This session is in our inquiry into humanitarian access and adherence to international humanitarian law. I will just let Members know that because of the judicial review on arms sales to Israel we are unable to ask questions on that, however much we want to ask questions on that. Minister, are you okay to go straight in? Thank you very much. Do you want to introduce your team or shall I ask them to?

Good afternoon, Committee and Madam Chair. I am Matthew Wyatt, Director for Humanitarian, Food Security and Resilience at FCDO.

Good afternoon. I am Hazel Cameron, Head of the Human Rights Department at FCDO.

Thank you very much. Minister, we are drawing to the end of our research period of the inquiry that we have done on international humanitarian law. It has come about because of the horrific numbers of humanitarian workers who have been killed around the world in the last 12-month period, more than ever has been recorded before, both international workers and workers on the ground. It rather pains the Committee that we do know who the international ones are, but most of the local people who are doing their absolute best for their communities are not even recorded in some cases, so we do not even know the real numbers. However, thinking specifically about people who either directly or through contracts are working on behalf of the FCDO, do you think that the FCDO has a moral if not a legal duty to make sure that all is done to keep those workers safe?

I absolutely do. That is quite a straightforward question. I am tempted to just say yes, unless, Matthew, there is some legal thing that I am not aware of.

We certainly have a legal duty to our own staff, but I think that the Chair was referring to—

If you are giving funding to an NGO, for example.

The legal position is normally that the NGO itself will have a legal obligation to its staff. You also asked about a moral obligation, and we certainly do feel that there is a moral obligation on us. I am happy to say a bit more about how we discharge it, unless the Minister would like to answer first.

Maybe, because of time, you could write to us about that. One of the things that we heard about, which the Committee felt very strongly about, was the way that the funding packages are put together when NGOs or INGOs are working in very unstable environments where, to be quite honest, other people would not go. They are having their budgets for security chipped away. From what we can understand, it tends to be the consultants who oversee them who are trying to get the budget prices down to report back to you value for money, but as a consequence of that people are literally put in the firing line without the necessary security. One of the things that we were being urged to raise with you is whether or not you would look at a security fund that could be bid into so that it is not coming out of their bottom line. Because what is happening is that either people are going in without the security, without the insurance, or they are not able to do the projects because the insurance levels are so ridiculously high and FCDO may or may not know that they are being talked out of putting it into their bids.

That does not sound like value for money, if that is the motive. Making your workers less safe is not value for money. Hazel, do you have anything?

No. I agree.

There are some funds that we support on that. For example, there is the HAVEN Consortium in Ukraine where we provide support. We support the consortium and the consortium provides support for agencies for things like duty of care packs. That can be training, flak jackets and so on and armoured vehicles, so there are some. Internationally, we support NGO safety through the International NGO Safety Organisation, which we finance. It provides NGOs with information about safety and so on, so there are a number of instruments.

The figures that we were quoted were £1,000 a day to insure their staff, which is a huge undertaking and deters a lot of organisations. Either they were not able to do the work or they were taking the risk and going ahead without the insurance, which is cold comfort to the workers and to their families. However, they are so committed to doing the work that they are in an impossible position because of this. The question was whether or not the Government had considered this factor when we are asking people to go into humanitarian areas that are deeply unsafe.

Can I make one other comment on that, Minister?

You go first and then I might say something.

One thing that I would say is that for the agencies that we finance, we do due diligence on those agencies and we look very carefully at all sorts of things—fiduciary standards and so on—but we also look at the way in which they handle security for their staff and security for any agencies that are downstream of what they are doing. We look at all that. If you are aware of instances where that is not working or not happening, we would be very interested to hear about that.

I agree with what Matthew said. We should not be commissioning a service that leads to people being put at risk to that extent, especially without insurance or the most basic levels of protection that they need. If something has been going wrong there, we would want to look at that.

I would suggest, Minister, with your shift in focus more to humanitarian, you are looking at earthquakes, for example, or you mentioned yourself mine deconfliction. That is putting people at a lot of risk and that is a costly exercise, so I hope that that is factored in.

Yes.

I am happy to jump forward there. Given the limited avenues for holding perpetrators to account at an international level, would you support an amendment to domestic legislation to provide for the exercise of universal jurisdiction over international crimes such as war crimes?

I do not know. That is a very big question.

I might offer a couple of thoughts. In general, our policy is that crimes should be investigated and prosecuted where they take place. It is a territorial basis for jurisdiction. We have some limited exceptions for that for some extremely serious crimes. It is something that we keep under regular review and it is under consideration, but I do not have any further indication that we would want to conduct domestic legislative amendment. We keep it under review.

Thank you. We will probably write to you with more details, if that is okay, because it is a very specific thing.

