#Baroness Anelay

[totallyhussein-blog]

Resisting genocide, facing the impossible in Iraq

Back in 2016, Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad came to the UK where she met the AMAR Foundation’s chair Baroness Emma Nicholson and Baroness Anelay of the UK’s Foreign Office, to discuss the plight of Iraq’s Yazidi women.

As Baroness Nicholson stated; “What happened to Nadia and the thousands of other poor Yazidi women was absolutely shocking. Now, the world is finally waking up to the enormity of the crimes perpetrated against them. It is a Genocide. The sheer murderous brutality of the vile Daesh is almost beyond words.”

In The Beekeeper of Sinjar, the acclaimed poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail tells the harrowing stories of women from across Iraq who have managed to escape the clutches of ISIS.

In the midst of ISIS's reign of terror and hatred, an unlikely hero has emerged: the Beekeeper. Once a trader selling his mountain honey across the region, when ISIS came to Sinjar he turned his knowledge of the local terrain to another, more dangerous use. 

Along with a secret network of transporters, helpers, and former bootleggers, Abdullah Shrem smuggles brutalised Yazidi women to safety through the war-torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Eastern Turkey.

“Telling my story of first, surviving genocide and then, as a captive of ISIS is not easy, but people must know.” Last Girl is the remarkable and courageous story of Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi woman who is working with Amal Clooney to challenge the world in the ongoing fight against ISIS.

Ian Birrell of The Times has said: “The Last Girl offers powerful insight into the barbarity the Yazidi’s have suffered alongside glimpses into their mystical culture . . . this is an important book by a brave woman, a fresh testament to humankind's potential for chilling and inexplicable evil.”

[politiciansandanimals]

Joyce Anelay, Baroness Anelay of St Johns with Palmerston.

[caymannewsservice]

Premier updates Baroness on beneficial ownership register

Premier updates Baroness on beneficial ownership register

Premier McLaughlin, Baroness Anelay and Attorney General Sam Bulgin (CNS Business): Premier Alden McLaughlin and Attorney General Sam Bulgin met with the UK’s minister responsible for its overseas territories, Baroness Anelay, Monday afternoon to update her on Cayman’s progress on the implementation of legislation underpinning the non-public searchable register for the enhanced exchange of…

[peterjohn0]

Dear Pete, Please see below an important announcement from Chair of UNA-UK, Lord Stewart Wood:

Dear UNA-UK Members & Supporters,

I am delighted to let you know that after a 3-month search, with an extremely strong field of applicants, we are announcing today the appointment of Marissa Conway as UNA-UK’s new Chief Executive. The press release with details of her appointment on our website can be found here. Marissa will start working in her new role in mid-April, and I know how much importance she places on getting to know members and supporters in the coming months.

Marissa’s arrival will take place just before my own handover of the Chair’s role to Baroness Joyce Anelay – Conservative peer, former Foreign Office Minister, and currently Chair of the Lords International Relations Committee. Joyce will take over from me in June this year. She has a lifelong passion for UNA-UK that goes back to her first ever political meeting – a UNA-UK event she attended in London aged 17.

We live in increasingly concerning and dangerous times, but I have high hopes that under Joyce and Marissa’s leadership, UNA-UK will make a major contribution to strengthening the vital role of the UN and international cooperation, provide an important voice for stability, peace and justice, and help to hold the UK Government to account for its international obligations.

With best wishes,

Stewart

To read the full statement on Marissa’s appointment click here.

All of us at UNA-UK look forward to working with Marissa and Joyce, and thank you for your ongoing support.

Warm wishes, The UNA-UK Team

[robertawilliams]

Brexit minister Baroness Anelay resigns after five months over 'injury sustained in 2015' https://t.co/Xm4FHjwccB

http://twitter.com/SEO_1st_AID

[uobattop-blog]

‘Fire At Sea’ - Richard Wilson

PROVOCATION: VIOLENCE

Fifty years ago Jan Kott imagined Prospero’s island as a concentration camp: a ‘garden of torment’ designed by Bosch.[1]  [2] And The Tempest has lately acquired a deadly specificity from the uncanny coincidence that the most likely geographical analogue for the isle has indeed long been identified as Lampedusa: the tourist trap, midway between the play’s Tunis and Naples, voted the world’s best beach in 2013, that has become Europe’s purgatorial holding-centre for its African migrants.[3] Shakespeare read about a hermitage on the ‘fire island’ of Lampedusa in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, it has been claimed.[4] But, if so, Prospero’s fictional island has been changed utterly by its association with this factual place of terrible beauty.

