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International Tribunals (Sierra Leone) Bill [Lords]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who makes a wise observation. He is right to say that the message will be heard around the world. Perhaps most seriously, children were drugged, armed and turned into soldiers, then forced to wreak on others the horrors that had been wrought on them and their communities. In May 2000, the United Kingdom brought peace to Sierra Leone. I pay tribute to the bravery and expertise of our troops who carried out that intervention. They have our continued gratitude for the typically courageous and professional job that they undertook. We know from experience that they also have the sincere thanks and respect of the people of Sierra Leone. Since then, we have supported the Government of Sierra Leone as they have sought to consolidate the peace and rebuild a country ravaged by conflict. Seven years on from our military intervention, the people of Sierra Leone are preparing to go to the polls to elect the leaders who will take the next steps on that path of recovery. The UK is providing support for that process, and we will work closely with those leaders as they face the difficult challenges ahead. However, part of the future of Sierra Leone is in coming to terms with the past, and ensuring that those alleged to have committed the shocking crimes of the country’s civil war are held to account. In turn, taking such action sends a message to those who would commit such crimes in future that, if they do so, they will answer for it. With those aims, the Government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations negotiated an agreement back in 2002 to establish the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The Special Court is an international criminal tribunal of a hybrid nature, in that it combines elements of Sierra Leonean and international law, and draws on the skills of Sierra Leonean and international staff. The United Kingdom has been one of the Special Court’s strongest supporters since its inception. That has meant ensuring that the court has the resources that it needs to do its work. To that end, we recently made a further payment of £2 million towards meeting the costs of the court, bringing our total contribution since 2002 to £12 million. Our support for international justice goes beyond the financial. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said in June last year, if we want to live in a just world, we must take responsibility for creating and fostering it. In practice, that means that we and other states must provide practical assistance to the different international criminal tribunals as they take forward their important work. We live up to that challenge. For example, we co-operate in the exchange of information with the international criminal tribunals, we take witnesses into our witness relocation system, and we imprison some of those convicted by the tribunals in the UK prison system. The legislative basis for doing that is the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which provides, among other things, for our entering into sentence enforcement agreements with the International Criminal Court and other international criminal tribunals established by resolution of the UN Security Council, such as those for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.