Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
THURSDAY 8 JUNE 2006
RT HON
HILARY BENN
MP, MR JIM
DRUMMOND AND
MR PHIL
EVANS
Q300 Chairman:
The point that was made clear to us was that the complaint was
not about DFID, which was continuing, it was the other donors
and particularly the European Community.
Hilary Benn: Indeed. Other donors
will always have to answer for themselves. We do what we do, we
do it by demonstration and we encourage others to do what we think
is the right thing and other countries take different decisions.
Q301 John Battle:
Can we not say, "We will take back some of our multilateral
if you do not come in with us on that project"?
Hilary Benn: In relation to our
contributions for the EC, we do not have that mechanism open to
us. The other partner you were describing was the—?
Q302 Mr Hunt:
US Humanitarian Office.
Hilary Benn: We do not make a
contribution there. The broader problem, of course, is the appeal
for the DRC has not been terribly well-funded, as we know. We
are making a significant contribution. On Uganda and the camps,
which was the second part of your question, at the moment the
Government of Uganda, as I am sure you know, is wanting to move
people out of the big camps that they have been in to move them
into smaller satellite camps to get them closer to where home
was, provide security, increase confidence and show people that
it is possible to go back. I do not think there is an incentive
there for the Government to go in and say, "No, no, it is
all too dangerous. We are going to leave them where they are".
There is an issue for the humanitarian community because it will
be more difficult to make sure that provision and support is given
to those people in a large number of satellite camps than is currently
the case in the bigger number of camps where they are to be found,
although the conditions, as I saw for myself in Padibe, were pretty
difficult, not as bad as Somalia but pretty bad.
Q303 John Barrett:
Just slightly related to that is the issue of what is happening
in one part of the country in relation to another part of the
country. We have taken evidence before from you, Secretary of
State, on what is happening in Sudan in the sequencing of a peace
agreement in the south with the problems that there have been
in Darfur and, again, we discussed that before. Have we learned
any lessons from what happened in Sudan and Darfur that we take
advantage of, what Jeremy Hunt has said there, in other parts
of the world as to whether or not we think in one part of the
country the peace agreement is signed, the conflict has ended,
but elsewhere the real problems are people living in IDP camps?
Is that something that we can look at to Darfur and say, "It
is applicable, we have learned lessons and they can be applied
elsewhere"?
Hilary Benn: There has, of course,
been, as we know, a very lively debate and you took part in the
Westminster Hall debate upstairs and some people said that the
balance was not right. I expressed the view in relation to Sudan
that I thought the balance was right, but it does show just because
you appear to have solved one problem, you have not dealt with
another one. In relation to the DRC, since we seem to be focusing
on it for absolutely understandable reasons, the east of the country
is just really difficult. Now the same is true in Afghanistan:
there are parts of the country where things are better and things
are much more difficult in the south for reasons that have been
fairly widely reported, and it does mean that you may have to
act in a different way in different places at different times.
I think it all comes back to trying to understand what is going
on, what are people's motivation, why is this a problem, what
can be done about it, who can we work with and how can we make
sure that what we do does not make things worse. It all sounds
rather trite and obvious, but it is obvious for a very good reason
because they are sensible considerations to take into account
in deciding what to do.
Q304 Mr Singh:
The Commission for Africa recommended that donors "use assessments
of how to reduce the risk of violent conflict and improve human
security in formulating their country and regional assistance
strategies". I know DFID has a Strategic Conflict Assessment.
How widely is this used, how committed are you to implementing
that recommendation and, if it is used, what happens to the analysis
which it produces within the Assessment?
Hilary Benn: It is about asking,
I think, precisely the questions that I alluded to a moment ago
in answering Mr Barrett's question. When Mr Jim Drummond came
to give evidence previously, I think you discussed the influence
it had had when we used it in relation to what we are doing in
Nepal. In relation to Yemen, it had an impact because it has led
us to do some work on access to justice that might not otherwise
have been the case. In Sri Lanka, the impact on the World Bank
was that they realised that they needed to work more widely across
the country, because otherwise focusing on one bit might lead
people to think that they were not being even-handed in the work
that they are doing, so we are committed to using it. In the case
of the DRC, I think the Swedes and the States did it and we have
drawn on the information contained in their analysis to inform
the work that we are doing, so it does not mean that we have to
do every one. If someone else is doing it, we can pinch their
results.
Q305 Mr Singh:
I do not mean so much that situation. Within DFID, if nobody else
is doing it, is it mandatory to do one?
Mr Drummond: It is mandatory that
people consider when they do a Country Assistance Plan whether
there are conflict issues that this tool would be useful for,
so we are not saying for every country we work in, "You have
got to do it", but you have to pass a test which says, "Is
it relevant to you?" and you can say when you submit the
thing whether or not it is relevant.
Q306 Mr Singh:
Does that mean then we are not accepting the Commission for Africa's
recommendation?
Mr Drummond: We do not think it
is sensible to do it in every single country for which we have
an aid programme and so we have done it in about 20 countries
so far. It is getting much more ingrained in the organisation.
Q307 Mr Singh:
Do you have plans for using it more extensively than you are at
the present?
Mr Drummond: We have made it mandatory
that people ask themselves the right questions when they do a
Country Assistance Plan and for more countries to use the tool
than so far. I expect the number will increase, but I do not think
it is sensible to say for absolutely everywhere in the world you
have got to do a conflict assessment.
Q308 Mr Singh:
Is there any scope for a joint tool kit either of different government
departments that are involved in the country or between donors
to be used in common?
Mr Drummond: Yes, we quite often
do this exercise with other donors and I think, in the Sri Lanka
case that the Secretary of State quoted—
Q309 Mr Singh:
There is not a common, uniform, joint tool kit used across our
government departments, is there?