Prospero’s account of the deportation of the ‘damned witch’ Sycorax from Algiers, when pregnant with her ‘freckled whelp’ Caliban, and abandonment on those deceptive sands ‘by the sailors’ [1,2,270-9], has been laden with horrific extra meaning due to the torture, rape and drowning of the boat-people of Lampedusa; and his image of a ‘rotten carcass of a butt’ is now shadowed by photos of the crammed hulks, with ‘Nor tackle, nor sail, nor mast’, that ‘the very rats have quit’, in which these Libyans or Somalians have been left ‘To cry to th’sea that roared’ [146-50]. ‘If you think they risk their lives on a boat that cannot even float’, remarked a captain in the Italian rescue operation called ‘Mare Nostrum’, ‘It opens your eyes to something you thought was different’, before he ‘tailed off, as if words cannot do justice’, The Guardian reported, to the catastrophe.[5] But it is to such a state of emergency in our sea that Shakespeare seems to want to open our eyes, when he has Miranda place responsibility for the disaster on her father’s art:

             If, by your art, my dearest father, you have

           Set the wild waters in this roar, allay them…

                                           O, I have suffered

            With those I saw suffer… O, the cry did knock

            Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perished.             

                                                                    [1,2,1-9]

 On October 27 2014 Baroness Anelay announced the British government would no longer support Mediterranean rescue operations, as ‘We believe they create an unintended “pull factor”, encouraging more migrants’. Prospero’s repeated call to ‘Come away, servant, come!... Approach my Ariel, come!’ [188-9], reminds us how much Europe’s power depends, however, on such ‘pull factors’, inducing guest-workers to enter, as Ariel sings, ‘Presently… Before you can say “Come” and “Go”, / And breathe twice, and cry, “So, so”, / Each one tripping on his toe / Will be here with mop and mow’ [4,1,42-7]. This is how he conjures a slave ‘at midnight’ from Bermuda [1,2,130]. The ‘direful spectacle of the wreck’ [26] that fronts The Tempest therefore signals that this will be a play not only about colonialism, racism and slavery, but also the strange immunitarian ethics of hosting, guesting, and repatriation, in a catastrophic time like our own, of terrorism, mass-migration and anxious waiting for barbarians [1,2,1-98; 197-225; 237].

 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the true Prince of the Isle of Fire from which he took his name, finished his own lecture on Shakespeare reflecting that in The Tempest we encounter Shakespeare as ‘the enchanter disenchanted’, whose last testament is that ‘my ending is despair’ [Epi, 15]. ‘Those are the final words the Lord of Smiles and Shadows addressed to us before his death’, is how the novelist rounded off his dark interpretation of the plays.[82] But Lampedusa’s lecture is here misleading, because these are not, of course, the last words of The Tempest. Prospero’s Epilogue continues that his ‘ending is despair’ unless he is ‘relieved by prayer / Which pierces so, that it assaults / Mercy itself, and frees all faults’. So the play in fact closes on an appeal that is truly Derridean, with the enjoinder that it is for us to complete the onward passage from this catastrophic shore: ‘Gentle breath of yours my sails / Must fill’ [10-11]. ‘If we were all to accuse ourselves, there would no longer be an innocent person on earth’, the French philosopher and critic Jaques Derrida warned us in his own late work On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, given that ‘we are all heirs to persons or events marked by crimes against humanity’.[83] Yet that is precisely the endless deconstructive project on which Shakespeare now asks us to embark and ‘then take hands’:

         As you from crimes would pardoned be,

        Let your indulgence set me free.

Professor Richard Wilson is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University, London. His publications include Will Power, Secret Shakespeare, Shakespeare in French Theory, Free Will and Worldly Shakespeare. Influenced by continental philosophy, as well as Anglo-American criticism, he reads Shakespearean drama in terms of its agonistic conflict.

[itsnelkabelka]

Speech: Lord Ahmad addresses Amnesty International

Good afternoon Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests, friends and colleagues – and indeed I see many familiar faces from both Houses of Parliament around the room – Ann Clwyd who as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group has worked tirelessly to advance human rights; my predecessor Baroness Anelay, who was strongly committed to this area of work. I am pleased to see many colleagues from the House of Lords, who consistently hold me and this Government to account on this critical agenda.

I would like to start by thanking the All Party Parliamentary Group on Human Rights and Amnesty International for organising today’s event, and for all the valuable work they do, including highlighting the important role of Human Rights Defenders.

