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Human Rights Annual Report 2005

The Committee has not considered asylum policy as it is not within our remit. As a Member of Parliament with constituents in exactly the situation that the hon. Gentleman describes, I would be concerned if they were removed to a situation in which their lives could be threatened and repressed. I know that there have been some legal judgments and court appeals, but I am not quite sure, off the top of my head, what the current situation is. The Government should consider this matter closely, and not just in relation to Zimbabwe, but for other countries for which they usually make annual assessments, in which circumstances change—Sri Lanka is another case on which we might comment—as a result of which, people could be sent back to difficult circumstances. I conclude—I shall not take any more interventions—by commending the FCO for the quality of its report. Over the years, our Committee has made several suggestions and we are pleased that the report’s quality has improved and that many of our suggestions about its content and style have actually been taken on board. This report is, again, an improvement on previous reports. I am also pleased that the universal declaration of human rights is boldly printed at the beginning of the report. I hope that we will continue to argue internationally that human rights are universal, particularly with fast-growing countries that have different political traditions and have not yet embraced the virtues of democracy. As the General Assembly said in 1948: there should be"““a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance””."