Powerful Parliamentary debate on Government policy on Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes. Cross Party Calls For A More Coherent And Consistent Strategy. Genocide Determination Bill given a First Reading in advance of Second Reading debate on July 17th.
Motion to Take Note
2.44pm
Moved by
That this House takes note of the role of government policy in combating atrocity crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords participating in today’s debate, along with the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, Protection Approaches, and the Coalition for Genocide Response—of which I am a patron—Dr Ewelina Ochab, and the House of Lords Library for its invaluable background papers.
My thanks also to the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, who in 2021, from the Opposition Front Bench, was such an outstanding supporter of the genocide amendments to the Trade Bill—about which I shall say a little more at the conclusion and a lot more on 17 July, when my new Genocide Determination Bill, introduced earlier today, receives its Second Reading.
It is particularly apposite that we are debating this topic today, as we mark the 37th anniversary of the horrific Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing—and indeed across China—on 4 June 1989, graphically symbolised by the heroism of “Tank Man”, who stood against the dictatorship’s might. It was moving from me to attend earlier today the unveiling of a new statue to “Tank Man” and to hear Kate Adie describe the horrors that unfolded in the square that day, where she was as a young journalist. We recall the many brave advocates for democracy and human rights incarcerated today by the Chinese Communist Party, including Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai. All over the world, it is patently obvious that we need more of the steely resolve of “Tank Man” in demanding justice for victims and an end to impunity.
Let me give the House some examples of our wholly inadequate, inconsistent and sometimes craven approach. In 2015, I raised the plight of the Yazidis and other minorities, which the House of Commons declared to be a genocide. In response, the Foreign Office said that Parliament had no right to declare a genocide. In the case of the Yazidis, seven years elapsed until a German court used universal jurisdiction to convict an IS insurgent of Yazidi genocide. Perversely, two years later, in 2023, having blocked attempts to enable our own High Court to make a genocide declaration, the FCDO said that the German court’s findings would enable it to formally recognise a genocide.
In a report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I have the honour to chair, looking at the Yazidi genocide committed by British members of ISIS, we highlighted the more than 400 returnees to the UK, not one of whom has been prosecuted for the crime of genocide or crimes against humanity. Is that still the case? When will we act on the JCHR’s recommendation to extend universal jurisdiction? Let us contrast that decision to finally recognise the Yazidi genocide with the FCDO’s almost simultaneous removal of its recognition of what the ICC had declared to be a genocide in Darfur—this, despite speeches from Ministers, still extant online, describing atrocities in Darfur as genocide.
While the FCDO airbrushed Darfur out of its list of genocides, several organisations were ringing the alarm of an impending new genocide. In April 2023, I chaired an inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and published a report entitled Genocide: All Over Again in Darfur? It warned of systematic atrocities against non-Arab ethnic groups and urged immediate international intervention to prevent another genocide. Removing the previous determination inevitably affected our response to the events that were unfolding. By 2026, a UN mechanism confirmed that at El Fasher all the hallmarks of genocide were indeed present. This was predictable—it was preventable. In what is the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe, tens of thousands have died, including at Darfur’s El-Daein Teaching Hospital, where 70 people were killed, including 13 children and three medical workers.
Why is it important to call out atrocities such as this for what they are? Under the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide, such determinations require us to take decisive steps; our obligations are to prevent, protect and punish, and they are crucial in understanding early warning signs of future atrocities. What of our duty to hold perpetrators to account? Why is Omar al-Bashir, charged by the International Criminal Court with the 2003-08 genocide in Darfur—a systematic campaign of mass killings, rape and forced displacement, which I saw myself at first hand—still at large? Will his early arrest be part of the Foreign Secretary’s welcome decision to create the international coalition to prevent further atrocities in Sudan?
Staying with Africa for a moment, which I know is close to the Minister’s heart and where he did great work as the Africa Minister, can he update us on action to bring the perpetrators of wicked crimes in Tigray—especially the targeting of women—to justice? Are we acting on the admirable proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for a permanent mechanism focused on conflict-related sexual violence? In Nigeria, what assessment has been made of the recent statement of Caleb Mutfwang, governor of Plateau state, that over 60 entire villages have been eradicated by jihadist militias? He said:
“I cannot find any explanation other than genocide sponsored by terrorists”.
Is the FCDO at least conducting a joint analysis of conflict and stability assessment in Nigeria?
In the DRC, the Ebola crisis is happening against the perfect storm of endless atrocities by jihadists and terror groups which include massacres, beheadings and abductions across the eastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. On 12 May 2025, when I raised the execution of Christians by jihadists, the Minister wrote telling me that:
“We are alarmed and saddened by the attacks by IS-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces … all those who have committed human rights violations and abuses must be held accountable”.
