Select committee: International Development Committee
Recommendation 7
Third Report - From Srebrenica to a safer tomorrow: Preventing future mass atrocities around the world
Published 17 Oct 2022
Paragraph 45
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
International Development Committee Promoting dialogue and preventing atrocities: the UK government approach All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Armed conflict and mass atrocities are linked, but overfocusing on conflict is likely to miss atrocity risks, to leave groups unprotected and to ignore how atrocities themselves can drive conflict. In addition to conflict prevention, the Government must explicitly recognise the separate but interlinked priority of atrocity prevention.
From: International Development Committee, Third Report - From Srebrenica to a safer tomorrow: Preventing future mass atrocities around the world (HC 149), paragraph 45, 17 October 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 19 January 2023 (deadline 17 December 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with many of the Committee's recommendations on atrocity prevention but says it "cannot commit to developing a written strategy at this time".
- It agrees that atrocity prevention is separate from conflict prevention, and says the Mass Atrocity Prevention Hub in the FCDO's Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation has been established with "central policy ownership" of the approach.
- On the Committee's call for a cross-departmental strategy, it disagrees, stating that it "cannot commit to developing a written strategy at this time" while taking a whole-of-government approach.
- On reporting, it partially agrees: "From 2023" it will expand the existing atrocity prevention section of the annual Human Rights and Democracy Report.
- On resources, it partially agrees but says that, "given fiscal constraints", it cannot guarantee additional resource until budgets are confirmed, with updates "in due course".