UK: Foreign Affairs Committee echoes Amnesty International's calls on the UK government to put human rights at the heart of its Middle East and North Africa policy

Today (20 July), the Foreign Affairs Committee released its report on the 2010 Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) Human Rights and Democracy Report.

Amnesty International welcomes the Committee’s recommendations for the government to place human rights at the heart of its future work in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The Committee’s recommendations echo Amnesty International’s calls on the government to take a more robust and significantly more consistent position on human rights violations throughout MENA. The Committee echoed Amnesty International’s concern about inconsistencies in the withdrawals of arms export licences and shared the organisation’s concern regarding the continuation of arms transfers to Saudi Arabia despite evidence that it was sending UK-supplied armoured vehicles into Bahrain. Amnesty International urges the government not to overlook human rights abuses and repression in favour of arms sales, trade more generally, or national security cooperation. Women's human rights must not be ignored.

 Amnesty International shares the Committee’s concern that the government’s simultaneous pursuit of both UK commercial interests and improved human rights standards overseas may be conflicting rather than complimentary. The failure to consider the potential human rights impact of UK businesses operating overseas is demonstrated by the launch last week of the Overseas Business Risk initiative which aims to give UK companies “the information they might otherwise miss out on to help them do business abroad safely and successfully.” Disappointingly, this initiative failed to include any information on human rights.  Amnesty International has long argued that more effort needs to be made by the UK to promote stronger international frameworks for governing the human rights impacts of companies.

Amnesty International also welcomes the Committee’s recommendation that the FCO work more closely with other departments to ensure that its human rights agenda is shared across government and that it gives higher priority to working to internationalise standards for human rights in business behaviour. The organisation hopes that the government’s response to the FAC report will agree to implement these recommendations. An immediate step that the FCO should take in this respect is to press the Ministry of Justice to amend proposals in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that will make it virtually impossible for overseas victims of human rights abuses by UK multinational corporations to seek justice in UK courts.

 Background

 Amnesty International welcomed the publication of the Human Rights and Democracy: 2010 FCO Report as a useful overview of the FCO’s work to protect and promote human rights worldwide and explain the role of human rights in the UK’s foreign policy. The report, backed by human rights reporting on the FCO’s website, is an important means of keeping the UK public informed of UK government policy and holding the FCO to account on its Human Rights work.

 Amnesty International welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the work of the FAC in its scrutiny of FCO human rights policy. The Committee plays an important role through its examination of this work and the recommendations that it makes for its improvement. Its work is vital to the continued accountability of UK government policy and practice in this field. Amnesty International’s written submission and oral evidence are included in the Committee’s report.