the mediation team from a regional organisation, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, which played an essential role in maintaining distance between the conflict parties and the supporting states during the Naivasha peace process that issued the comprehensive peace agreement.
However it is achieved, I believe that pressure for the implementation of the CPA should be directed to achieving three ends. First, the two parties must be held accountable for non-implementation and the international signatories to the agreement must strengthen its Assessment and Evaluation Commission. Secondly, the international community must send a strong, co-ordinated message to the National Congress Party that it is legally bound by the report of the Abyei Boundary Commission and that it is expected to implement it in good faith so that the south receives its fair share of the oil revenues from this disputed region. I hope that my noble friend Lord Sandwich will be able to say more about Abyei later.
Thirdly, the forthcoming census, elections and referendum on independence from the north could easily be triggers for conflict and must be supported and prepared for thoroughly in advance. Very little preparation has been made for free, fair and representative elections to take place in 2009. However, these elections must take place according to the timeframe of the CPA. The UK, EU and other Governments have a key role to play in supporting elections with logistical support and electoral observers. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will be able to signal in this debate their willingness to intensify their efforts to support the implementation of the CPA so that we can concentrate on the provision of education and healthcare, which are almost entirely absent in southern Sudan.
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The noble Lord, Lord Luce, referred to enabling skilled people to get back into these countries and use their skills to help rebuild new worlds. With virtually no secondary schools in southern Sudan, that is an enormous challenge. Who will go back there if they cannot get education for their children? The support we give to education— not just putting bricks and mortar into place but providing teachers and supporting their skills—has an enormously high priority in the diocese of Salisbury.
There are some rays of hope. For example, there is a lower than average incidence of AIDS in southern Sudan because the roads have been impassable and the bridges are down so the truckers have not been able to get through. What are we learning about how to do educational programmes to support the medical and health education needed in southern Sudan? Appropriate support at this stage by the wider community would go a long way towards ensuring the planned and sustainable development of the region, which has such enormous potential. It is a part of Africa where some of this is within our grasp. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will do everything they can to support these processes lest the hopes of the people of Sudan are dashed yet again.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I remind noble Lords that in these debates the clock is not always very helpful because once it reaches seven it means that we are in the eighth minute. Time is very tight in this debate, so I remind noble Lords that when they reach number seven, they are in the eighth minute.
12.32 pm
Lord Blaker: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on introducing this topical debate. He spoke a bit about Zimbabwe. My noble friend Lady Park also made some useful points about that country, and I congratulate her too. I also want to congratulate our colleague the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, who must have brought home for the first time to millions of people the fact that there is a Mugabe problem when he cut up his white collar on television and said that he will not wear it again until Mugabe has gone.
Mugabe claims that he is fighting against Britain, but he is not; he is fighting against his own people. Our role was to end the war of independence and to arrange the elections that put Mugabe into power. He makes two allegations against us: neo-colonialism and that our sanctions have caused the appalling economic condition of Zimbabwe. Both charges are ridiculous. The “sanctions” are not sanctions but targeted measures, and it is not likely that they have caused the inflation in Zimbabwe which, according to the latest report that I saw today, has now reached a rate of 14,840 per cent. So good is Mugabe’s spin that it seems he has convinced a majority of the leaders of the SADC countries of what he is saying. The three principal African treaties have been breached by Mugabe, but the SADC leaders appear to be unaware of that—at least they do not refer to it. The effects of the economic situation in Zimbabwe are horrifying. One-third of the population has fled, especially the best qualified people and young people who were born after 1980, when Mugabe came to power.
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On 11 March, a prayer meeting in Harare was violently broken up by the police and the military. That shocked even the leaders of SADC and led them to give a mandate to President Mbeki of South Africa to facilitate negotiations between the opposition and Mugabe. That was accompanied by a police warning to the MDC opposition, who are entirely peaceful, not to cause any trouble. No such warning was given to Mugabe, who has been causing turmoil among the opposition by the beatings and the intimidation of all sorts that he was conducting before that event and which have continued until now. Mugabe is preparing for elections with the usual measures that he has used in the past. The latest one—which is new, so far as I know—is that 4 trillion Zimbabwe dollars have been set aside as a fund available to Mugabe in preparation for the elections. We can imagine that it will be used to persuade voters—so far as they need persuading, given the violence that has been going on—to vote for Mugabe.