Mr Drummond: Across Whitehall,
the tool kit is becoming much more commonly used. Across other
donors, I am not sure if we have got to the stage where we have
got a commonly agreed tool kit for everywhere, but in some countries
we have been using the same sort of formulation.
Q310 Chairman:
Can I ask about that context because in your memorandum to the
Committee[12]
you talked about economic issues fuelling conflict and you said:
"There is a growing international awareness of the links
between conflict and economic issues such as trade". Can
I ask, at what point if you are going into a country which is
in conflict or post-conflict do you involve the DTI? They are
not part of the Conflict Unit, which I think is just Defence,
the Foreign Office and DFID, yet there are quite a lot of issues
it seems to me where the DTI needs to be engaged whether it is
conflict commodities or trade rules, and there seems to be a significant
omission.
Hilary Benn: To be honest, I cannot
think of a case where I am aware that we have had that kind of
conversation. I do not know whether you know, Jim.
Mr Drummond: I do not know.
Q311 Chairman:
You also say that, and this is in your memorandum about business
behaving more responsibly, the Ethical Trading Initiative which
I did ask the DTI questions on the last time around, and you have
talked about licences being required for conflict-sensitive goods.
It says: "The Criteria proved an effective mechanism to deny
licences where there is concern that goods might be used for internal
repression or international aggression, a risk to regional stability,
or other considerations, including the effect on sustainable development."
How many licences have been refused?
Hilary Benn: Are you talking about
arms export licences there?
Q312 Chairman:
Not necessarily. This is in the memorandum submitted by the Department,
paragraph 31, where you are asking the question, how can the UK
encourage conflict-sensitive business practices? It says: "As
part of its implementation of the Guidelines the OECD Investment
Committee is developing a `Risk Management Tool'. HMG also contributes
to conflict sensitive business practice through its export licensing
policy."
Hilary Benn: My understanding
is that is referring to the arms export licensing policy—I
am sorry if that was not made clear in the memorandum—because
those criteria in the final sentence are the ones that form the
consolidating criteria against which arms export licences are
assessed.
Q313 Chairman:
It only applies to arms licences?
Hilary Benn: That is my understanding,
yes.
Q314 Chairman:
If it was related to other goods or commodities which might be
seen to be fuelling conflict, there is no—
Hilary Benn: There is no licensing
mechanism relating to those, is there? No, it is just arms exports.
Chairman: I am not quite clear on the
point about arms and sustainable development and the nuclear weapons
aspect.
John Battle: There is a list by which
people have to assess whether—
Q315 Chairman:
Secretary of State, there are clearly issues here where the DTI's
involvement is important if you are trying to take out the factors
for conflict. The answer you were saying that there is not a mechanism,
it seems to me, is an area for more useful earlier co-operation.
Hilary Benn: It depends which
way the trade is flowing. The Kimberley Process and the FLEGT[13]
process—fisheries do not tend to be involved in conflict—are
two examples of where we have got mechanisms that we are pursuing
to try and deal with illegal use of natural resources and I think
those do provide us with some way of trying to deal with a very
practical problem. As far as licensing of stuff coming from the
UK going to countries, to be honest, I am struggling to think
of what kind of products we would be talking about that would
be fuelling conflict, goods that would be exported from the UK
apart from arms.
Chairman: I think on the issues of trade
and other things, we might cover that in our own report. There
seems to be a role for DTI which does not appear to be as high
on the list as it should be.
Q316 Mr Davies:
Before I get on to the issue of conflict, I want to take you back
to what you were saying earlier on about conditionality because
you know this is something that interests me.
Hilary Benn: Yes.
Q317 Mr Davies:
I had supposed that there were four cases in the last six or nine
months where conditionality had been applied and sanctions triggered,
and they were Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Palestine. You told
the Committee this afternoon there is a fifth, which I did not
know about, maybe colleagues did, which is Rwanda. I know that
the Hamas case, the Palestine case, was a joint EU initiative
and proceeded from the decision of the Council of Ministers. In
the other three cases, did you make any attempt to get other donors,
either our EU partners or indeed the international financial institutions
or the United States, to go along with those sanctions, so as
to prevent the effect of triggering sanctions being negated by
other donors and, if you did make those attempts to get some kind
of solidarity and coherence in the message being sent by donors
to these governments in the light of their behaviour, how successful
was that? To what extent was your initiative backed up by other
donors?
Hilary Benn: In taking the list,
in the case of Rwanda, there were a number of countries that had
the same conversation with the Government of Rwanda. At the time,
they had announced publicly they were thinking of doing this and
a lot of international pressure went on to Rwanda in that case.
In the end, Rwanda did not do what it had threatened to do in
those circumstances. In the case of Uganda, I can think of at
least two other donors who have also withheld some of their payments
and are currently considering what to do in the light of the outcome
of the elections. In the case of Ethiopia, of course, all of the
direct budget support donors acted in concert, so there was a
complete unanimity of view, and, of course, in each of these cases,
as you will know, Mr Davies, particularly in these circumstances,
there is a lot of debate within country amongst all of the country
representatives of the different donor organisations. For Kenya,
there were not sanctions because, of course, we were not giving
direct budget support to Kenya in the first place.
Q318 Mr Davies:
I thought you withdrew aid and I thought it was budget support,
aid money, as a result of the failure of the new Kenyan Government
to deal with corruption.
Hilary Benn: That is not the case,
we do not give—
Q319 Mr Davies:
There were no sanctions?
Hilary Benn: We had taken the
decision previously that we would not give direct budget support
to Kenya precisely because of the concerns about corruption, so
we give our support in other ways. In the case of Palestine, there
has obviously been a view right across the donors that it would
not be possible in current circumstances given the Hamas Government,
to provide direct budget support.
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