A year has passed. Has anyone been held to account? With gross impunity in so many situations, is it any wonder that genocide happens over and over again?
What of that other theatre of war, in Ukraine? As we recall appalling atrocities committed in Mariupol, Bucha, Izyum, Olenivka and elsewhere, what progress are we making in holding Vladimir Putin’s regime to account for his atrocity crimes, including abduction of children and recent reports of forced recruitment and trafficking of foreigners to fight in the Russian armed forces in Ukraine? This has been documented by Fortify Rights, on whose leadership council I serve, and Truth Hounds, which later this month will be publishing a ground-breaking report on the use of sexual violence by Russian military against Ukrainian men. What are we doing to support the efforts to ensure justice and accountability for such crimes?
Where war crimes occur, whether they are committed by our foes or our friends, we must uphold the conventions, especially the Geneva convention. As is clear in Gaza, even wars must be governed by laws. I refer to my Question answered on 29 April concerning reports of the deaths of more than 38,000 women and children in Gaza. The conventions set the standards for international humanitarian law, and we ignore or abandon them at our peril.
Elsewhere, in Burma such war crimes occur daily. During several visits, both legally and illegally, I have walked through the smouldering villages of Karen state and interviewed survivors of the military’s attacks. I visited a burned-out village near the capital, Naypyidaw, in the aftermath of attacks on the Muslim community. Will the Minister examine the reports by Fortify Rights about airstrikes and related atrocity crimes across Myanmar, and its call to bring the military, the Arakan Army and Ata Ullah—the leader of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army—to justice for their atrocities?
Can the Minister update us on progress in the case brought by the Gambia at the International Court of Justice—supported, I was glad to see, by the United Kingdom—on charges of genocide against the Rohingya? What progress is being made in achieving the request by the ICC prosecutor for an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s dictator, Min Aung Hlaing?
With Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, I co-chair the APPG on North Korea, where human rights violations have been described in a UN commission of inquiry report, chaired by the Australian Justice Michael Kirby, as
“a state without parallel”.
I have been in North Korea on four occasions, met many escapees and chaired numerous hearings here in Parliament—including one just two weeks ago with Thae Yong-ho, former North Korean deputy ambassador to the UK and one of the highest-level defectors. Thae told us that, when the commission of inquiry reported, senior figures in the North Korean regime were initially very nervous reading the commission’s call for the leadership to be tried by the ICC for crimes against humanity. However, he said that, when it became clear that the international community were not going to act upon the call by the ICC, the regime in Pyongyang regained its confidence.
What does this say about the international community’s effectiveness in addressing atrocity crimes? Do we have any intention of ever following through on the recommendations of the commission of inquiry, and what stops us as a country from leading those efforts? North Korea, like Iran, routinely imprisons, tortures and executes people, even for listening to banned music or watching banned movies, and 300,000 people are incarcerated in its gulags and prison camps.
North Korea, Iran, Russia and China are part of what the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, calls “a deadly quartet”. In noting that all four have sanctioned me, the House will not be surprised that I am deeply disappointed by the response we have made to the CCP’s atrocities in China. What practical actions have we taken in response to the two independent tribunals chaired by the eminent lawyer, Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who prosecuted Milosevic, and which found evidence of genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, a view again endorsed as such by the House of Commons, and forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China?
On China, what practical response are the Government making to two other inquiries by the Joint Committee on Human Rights? Last year, we heard evidence of CCP transnational repression in the UK, including the imposition of a bounty on the head of a young woman, Chloe Cheung. The committee unanimously identified the CCP regime as the worst TNR offender and said it should be placed in the top tier of the foreign influence registration scheme—when will that happen?
In a second unanimous report, the JCHR also found that state-imposed, coercive, forced labour in Xinjiang is widespread and deeply entrenched in global supply chains of everything from cotton to solar panels. Is it reasonable to simply do business as usual with the CCP regime, which Sir Geoffrey says is
“interacting with a criminal state”.
Are we simply turning a blind eye or, rather, ravenously eyeing up the next trade deal?
The duty to prevent genocide in Article 1 of the convention is triggered the moment a state learns or should have learned that there is a serious risk of genocide. In 2021, the all-party genocide determination amendments to the then Trade Bill were passed here in this House with substantial majorities, including with eloquent support from the noble Lord, Lord Collins, who moved amendments linking trade to human rights violations and called for Magnitsky sanctions on perpetrators; some of those things are still waiting to happen. Crafted with the wise assistance of the former Supreme Court judge, my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead, and supported by two former Lord Chancellors, the genocide amendment was opposed by the Foreign Office and Trade Ministers and ultimately was wrecked by an amendment—now Section 3 of the Trade Act 2021—that is not worth the paper on which it was printed and which does nothing for victims survivors of genocide.