Is there any ray of light on the horizon? Four representatives of the European Union recently made speeches in Lisbon that criticised Mugabe. I do not remember other members of the European Union often criticising him, so that is a step forward. In a few days there will be an election for the next president of the ANC in South Africa. It could be quite important if it leads to the election of Zuma, who is a robust character compared to President Mbeki. His history is not entirely without blemish, but it is possible that he will be much more active in pursuing peace in Zimbabwe than President Mbeki has been. Kofi Annan recently made an important speech—the Nelson Mandela lecture—in which he cited Zimbabwe as one of the crises in the world that the United Nations should pay attention to. He said that Africa is particularly crying out for resolute action by fellow Africans. That was with particular reference to Zimbabwe, so one or two straws are beginning to blow in a light wind. However, we cannot regard the end of Mugabe as being likely soon. We have to bear in mind also that his mother lived to 100, and he is only 84. An end could be put to the problem if the SADC leaders got together with a powerful president of SADC in the form of Zuma, if he wins.
12.38 pm
Lord Jones of Cheltenham: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on this timely debate—I am tempted to call him “my noble friend” because we go back a long way. This debate is timely because of the recent meeting between Europe and Africa which highlighted the continuing conflicts on that continent, most notably the grinding oppression of the people of Zimbabwe. I shall not say much about Zimbabwe, but a snapshot that may be of interest to noble Lords is that its latest issue of postage stamps has a denomination of half a million dollars; if you are a dollar millionaire in Zimbabwe, you can buy two stamps.
Several years ago, the eminent broadcaster and writer Alan Whicker was interviewed on a chat show. He was asked about Africa and replied that in his view there was no hope for Africa and, consequently, he rarely went there. I disagree with that analysis.
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Since entering Parliament in 1992, I have taken every opportunity to visit Africa to learn more about that fascinating continent. There is no doubt that there are some good countries and that there are others which are not succeeding. There are many still suffering the after effects of conflicts which have ended; there are others where conflicts are taking place today—the noble Lord, Lord Alton, told us about those; and there are others where future potential conflicts are bubbling under the surface.
The recent report to which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred, Africa’s missing billions, was published in October. It is a sobering document and I recommend it to all noble Lords. Armed conflict costs Africa $18 billion a year and $300 billion has been lost by 23 countries since 1990. Those 23 countries are: Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda. It is a catalogue of shame, but some countries are not on that list.
I am patron of the Kambia Hospital Appeal in my former constituency of Cheltenham. This is a link between Cheltenham General Hospital and the Kambia area of north-east Sierra Leone. The population served by the hospital there is more than 100,000 and it is a little more than a large shed—or, rather, it was little more than a large shed because during the civil war in Sierra Leone rebels looted anything worth taking and set fire to the buildings. Now, some years later, thanks to the European Commission and our Cheltenham appeal, there is a new hospital. So the consequences of the civil war in Sierra Leone resulted in European taxpayers picking up the cost of reconstruction.
I also went to Sierra Leone in 2002 to monitor the first elections shortly after the civil war ended. It was the most difficult visit I have ever experienced in Africa. Perhaps because it was an EU observer mission they sent me, a British MP, to a former rebel-held area in Kabala—“We’ll teach these Brits”—and it was really difficult. Most of the buildings had no roof; there was no electricity supply because the electricity pylons had no cables; and there was no water supply. Each day, a UN wagon turned up which contained a liquid that they called “water”. It was either green with brown bits floating in it or brown with green bits floating in it and we used it to flush the toilet. Residents of Kabala asked us if they could have some of our water to take home to cook with and drink. It was a terrible experience. So the consequences of civil war are bad. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, described, the consequences in Sudan and Darfur are truly terrible.
The countries neighbouring conflict areas suffer economically because of reduced trade, political insecurity and an influx of refugees. I visited Burundi in September with an Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation. Burundi lost 37 per cent of GDP during its 13-year, savage civil war. This was more than Rwanda, although the conflict there received more widespread international coverage.
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In the report to which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, introduced us, there is a snapshot entitled, “The cost of a bullet”. It states that:
- “a surgeon from Kenya tells the story of a 17 year-old Congolese boy whose jaw was shattered by a bullet. The son of a diamond prospector, he was shot by rebel soldiers who thought he had diamonds. It took him one year to raise the money from friends and family to have it treated. During this time, he kept his disfigured mouth covered. He travelled 3,000km to Nairobi for the operation to insert a steel plate into his jaw, which took nine hours and cost $6,000.
The cost of the operation is equivalent to a year of primary education for 100 children, or full immunisations for 250 children, or 1.5 years of education for a medical student”.
That is the cost of one bullet.
Tourism is important to Africa. The report contains a snapshot on tourism which states that:
- “the continent’s share of global tourism revenues is twice its share of global GDP. It is an essential source of foreign exchange to many countries, and for Kenya the largest source. However, armed violence deters millions of potential visitors. The chief director at South African Tourism admitted that the reality and reputation of South Africa as a country beset by gun crime had lost it 22 million visitors in five years”.
There is no doubt that Africa will continue to have conflicts in the foreseeable future. Many countries have had bad rulers, and corruption, the misuse of resources and conflict have cost Africa dear. In the 21st century the continent must put that legacy into the past and build good countries for the future. It will need our help.
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