In what circumstances would the Government use Magnitsky sanctions against individuals suspected of committing or being complicit in breaches of IHL?

We do not speculate on sanctions, obviously, and about future designations. You are asking me to describe a hypothetical situation. I do not know; I will look to officials.

We do not have a specific sanctions regime designed for international humanitarian law breaches, but in some of our existing geographical regimes—for instance, in the Sudan context—we have the ability to designate people because of suspicion of violations of international humanitarian law. That is the way we currently look at that.

If you were aware of individuals who were giving instructions that were clear breaches of international humanitarian law, you would look at using sanctions?

I have been working with the sanctions team. One of the big challenges that we have is finding targets. There is an argument for putting more resource into that sanctions team because it seems to be quite an effective tool in the current context.

It is a very effective tool, Minister.

Yes. We now have a new regime that is looking at people trafficking and some of that activity. It is finding targets that we are confident would withstand legal challenge. My sense of it is that that is the hurdle that wej would need to overcome to implement in a situation like you described, but I am sure there are other hurdles, too.

If either a general or a politician was giving an order that led to a war crime being carried out, withholding food from a population, would you, therefore, look to use those sanctions?

It is so context-specific that I don’t think I can give a definitive answer to that. I am relying on officials. I spent all my time, two months, trying to work out how to do this aid budget decision.

We can come back to you on the specifics of that, because there is a difference between international human rights law and international humanitarian law that we need to be clear on. We can come back to you on—

If you could pick away at it. We are looking around the world at international humanitarian law being broken. The Committee went over to Geneva and met the ICRC and asked what were the consequences, and there sort of are not any. We are asking, would you be using sanctions as a consequence of people breaching the law? Because we need someone to start stepping up and doing something now. It feels as though people can make decisions that wipe out society without any consequence, and they need consequences.

It is slightly different but with some of the sanctions that we have implemented in Venezuela, where it is about people in leadership positions doing things that we don’t like, that can happen. That is slightly different. I think you were asking for a suite of sanctions or a regime that we might be able to—

Would you use them? If you know that, for example, aid workers are being deliberately targeted, hospitals are being deliberately targeted, civilians are being deliberately targeted, which all break international law, how do you hold people to account, and are sanctions one of the ways you would use?

It is very context-specific, as I said. I think you possibly could, and you possibly could do that within our existing regime. I am on the edge of my understanding of this.

I think that is correct. The only thing I will add is that sanctions are one of the policy levers that we have in the toolbox. It is quite an intrusive method and we need to make sure that it is the right method to achieve the outcome that we want.

We have put sanctions on settlers in the west bank, for example, and the decisions that are being made—and one can look at Sudan—are being made by individuals. To lose some of your freedoms would seem to be a way to have a chilling factor on decisions being made and to hold people accountable.

I want to push back on the idea that international humanitarian law is context-specific. International humanitarian law is international humanitarian law and it is a nonsense to suggest that context is relevant as to whether IHL is or is not being broken.

Absolutely, but that is not what I said. I said our ability to make a decision on a specific individual case is context-specific.

Either international humanitarian law is being broken or it is not, and I think what the Chair is asking is what steps you would be prepared to take. We know it is being broken in several places around the world and no steps appear to be being taken. Are sanctions, therefore, something that we, as a Government, would be considering?

The point I am making in response is that international humanitarian law is universal but our ability to make a judgment depends on the information that we have, and our ability to get that information and evidence is context-specific.

How would a Government Department initiate an investigation if there was reason to believe that the UK was supplying arms or components that were being used in attacks against aid workers?

With any export licensing decision there are certain obligations, including under the arms trade treaty, to conduct assessments and we do that regularly. The very specific threshold that we are looking at is whether there is a clear risk that a particular item might be used to commit a breach of international humanitarian law that could indeed comprise attacks on aid workers. We do that very specifically under our domestic legislation that implements the arms trade treaty.

Is there any responsibility on the arms manufacturers to investigate the use of weapons or components in these circumstances?

They are obliged to comply with our national law and with any decisions that we make under the export licensing criteria.

I can see why they have said that to you.

Obviously, deconfliction is an important thing and we support it in a number of ways. Of course, it does not always work and it is never going to work everywhere, but we do a number of things. One is that OCHA has the responsibility for running the UN notification system. We provide core funding for OCHA, which helps it to do that. We also support the International Committee of the Red Cross, which also does a lot of work on deconfliction, including dealing with regimes, states, non-state actors and so on, to try to ensure that deconfliction can work. In instances where it is clear that deconfliction has not worked and where there have been problems—and we have seen some, of course, in Gaza recently to tragic effect—we press the various parties to the conflict. In Gaza we have been pressing Israel very hard, as you are aware, on ensuring that proper investigations are carried out, that the deconfliction system is improved and that where things have gone wrong and there is a need for accountability there are proper investigations and people are held to account.