Successive Governments were lamely repeating the Foreign Office mantra that “only a court” can decide whether grievous criminality constitutes genocide while disingenuously blocking every attempt to empower our own UK courts to do so. The failure to provide judicial architecture has a further undesirable effect. It allows the word genocide to be misappropriated and turned into a slogan. Preventing the High Court from making a determination plays into that sloganeering.
The noble Lord may have been encouraged to repeat the FCDO’s contention that failure to formally recognise a genocide does not hamper our ability to act. However, as I explained in the case of Darfur, this is far from empirical reality. There is also recommendation 7 of the Truro review on genocide and atrocity prevention and the future of the mass atrocity prevention hub, on which I hope we will hear more when the Minister comes to reply.
Atrocity crimes come at great cost. They are linked to identity-based persecution, collective punishment, sexual violence, a culture of impunity, endless repetition and a deficit of accountability, playing into security and humanitarian challenges, including the mass displacement of over 120 million people. Instead of obfuscation about the future of the hub, we need clarity and transparency, and we must have JACS assessments that are not kept secret but published, so that we know why and what action is being taken.
What is not acceptable is a continuation of the illusion that we have a clear and effective strategy for combating atrocity crimes. In so many respects, today’s debate puts atrocity crimes back on to the House of Lords’ agenda, and I am incredibly grateful to all noble Lords who are ensuring that that will happen. I thank all noble Lords who are going to speak. I beg to move.
2.59pm
— Response to the Debate—
5.13pm
My Lords, I am greatly encouraged to have heard our House speak so powerfully, so eloquently, and with such a united voice about our determination to tackle atrocity crimes in whatever vestige they may come, whether it is outright genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. I was obviously disappointed to hear the final remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury. As he said, he and I want to see the same ends, so I was disappointed to hear him say that he is unable at the present moment to support the Genocide Determination Bill. He has heard the Opposition Front Benches, and I was extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham and to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for what they had to say and for the support the Bill has been given, particularly by people like the noble Baronesses, Lady Helic and Lady Sugg, in their remarks today.
There will be a debate about the Bill on 17 July. We are in continued discussion with the Government about it. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of the Shaws, and I met with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, the Attorney-General. We have questions for the Lord Chancellor, David Lammy, around this and universal jurisdiction.
I hope that the conversation will remain open, because we cannot have it both ways.
We cannot say, as the Minister did in his last remarks, that we will abide by the determination of a court if we then rule out the opportunity of the High Court of England and Wales and the Court of Session in Scotland being able to do just that, which is why my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead, helped to devise the terms of the Bill.
I hope that, given that the vetoes that we heard referred to by my noble friend Lord Hannay, will always be used by Russia or China when you seek to refer to a case, such as that of the Uyghur Muslims, or even the United Nations’ own commission of inquiry into North Korea, which called for a referral to the ICC, it has not gone forward because of the threat of the use of veto. My noble friend was right that the United Kingdom should revisit this question, even if it is only to call out the countries that would block such referrals. The French floated this idea some time ago. We should work with them to try and make sure that it is placed before the Security Council—something, I know, that would be close to the heart of the Minister.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, said that we needed clarity, resources and urgency.
The point about resources was underlined by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester. It takes me back to my student union days, when I argued for Resolution 2626—the United Nations resolution calling for 0.7% of our gross national product to be provided in development aid. The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, has an incredibly honourable record on this. Not many people leave government over a matter of principle. I enormously admire her for putting her beliefs into action in that way. She is right: we must understand what impact this is having on things such as the atrocity prevention strategy. I hope, therefore, that when the letter comes from the Minister that something more can be said about whether this impact of resources will affect capacity and the size of the hub.
Many Peers echoed the call for a cross-departmental and cross-government strategy, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, and others. We were told that it is a core question. Many lamented the absence of a national strategy. The scale of the challenge was underlined by the noble Baronesses, Lady Helic and Lady Nye, my noble friend Lady D’Souza, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, and others. The re-vivification of the conventions was a point that the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, made, and it was echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.
Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin were called in aid.
I once had the privilege of visiting Simele in northern Iraq, which is where Lemkin went in the early 1930s to understand what had happened to the Assyrians and Armenians.
It was on that basis that he started to think about crafting something to try and deal with atrocity crimes.
More than 40 of his own family members were murdered in the Holocaust.
