Speech

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this conference, although when you invited me to give this speech, and I accepted, little did we know how circumstances would make today's conference not just a debate about what we have learned in the past from bitter and hard experience about conflict, but also about what we are learning today - here and now - about the reality of conflict in the 21st century.

The events of September 11th changed many things. When those who took up Osama Bin Laden's invocation to kill Americans attacked the World Trade Centre towers, they actually ended up killing people from 62 different countries, including six people from Bangladesh. In many ways, the Towers themselves were a symbol of the extent to which the world is now more interdependent than it has ever been before in its history.

We have all had to do a lot of learning, not least those who have wanted to understand why the United States, and the West, are seen by some in a way that we do not see ourselves.

We have also learned that this is not a conventional conflict; those responsible - and I think everyone wants to see them brought to justice - are hard to find, and we face in truth a terrible dilemma as a world community.

The current action in Afghanistan is directed against the Taliban who have been responsible for sheltering Osama Bin Laden and against the Al-Qaida network which has threatened to kill more people, if it gets the chance. Every effort is being made to avoid civilian casualties, but as we know innocent lives have tragically been lost.

And there lies a lesson that each new generation learns: through the eyes of another group of fresh-faced young men who march off into battle and return - those who do make it home - scarred and shaped by the experience they have gone through; and through the eyes of civilian communities finding themselves caught in the centre of a conflict that they desperately want to escape.

And the truth - and you know it better than anyone - is that war is bloody, dangerous, and uncertain, even if on occasion it is necessary.

And that is the dilemma. We have to protect ourselves from further attack, and yet at the same time, although the situation inside Afghanistan is desperately difficult, we need to do all that we can to ensure that the international humanitarian effort receives priority. To ensure that we relieve the suffering of the people of Afghanistan with whom we have no quarrel at all.

As Clare Short has said, we all want the conflict to come to an end as soon as possible, but it is also the case that Afghanistan was in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis well before 11th September because of three years' drought, two decades of conflict and the policies of the Taliban. Four million Afghans had already sought shelter in Pakistan and Iran.

It is also true that the delivery of humanitarian relief into Afghanistan is being made much more difficult by a range of factors, including: the enforced withdrawal of all international humanitarian staff from the country after 11th September; the continuing fighting within the country between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance; the breakdown of law and order; and the harassment by the Taliban of local UN and other aid agency workers who do a vital job in hard and often dangerous circumstances. I want to pay tribute here to the ICRC on its work in Afghanistan.

One of the consequences of all this - and it is an issue which you live with as an organisation day in and day out - is how we manage these two processes side by side in a world where, if the international community is less likely to stand aside than was the case in the past and more likely to intervene in countries where conflict is taking place, we will have to find a way of working this through.

By its very nature conflict makes humanitarian work much more difficult. Tensions rise, law and order may degenerate, communications are disrupted so it's hard to find out what is going on, a lot of people are likely to become displaced, and for those trying to deliver humanitarian aid it can become hard, or even impossible, to track what happens to it. That's just what we have in Afghanistan but - rightly - we go on trying to get the food in.

In these circumstances, humanitarian organisations rely of course on their humanitarian principles; impartiality, neutrality, and help for the population affected. Many NGOs - yourselves, Oxfam, and others - will not compromise on these principles because any sense that you are not neutral and impartial could damage your ability to help and put your staff at risk.

One consequence is a great wariness of any joint activity with the military, although contact may be required to negotiate safe access. This in itself, and the delivery of assistance to populations affected, runs the risk of being seen as political by parties to the conflict so potentially jeopardising freedom of movement, delivery, distribution and safety. We also know that Western aid agencies and organisations may, despite every effort to distance themselves from the statements or actions of particular political or military coalitions, suffer because of their national origins.

The extent to which the humanitarian community works with an internationally mandated force - UN peacekeepers for example -is governed by the same principles. Each crisis and where it has got to will dictate the extent to which that force is itself perceived to be neutral. In cases where it is seen to be party to the conflict, the humanitarian community will only reluctantly turn to it for assistance and only then if the scale of the crisis and the suffering engendered are such as to be beyond their capacity to cope.

Where a UN Force has a mandate to secure access for the delivery of humanitarian assistance (as in Bosnia) UN Agencies and NGOs will work with it as there are really no other options available in the midst of an ongoing conflict. But here too there may be negative consequences for operations elsewhere or in the future.