In that specific case we certainly have raised that on numerous occasions. Of course, as you know now, Israel announced a block on aid into Gaza in any case, so a lot of our efforts at the moment are trying to make sure that that block is lifted. We regard that as unacceptable.

Unacceptable? Philippe Lazzarini, the chief of UNRWA, was on Radio 4 this morning saying that withholding food and, therefore, starving the Gazan population is a war crime, not that it is unacceptable. Minister, which is it?

I think officials are more cautious with their language than I would be. I met Philippe Lazzarini yesterday and I listened very carefully to what he had to say. We have been clear for some time now that that aid must be allowed into Gaza urgently because children are dying from exposure and malnutrition, and it is desperate and it is an immediate need. We talk privately to Israel about it, but we also make calls publicly for the situation to be changed. How that is done, and who does it—we could have a big old argument about that. I just want that aid to get to where it needs to get to immediately.

Minister, I hear what you are saying and everyone agrees with that, but I do not know how many civilians are left. 2 million civilians are left starving to death, being bombed to death, and we are all saying it is awful and that we want investigations. At what point do we say, as my colleague James said, that international humanitarian law is very black and white? A phrase like “civilians are a human shield” does not stand up. Civilians are protected, health facilities are protected, schools are protected. Humanitarian workers, particularly when they have a red cross or a red crescent on, are protected. Do you see the frustration and why we are asking about sanctions?

Yes, I do.

Why does there seem to be this paralysis of the international community so that we are just having words rather than screaming from the rooftops? We are literally watching on live television children being starved to death day after day.

I would do whatever I thought would have the effect that we want. We do come to the issue that it is difficult to get the evidence that we need to make the decisions that you are inviting us to make. It is for a competent court to make certain determinations.

The ICJ has made advisories. We could be acting on those advisories.

I can just give you what the position is. We are getting as much information as we can. The information that we are getting is horrendous about what the situation looks like. As I said, I spoke to Philippe yesterday to get his account of this, but we also get reports from other sources. All we can do at this stage, I think, is to just keep being clear that we need that aid to get in. We made a decision about arms exports because we were concerned about breaches, and principally that was about aid workers and access to aid. That is the position and we share and we have expressed.

In a letter to us on 16 April, the Minister confirmed that the Government are still considering their response to the ICJ ruling that was made in July. When will there be a response to that?

It is a complex ruling. We are still considering that—that is the position, and at the moment there are three different ICJ cases. There is the South African case, the case about the occupation, and there is the one on which we delivered our statement last week about the obligations as an occupying power to provide humanitarian relief. We delivered a statement very strongly supporting the UN and ICRC on that. We are still considering the implications for the second of those cases. It is deeply political.

Minister, we hope with you in post we will get a slightly stronger position, because it is not that complicated. The rules are not that challenging to read and understand. Something like forced transfer is a thing, yet your Department is still saying that they are displaced people in the west bank. Could we urge you to look at it? You keep saying that the UK will be a global leader and we have all this expertise. That requires standing up and being counted and leading. Could you look into this, particularly when it comes to international humanitarian law?

I take that challenge.

I want to say that we have indeed made very strong statements, including at the multinational level on the need for—

Your UN in New York presence has been superb on this.

We set out our stall extremely strongly and I think we take a leadership role on that, including with European partners. We hope to have the issue addressed at the UN Security Council.

This is a proactive question, really. How is the UK supporting the Palestinian Red Crescent as it recovers from the attacks on its medical convoy?

I don’t have the details of precise financial support for the Palestinian Red Crescent, so I will have to look at that. We have certainly been in touch with them. I was in touch with the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent personally to express condolences, and we have done that publicly so that they know that we are very worried about that. We have described publicly outrage at the incident. I will have to get back to you on physical support for the Palestinian Red Crescent.

If you could, that would be lovely. We were in the west bank last year before that and we heard directly about some of the horrible things that were going on even then.

Thank you. You said you will come back before us whenever. We have you back in three weeks, Minister. Baroness Chapman of Darlington: Have you? Excellent.

Yes, we are very excited about that. Thank you very much. We recognise what a challenging job you have right now. Again, this Committee is here and wants to help. We speak to an awful lot of people around the world and we have collectively an awful lot of experience, so please do draw on us if we can help. Thank you for your time today. Please send the Committee’s regards to Rory Stewart. I think we have made you on time to meet him. Committee, thank you very much for your questions, and thank you for being so generous with your time, Minister.