Churchill said that there is no word sufficient in our language to capture the scale, the monstrosity of the crimes that have been committed. Lemkin gave us that word: genocide—the cutting of the human family.
In every generation, we owe it to the founding fathers and mothers of that period—from Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to Winston Churchill and the many senior figures in the Conservative Party and the Labour Party at that time who promoted the European Convention on Human Rights, on which the noble Lord, Lord Rook, spoke when I had a debate on that subject.
It is a great pleasure for me to be able to pass the baton on to the noble Lord, who has more than grown into his own shoes. I am particularly pleased that he has joined us on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, where he is already making quite a mark.
In the 1930s, we saw, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, the growth of crimes that nobody responded to in any adequate way. There was insufficient justice or accountability. People were not listening to the survivors and victims. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, gave us a particular contemporary case, that of Ryan Evans, who has paid the ultimate price in Ukraine for shining a light on the atrocities there.
I mentioned in my opening remarks that I heard Kate Adie earlier today at the unveiling of the statue of “Tank Man”, where she said that the protesters in the square in Tiananmen said to her, “Please go and tell the world”. That is what so many of our brave journalists have done down the years. They have gone and told the world, at great risk to their own lives. We surely have to acknowledge and underline, as my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, told us, that atrocities flourish in darkness, and we have to shine a light on them.
The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, said that early warning is useless without early action. The noble Lord, Lord Rook, said that the true test is in implementation. They were right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said that we needed something like the US Elie Wiesel Act in our own country.
This is the beginning of a conversation. We can continue it, I think, on 17 July, on my Private Member’s Bill. But it is also a conversation to have within your Lordships’ House, perhaps with the special envoy David Smith, the Member of Parliament who has been referred to, with whom I once travelled to India. I have a very high regard for him, but it would be good too to have officials from the FCDO present at a meeting with those who have taken part in this debate, where we can discuss more candidly, and perhaps with one another, some of the issues that I know unite us.
I will end by saying that I was particularly pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, was given the task of replying to today’s debate. We have recently missed his voice in this House on these issues. No one cares more deeply about them than he does. I am grateful to him and to all the Members of your Lordships’ House who have taken part in today’s debate.
Motion agreed.
Summary Note From Dr.Ewelina Ochab:
- Genocide Determination Bill: Lord Alton introduced his Private Members’ Bill – the Genocide Determination Bill, a bill to provide for the High Court in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Court of Session in Scotland to make preliminary determinations of genocide or the serious risk of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; for the referral of such determinations to relevant international courts or organisations; for response to reports on genocide; and for connected purposes.
- This Bill will have its second reading on 17 July.
- Atrocity Crime debate: Lord Alton’s debate on the role of government policy in combating atrocity crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide has engaged Peers from across the political spectrum, raising dire situations globally, and also identifying important and proactive approaches to address them, including (but not limited to):
- Atrocity prevention strategy;
- Universal jurisdiction reforms:
- As proposed by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, reforming the International Criminal Court Act 2001 – removing the requirement of the alleged perpetrators being British citizens or residents
- Providing justice and accountability for British victims of international crimes abroad – and the case of Ryan Evans.
- Genocide Determination Bill– as a response to implement the UK’s long-standing policy of leaving the question of genocide to competent courts – while having very narrow legislation allowing British courts to look into genocide only if perpetrated by British citizens or residents.
- This PMB was first introduced in June 2016 but was never given enough time to proceed through all stages.
- The Genocide Amendment to the Trade Bill 2021, modelled on the Genocide Determination Bill, received significant cross-party support in the Lords, before losing in the Commons. The mechanisms also received significant expert and civil society support through the years.
- Recommendation 7 of the Truro Review:
- To be implemented in full:
- Ensure that there are mechanisms in place to facilitate an immediate response to atrocity crimes, including genocide, through activities such as setting up early warning mechanisms to identify countries at risk of atrocities, diplomacy to help de-escalate tensions and resolve disputes, and developing support to help with upstream prevention work. Recognising that the ultimate determination of genocide must be legal, not political and respecting the UK’s long-held policy in this area, the FCO should nonetheless determine its policy in accordance with the legal framework and should be willing to make public statements condemning such atrocities.
- To be implemented in full:
- The full debate can be found here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2026-06-04/debates/D9B5B083-5625-46E5-9788-E14F9E75E0BB/CombatingAtrocityCrimesCrimesAgainstHumanityAndGenocide
Best regards,
Dr Ewelina Ochab
Senior lawyer,International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute
Co-Founder, Coalition for Genocide Response
Secretariant, APPG on International Law, Justice and Accountability
Co-Convenor, Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes
