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Refugees:
[ 27 FEBRUARY 1985]
Civil conflicts inevitably increase the refugee problem, but the second and I think perhaps the more fundamental issue is that of famine. Although there is not a great deal that we can do to prevent civil conflicts, or indeed international conflicts, in the African states-there are some things which we can do, but we do not have time to discuss that subject this afternoon-without doubt there are things which we can do, should do and should have done to prevent famine.
Again going back to the colonial era, so many of the economies of what are now known as the developing nations were distorted and disrupted right from the days of the slave trade. Let us not forget, either, that as recently as immediately after the last world war this country was begging the African nations and their people to produce food for us. Let us remember the Tanganyikan groundnut scheme. There was a great wave of diplomatic activity to get Africans to export food because we were short of it. Let us not forget that there was a great accumulation of food for Britain produced in the first few years after the Second World War. That inevitably added to the natural disaster of the droughts. This is the latest one over the past four years, but there have been others since the last world
war.
I ask the noble Lord who is to wind up for the Government to answer a question in this context. The drought in Ethiopia that has so hit the conscience of the world over the past few months was predicted over two years ago by all the major voluntary organisations. Indeed, it was the subject of a United Nations examination which was never published but which not only predicted the famine but pointed out how it could be averted. What were we doing two and a half years ago, in 1982, when we knew that that was coming and when some of us were pressing the Government to take action?
I would ask the noble Lord this question. Why is it that this Government, along with the Government of the United States, have been and are still sabotaging the most constructive organisation of the United Nations the International Fund for Agricultural Development-which is expressly designed, not to give food aid and succour the hungry now but to prevent millions starving in the famines of the future? That organisation is designed to help the peoples of the developing countries of the world to increase their agricultural production. It surely meets all the criteria that this or any other Government could ask for. It is constructive. It can prevent famine by increasing agricultural production. It can also prevent social conflict through the same means. It has low adminis- trative costs. It has a good reputation for reaching the poorest people in the developing world. It has financial support from the OPEC countries. It has a voting structure which includes both OPEC and the developing world along with the industrial world in a balanced way.
Why is that organisation being sabotaged by being denied funds by the British and American Governments? Surely it is the organisation which can prevent the tragedy and disaster of famine, which has so shocked the world this and last year, from recurring next year and in five or ten years' time, when the cost to the human race will be even greater. We must now
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tackle the basic problem of helping people to provide food for themselves, as the noble Viscount said in his most welcome and remarkable maiden speech. 4 30 p.m.
Lord Bauer: My Lords, many people in this House and many more, but less fortunate, outside will be grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for his Motion and for the eloquent speech with which he supported it. I should like also to add my congratu- lations to my noble friend Lord Brentford on his wholly exceptional maiden speech.
The suffering of third world refugees is widespread and chronic. It tends to be forgotten between crises. The appalling fate of refugees from Vietnam has by now been superseded by events in Africa.
I begin with a micro-example. In 1970, in South India, I met a lowly clerk. His humble job seemed incongruous with his intelligence and education. He was a refugee from Burma. He had two good A levels and was heading for a third when, in 1964, his family were expelled from Rangoon where they had been pharmacists since 1884. They found it very difficult to get jobs in Tamil Nadu, where they were aliens. Their closest relative lived in Bradford. Since the second world war, many thousands of refugees have fled to South India from Sri Lanka, Burma and elsewhere.
As other speakers before me have noted, in Asia, the Levant and Africa there always have been refugees from communal conflict and natural disaster. But in recent decades new forces have been unleashed. Violent conflicts are more frequent and widespread. Persecution and brutality have become more systematic and intense. More significant is the tension, conflict, persecution and fear that have emerged in countries where previously the different communities lived together peaceably for generations, as in Malaysia and Sri Lanka. Long study and reflection have persuaded me that such conflict, where there was little or none before, is the result of the wholesale politicisation of life, especially economic life.
It was often said in pre-war Malaya that the Chinese did not mind who owned the cow as long as they could milk it; although the Chinese earned their prosperity and did not extract it from others. The truth is that people are not deeply agitated about who governs them when a country is lightly ruled and its government confine themselves largely to such tasks as public security, foreign affairs, education, health and basic communications. The situation changes radically when the government directly control much of the economy through state enterprises, monopolies of export and import, licensing of industrial and commercial activity and when they enforce quotas of employment that discriminate on a racial basis. Malaysia and South Africa are familiar examples of such discrimination which is, however, ubiquitous in Asia and Africa.
At least as early as 1965 jobs in Kenya were advertised as restricted to Kenyan citizens of African origin. In Nigeria Ibo clerks, book-keepers and craftsmen are denied employment in the Hausa and Fulani-dominated north, with the result that there is a surplus of them in Eastern Nigeria and a shortage in Northern Nigeria where costly technical assistance missions are despatched to remedy the situation.
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