And yet there is also a general recognition that lines of communication between the military and the humanitarian community should be established not least to receive information on security and planned humanitarian activities. For example during the Kosovo bombing campaign NATO (SHAPE) established a system whereby humanitarian organisations provided advance notification of their convoy movements in an attempt to prevent those convoys becoming inadvertent targets. Although details vary from crisis to crisis there are several models, which provide a mechanism for this civil - military exchange, although I recognise its sensitivity as an issue. In truth all of this is sensitive, but we have to face up to these hard, and at times, uncomfortable questions.

One of the other ways in which the world community is feeling its way forward concerns how to bring those responsible for breaches of human rights to justice after the conflict is over. The International Criminal Court is a symbol of this progress. The UK ratified the ICC Statute on 4th October and to date 43 states have now ratified; only 17 more to go top ensure that the Court comes into force, hopefully in 2002. The International Criminal Court will, of course, have jurisdiction over crimes such as those committed on September 11th in the USA, as well as war crimes.

The UK worked hard to create the ICC, and we have played a leading role in ensuring that gender issues have the prominence they deserve throughout the Statute. For instance:

• persecution on the grounds of gender is included in the list of crimes against humanity; 
• rape is explicitly named as a war crime; and 
• there is much better provision for the protection of vulnerable witnesses and victims. 

The Statute also provides that the composition of the court should include judges and officials with knowledge and expertise of gender crimes.

In order to ratify the ICC Statute, the UK has brought these crimes into the national jurisdiction; this means that those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity (whether or not there is an armed conflict) or war crimes can now be tried in the UK.

In the ad-hoc tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, there have been developments over the last few years that have put serious crimes against women firmly in the category of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The conviction this February of the men accused of committing heinous crimes against women and girls in the town of Foca in Bosnia is one such leap forward.

Another is that, although it may be obvious to most of us, various courts - including the European Court of Human Rights - have now recognised that serious sexual assault can constitute torture.

And, of course, next week will see the first anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. The UK, along with Namibia (the then Chair of the Security Council), was a driving force behind the Resolution and we continue, today, continue to push for its implementation.

I know that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) devotes a lot of time and other resources to informing all concerned bodies about international humanitarian law and the UK government supports this work, both financially and in other ways.

More broadly, at DFID we are only too well aware of the connections between poverty and conflict and, the lack of protection of human rights, in conflict. Equally, while poverty and the lack of human rights do not cause war - a sense of injustice is a major cause - but they are a breeding ground for resentment.

It is therefore essential humanitarian agencies have, at the front of their minds, the protection and assistance of people who are poor, marginalised and whose voices are rarely heard, if at all. Women are often found in each of these categories, and that's why I particularly welcome the ICRC study on "Women Facing War" launched yesterday.

Hearing these voices - especially the voices of women - is one reason why we have moved on from the days of throwing food and blankets indiscriminately off the backs of lorries to thinking much more carefully about humanitarian assistance - who does it goes to ? What effect is going to have ? Is it appropriate?

In the case of Afghanistan, the position of women has, of course, been made much more difficult by the institutionalised separation they have faced

For decades, women in Afghanistan have faced the most draconian violations and abuse of their human rights. Discrimination did not start with the Taliban - long before - but this regime has been responsible for the virtually complete exclusion of girls and women from education, from employment and from public discussion and decision-making.

Women and those who support them have gone to incredible lengths to protect some corner of their rights; secret schools (where brave people have risked much to continue to provide teaching in private houses), education through radio programmes, working as nurses in order to talk to other women and much more. These initiatives deserve our support and, whatever happens in Afghanistan in the coming months, we must ensure that we support the women of Afghanistan and their efforts to realise their human rights.

We hope through this work - and work elsewhere - to begin to bring a gender and human rights perspective to our humanitarian assistance, although I would be the first to acknowledge that we have a long way to go.

In conclusion, these are not just challenging times for the world community but also very difficult ones. There can be no doubt that the best way to ensure that women are not adversely affected by armed conflict is to prevent conflict from starting by removing the causes of armed conflict, including human rights restrictions and violations, poverty and corruption.

It is clear also that the one other we have learned from the events of 11th September is that a world with less injustice, poverty and inequality will be a safer one than the world we seem to have become since that fateful day.

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