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United Nations

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, rightly reminded us that after the devastating world war came the horrors of the concentration camps and the realisation that mankind had fallen so low. That must explain why the second objective of the UN charter was, ""to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small"." I thank the noble Baroness sincerely for giving us this chance to reflect on the atmosphere of that time. It is easy for people to criticise the UN when they think of the outrage of poverty, child labour and the depths to which human beings have to sink to survive, and of our collective inability to change even the worst aspects of the way in which we live. But this country has a good record at the UN. The Government have not only met aid targets, they have made notable and specific contributions to the workings of the UN. British NGOs have also made their mark going back to Eglantyne Jebb’s work for Save the Children 85 years ago when she persuaded the League of Nations to adopt the first Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The UK was among those states that established the new Human Rights Council following the 2005 summit and the report of the high-level panel, and it was a UK initiative that in September 2007 established the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. I have seen at first hand the extraordinary success of the UN in post-conflict countries such as Nepal, where the UK has also played a leading role. Human rights, especially the rights of minorities, are arguably the UN's biggest headache. Membership of the old commission was a constant source of internal rows and an embarrassment to the secretariat. That was one of the concerns of the high-level panel which said that membership, ""has become a source of heated international tension, with no positive impact on human rights and a negative impact on the work of the commission"." Accordingly, it recommended a number of changes, most of which the UN subsequently adopted. The council now has 47 elected member states and, through the universal periodic review, it somehow manages to examine the human rights obligations of all UN member states. It may be that the machinery at the UN is improving. But human rights will remain a highly politicised area of the UN, and the issue could still encourage more fragmentation than consensus. Does the Minister consider that the new Human Rights Council is more effective than the old, and that it has fully met the concerns of the high-level panel about membership? Finally, the Minister will know that there is a UN voluntary trust fund on contemporary forms of slavery which provides direct assistance to victims of slavery and trafficking. Can he confirm that the UK last supported this fund in 2003, and that the Government intend to support it again this year, six years later?