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Foreign Policy

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for securing this debate and giving me the opportunity to talk about foreign policy challenges in the Great Lakes region of Africa, following on from the overview provided by the noble Baroness, Lady Amos. I want to refer, in particular, to recent developments discussed in Uganda in meetings with government Ministers, opposition party leaders and local MPs during parliamentary workshops held in Kampala last week. I record our gratitude to the Prime Minister of Uganda, Professor Apolo Nsibambi, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Oryem Henry Okello, Dr Latigo, the leader of the Opposition in the Ugandan Parliament, and many senior parliamentarians for the detailed briefing that they gave us during our short visit. Noble Lords will know of my interests in strengthening democracy in the region in my role as the vice-chairman of the Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group and as a council member for the UK Parliament with AWEPA. As a member of the FCO and the CPA parliamentary delegation to Uganda, I was made particularly aware of the progress of DfID-partnered multidonor projects, such as Deepening Democracy, and of AWEPA plans for providing parliamentary support in Uganda. The reason for concentrating on Uganda is that it is the centre of a region that has for decades suffered fraudulent elections, tyranny, civil wars, rebellion, terrorism, mass torture, genocide, forced migration and the creation of millions of refugees and internally displaced persons. Not one of the region’s states, which include the Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, has remained unscathed in that time. Yet it is self-evident that the success or failure of developing democratic, transparent and accountable governance will determine the stability of that region and thus of a major part of the African continent. We know that securing that success presents a major policy challenge to the nation states, the regional political institutions and the major donor nations, in particular the United Kingdom. To the west and north of the region, in the DRC and in southern Sudan, the situation remains grimly volatile. In Kenya to the east, the violence that followed the recent elections generated uncertainty and instability. In the heart of the region lies Uganda, a country that suffered 40 years of coups, dictatorships and guerrilla war, resulting in 1 million Ugandans killed, 500,000 seriously injured and 2 million uprooted as refugees. Your Lordships will be aware that for more than two decades the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has terrorised great swathes of the Congo, southern Sudan and Uganda. The conflict in northern Uganda is one of the longest running and most brutal in Africa, with thousands of children abducted to become child soldiers and more than 1 million internally displaced people in refugee camps. Peace talks between the Government and the LRA broke down last year when the LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony, refused to sign for fear of an International Criminal Court warrant issued against him. This ran contrary to previous statements made by the LRA that its members would be willing to face trial. With the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, insisting on Kony’s arrest, it seems unlikely that the indictment will be dropped. The LRA has resumed attacks on communities along the DRC-Sudan border, with reports of horrific violence, atrocities and the abduction of over 150 children to be recruited into the LRA’s ranks. As many as 50,000 people are thought to have been displaced in the affected areas. In mid-December, Uganda, the DRC and southern Sudan launched a combined military offensive on LRA positions. Although this initiative, named Operation Lightning Thunder, is now recognised not to have quite lived up to its name, it is nevertheless thought to have splintered the LRA forces into several groups totalling at most a few hundred. In any event, at present Uganda has an agreement that its armed forces’ actions in the Congo may continue until the LRA leadership is captured or killed, effectively destroying the rebels as a force. It now seems probable that the remnants of the LRA are trapped in the north-eastern corner of the DRC and are likely to surrender. Ugandan government Ministers, however, have made it clear that such is the trauma suffered by their people in the impoverished northern region of Uganda that normality will not be achieved until the threat of the return of Kony and his cronies is finally removed. Government Ministers stressed to us their determination that Kony and his second and third in command, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen, should first be put on trial in a court constructed for that purpose in Uganda. Only then would they be handed over to the International Criminal Court to face any charges of war crimes. Can the Minister in his response or later tell your Lordships’ House whether Her Majesty’s Government think that there is adequate scope in the Ugandan domestic justice system to try LRA fighters and commanders and thus suspend the ICC indictments? Do Her Majesty’s Government feel that they can do anything to ensure that the process is seen and demonstrated to be credible? What steps are our Government considering with the Ugandan Government to facilitate more defections from the LRA’s ranks and to support those who have defected as part of an embassy programme? What measures are Her Majesty’s Government taking to support the Governments of the region in their efforts to find and arrest Joseph Kony? What actions are our Government proposing to ensure that adequate protection and assistance is given to those civilians affected, or terrorised, by recent LRA attacks? What is the Government’s response to the concerns that the UN force in the DRC does not have sufficient capacity to protect civilians at risk of attack in the northern DRC? Our discussions in Kampala with Ugandan parliamentarians showed that there is a real fear that the LRA will be able to return to northern Uganda itself. If Kony were able to send even a few elements of his forces back to that area for just a short period, this would be hugely destabilising for the ongoing process. Such a scenario will not have been lost on Kony. The Prime Minister of Uganda, Professor Apolo Nsibambi, is responsible for planning a $600 million reconstruction budget with international donors. This programme is needed to resettle the north once Kony’s rebels are finally defeated. The challenge is the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons still in the camps in the north, of which some 20 per cent are orphaned children, disabled adults or elderly infirm, who will be very hard to resettle. While the turmoil in the DRC continues to threaten progress, by meeting the major humanitarian challenges of resettling refugees, rebuilding schools and clinics, and by stimulating local markets and the economy, Uganda could well become a bastion of stability in an otherwise turbulent region. The challenge for Her Majesty’s Government is to ensure that the United Kingdom support programme continues to nurture and strengthen the institutions fundamental to democratic development. Can the Minister confirm that the Government are, for example, committed to the Deepening Democracy programme and other parliamentary support programmes in the longer term? Uganda holds a pivotal role in the United Kingdom’s interests in this region and Ugandan parliamentarians hold the closest ties to Britain. Uganda currently holds an African Union seat on the UN Security Council. With the recently confirmed oilfields in Lake Albert expected to enter initial production next year, the Ugandan economy could be transformed. In the mean time, it is clear from meetings and discussions in Kampala that there is a cross-party determination among Uganda’s parliamentarians to strengthen their Parliament and a multiparty democratic structure to support it. This fact is demonstrated by well over 100 MPs attending the UK-funded two-day workshop organised by our high commission in Kampala. Full credit must be given to our high commissioner, Martin Shearman, to his deputy, Jason Grimes, and to Isabel Turner for their extraordinary efforts in providing a catalyst for Ugandan parliamentarians of all parties to work together in addressing the challenges faced by their region.