{"id":1959,"date":"2021-03-04T17:16:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T17:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewitnessexet.wpengine.com\/?p=1959"},"modified":"2021-03-04T17:16:10","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T17:16:10","slug":"the-genocide-amendment-a-real-opportunity-for-the-uk-to-stand-up-to-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=1959","title":{"rendered":"The Genocide Amendment: a real opportunity for the UK to stand up to genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>4 Minute, 23 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

On 23 February, the House of Lords backed<\/a> Lord Alton\u2019s Genocide Amendment to the UK Trade Bill in an effort to prevent the government from negotiating bilateral trade agreements with countries committing genocide by 367 votes to 214. The importance of the Genocide Amendment cannot be understated, for it offers an apparatus to condemn and punish states that commit genocide if multilateral treaties and statutes would prove insufficient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

International opinion is slowly beginning to coalesce in its\ncondemnation of China for its forced\nsterilisation<\/a>, mass rape<\/a> and forced\nlabour<\/a> programme aimed at \u2018eliminating<\/a>\u2019 Uyghur,\nTurkic and Muslim culture. The week of 22 February alone saw the Canadian House\nof Commons declare<\/a> China to be\ncommitting genocide and call for Beijing to be stripped of the 2022 Winter\nOlympics and the Dutch House of Representatives support<\/a> a proposal\nthat declared China\u2019s treatment of Uyghurs to be genocide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the multilateral mechanisms that have arisen following the\nHolocaust and the genocides in Darfur, Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s,\nnamely the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 2005 Responsibility to Protect, are\ndoomed to fail when the genocide-perpetrating force has the economic and\nmilitary might of China or is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking the definition of genocide established by the Genocide\nConvention<\/a>, it is without doubt that China\u2019s forced sterilisation programme makes\nthe state guilty of genocide. The issue with the Convention is that trial and\npunishment for genocide is left to \u201ca competent tribunal of the State in the\nterritory of which the act was committed\u201d. When China ferociously denies that a\ngenocide is taking place and that their camps in Xinjiang are strictly for the\npurpose of \u2018re-education<\/a>\u2019, it\nbecomes apparent that in this case, this clause is completely futile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is room in the Convention for an international court to rule on\naccusations of genocide. But China has never\nrecognised<\/a> the authority of the International Criminal Court, refusing the sign to\nRome Statute<\/a> in 1998,\nand could veto any Security Council referral to the Court. Then if we turn to\nthe International Court of Justice, it is only able to offer advisory\nopinions<\/a> when there are disputes over treaties, suggesting that the\ninternational court route offers no viable solution to the Uyghur genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we turn to the Responsibility to Protect<\/a>, established in 2005 to redefine the notion of sovereignty and place a burden of responsibility on all states to intervene and end cases of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the issue comes from where it derives its legal competence. By deriving its competence from Chapter VII of the UN Charter<\/a>, the UN Security Council, there is one significant hurdle for the notion of effective intervention to overcome: the veto held by permanent members of the Security Council. China\u2019s position as a permanent member of the Security Council reduces the likelihood that the Council would unanimously agree that China is \u201cunwilling or unable\u201d to protect its citizenry from genocide from slim to none. These issues arise before even beginning to discuss the legal controversies surrounding Responsibility to Protect and the consent of the host state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such multilateral mechanisms can prove useful but only in a state where genocide can be ended militarily. This leads one to summate that the Genocide Convention and Responsibility to Protect are not the universal principles they were devised to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then how can Western democracies, that emotionally pledged \u2018Never Again\u2019\nafter The Holocaust and the Darfur, Rwandan and Srebrenica genocides, honour\ntheir commitments to the victims and survivors of genocide if not through\nmilitary might? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where we turn to the Genocide\nAmendment<\/a> to the Trade Bill, which is due to be debated in the Commons in the\ncoming weeks. Lord Alton\u2019s amendment seeks to introduce an extra layer of\naccountability to the trade agreements signed by British governments. It\nproposes the creation of a parliamentary committee of legal experts to make\njudgments on \u2018credible reports\u2019 of genocide by a party to a trade agreement\nwith the UK. Lord Alton\u2019s proposal is a way of stopping the UK from any\nindirect complicity in genocides and reframing the political debate around\npotential trade partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One major sticking point for the government, however, is the current economic reliance on Chinese imports. In 2019, the UK had a trade deficit<\/a> of \u00a318.3 billion with China. The Genocide Amendment asks the parliamentarians to look beyond this and compels them to significantly alter the paradigm around trade, shifting the primary focus from economic gain to human solidarity and compassion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Lord Alton confesses, the Genocide Amendment is a \u201cmodest attempt<\/a>\u201d in beginning to address previous failings to predict or prevent genocide, or protect victims of genocide. But it compels parliament to go beyond rhetorical concern and condemnation and empowers the UK to unilaterally declare that it will not trade with genocide-perpetrating nations.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To enact the wishes of Lord Alton, as well as Holocaust survivors Ruth\nBarnett MBE and Dorit Oliver-Wolff BEM, the Commons can set the moral benchmark\nfor countries engaged in trade with genocide-perpetrating economies and would\ndemonstrate to the world the British value that \u201ctrade is not\nworth the price of a people<\/a>\u201d. <\/p>\n

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On 23 February, the House of Lords backed Lord Alton\u2019s Genocide Amendment to the UK Trade Bill in an effort to prevent the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":1965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,12,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-british","category-latest","category-foundation4uyghurfreedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}