Tony Blair's government deserves praise for the Northern peace process but its wider human rights record has been found wanting, writes Seán Love
Over the past 10 years, Tony Blair's government has invested considerable energy and creativity in the Northern peace process.
Of course there have been many partners, but Blair and his ministers are deserving of great credit, both in terms of working to resolve the conflict and in particular by doing so within a solid human rights framework. It is a very good model, and one that could be applied internationally.
However, the same UK government is as culpable as the current US administration in the destruction of the global human rights framework. In this assessment, I am referring only to very recent and current events, not to past history. Here are a few examples.
The UK government is as much at fault as the US for its support, under false pretences, for the invasion of Iraq and it shares responsibility for the humanitarian quagmire into which Iraq has descended. As one of the occupying powers, the UK has a legal responsibility to protect the civilians of Iraq and to ensure that human rights law is respected.
Instead, the rule of law is non-existent, and the occupying forces have been directly implicated in torture and illegal killings. Claims along the lines of "How could we have known?" have no validity whatsoever. In 2003, in advance of the invasion, Amnesty International warned Blair that the likely cost of the invasion in terms of human life would be 50,000 civilian deaths, 500,000 civilians injured, two million displaced and 10 million in need of humanitarian assistance. Amnesty's assessment was met with ridicule by the UK government and by some commentators.
If anything, Amnesty's assessment was an understatement. Then we saw extraordinary statements from both Blair and British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett in which they welcomed Saddam Hussein's encounter with "justice"!
Saddam's trial and execution were a farce, and by undermining the rule of law as the US and UK have done, they place everyone's security in danger. Every accused has a right to a fair trial, whatever the magnitude of the charge against them. This plain fact was routinely ignored through the decades of Saddam's tyranny.
His overthrow opened the opportunity to restore this basic right and, at the same time, to ensure accountability for the crimes of the past. It is an opportunity missed and made worse by the imposition of the death penalty.
The UK government's deliberate obstruction (with German and Dutch support) of any co-ordinated EU pressure via the US on Israel during its invasion of Lebanon last August - which included an unwillingness to describe Israel's actions as "disproportionate" - was another serious indictment of their commitment to human rights. It is worth reminding ourselves that over those four weeks of bombardment more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed by the Israeli Defence Forces.
They targeted civilians, failed to respect the principle of proportionality, and ignored the distinction between civilian and military objectives, resulting in an extraordinary level of civilian infrastructural damage. Attacking civilians, civilian objects, and carrying out disproportionate attacks are war crimes.
Thousands of civilians, particularly elderly and disabled people as well as women and children, were trapped in villages in southern Lebanon with no access to medical services, food, electricity or fuel. Humanitarian agencies, including the Red Cross, were deliberately prevented from accessing these people.
On Darfur, the UK government has spoken of its concern for human rights, and has certainly been a generous donor to humanitarian relief. Yet Blair's government seems unable to even accept that the Janjaweed militia is acting at the direction of the Sudanese government. In addition, the Sudanese government's security chief Gen Salah Abdallah, who is accused of supporting ethnic cleansing in Darfur and should be facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, has been granted two visas over the past year to enter the UK for treatment at a private hospital in London.
Between 1990 and 1996 Abdallah was Osama bin Laden's main escort when he lived in Sudan. Since 2003 he has organised and carried out the brutal counter-insurgency operation in Darfur where thousands have been raped and killed by marauding Janjaweed militia, and several million displaced.
One person is killed every minute by the use of conventional weapons, and the UK government has been very supportive at the UN regarding the urgent need for a legally binding arms trade treaty. Yet, at Blair's direction, Britain's Serious Fraud Office dropped a corruption probe into an arms deal with Saudi Arabia after warnings that it could damage "national and international security". The attorney general said the decision had been made in the wider public interest, saying Blair had agreed that the continuation of the investigation would cause "serious damage" to relations between the UK and Saudi Arabia.
Prospective prime minister Gordon Brown said this week he would try to rebalance the UK's foreign policy, in part "to rid the government of the political stain" of Iraq. If this commitment is to have any legitimacy, the UK must address its own serious failings, and challenge its friends as well as its enemies if they abuse human rights. It must stand up for the rule of international law whatever the politics of the "war on terror" suggest, and it must be seen to uphold its own obligations. In recent years the UK has too often failed to do so.
Seán Love is executive director of Amnesty International's Irish section.