I would also like to thank Amnesty International and many of you here who have helped us revise the guidance for our diplomats. Our diplomats play a key role across the world and by supporting human rights defenders, especially many tragically facing prejudice and oppression in their front line work, it is important the British Government, wherever we have representation in the world is a voice advocating for those human rights defenders.

Let me assure you that that guidance has now issued to our staff around the world, and will inform their work in 2018 – the year which marks the 20th Anniversary of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

And in that context, next year I am also mindful of the fact that that the UK will host the Commonwealth Summit Heads of Government meeting. Working through the agenda with the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and indeed across government, we want to ensure that whilst there will be challenges, we bridge those challenges, as we see 52 Heads of Government assemble right here in London.

I know we are today joined by many human rights defenders and advocates, brave and courageous people who defend human rights across the world. We are joined by Issa Amro, whose work as a human rights defender in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is well known to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Issa, I know you have recently discussed your experiences with my colleague Alistair Burt, our Minister for the Middle East.

Human Rights Defenders – UK Support

I am sure no one here underestimates the contribution of brave human rights defenders like Issa and others who are advancing human rights internationally.

By speaking truth to power and helping individuals understand and exercise their rights, they act as custodians, guardians of our freedoms, our democracies, and of good governance. But they are also acting because it is the right thing to do.

And it is a tragedy, ladies and gentlemen that these very same people frequently come under attack. Unsurprising, they come under attack from the very powerful voices those seeking to protect their own influence, to whom human rights are an obstacle and an inconvenience, not something every citizen should enjoy.

This is why our government, why the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, champions human rights defenders around the world. This year we have been working to uphold and strengthen the protections afforded to them by the international human rights system. Just last month we helped forge consensus on a UN General Assembly Resolution on Human Rights Defenders. Indeed only yesterday I returned from Geneva were the UK supported a Special Session of the Human Rights Council on the plight of the Rohingya .

As part of our commitment to human rights defenders, the UK is a powerful advocate of journalists and programmes to build their capacity. That’s why ladies and gentlemen on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists in November, our Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson committed to spending £1 million over the next financial year on projects that will enable journalists and media professionals to promote their own free press and uphold human rights. And let me be clear, this is one area amongst others prioritised by our Secretary of State. He talks very passionately about human rights, in particular the issues of press freedoms and protection of journalists, and LGBT rights, all of which are very close to the Foreign Secretary’s heart.

Write for Rights Campaign – Detentions in Turkey

Amnesty International’s Write for Rights campaign is another powerful way in which we can support those whose basic human rights are under attack. This year’s campaign is particularly poignant. As we stand here today, Amnesty International Country Chair Mr Tanner Kilic – who has worked tirelessly to defend the rights of others - remains behind bars in Turkey.

The UK Government is deeply concerned by these detentions in Turkey. But let me assure you, the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and Ministers have all raised the issue with their Turkish counterparts. We continue to encourage Turkey to work towards the full protection of fundamental rights for everyone, particularly with regard to free speech.

The Write for Rights campaign again shows us that human rights defenders have their rights violated all too often:

In China - Ni Yulan has been harassed and attacked for supporting people faced with forced evictions. We have raised her case with China on numerous occasions and continue to be concerned about her treatment. I again urge the Chinese authorities to ensure that Ni and her family are free from harassment; and that she is able to access the medical treatment she needs.

In Egypt - Human Rights Defenders like Azza Soliman and Ibrahim Metwally face arrest and mistreatment, and are subjected to asset freezes and travel bans. We continue to raise our human rights concerns privately with the Egyptian authorities, but also let me assure you in public, including at the UN. On 3 November our joint statement with Canada, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands set out our concerns about the detention of Ibrahim Metwally.

In Bangladesh, human rights defenders - and I talked to some of you before we got going this afternoon - like the LGBT activist Xulhaz Manan have been attacked for their campaigning, as I heard during my visit in August. This is why Bangladesh remains a human rights priority country for the UK and why we raise our concerns at all levels with the government there.

Standing up for human rights defenders is a regular part of the work of so many of our Embassies as I have already said. Let me take this opportunity to highlight the work that two of them are currently doing.

In Bogota, our Embassy lobbies on behalf of many individual human rights defenders, and we coordinate the work of other concerned members of the international community.

This year, David Ravelo, Huber Ballesteros and Miguel Beltran were released from prison, and we have helped ensure their personal safety on release.

The Embassy also funds a project that is developing self-protection strategies for social leaders in the regions of Colombia most affected by conflict.

In Bangkok,Thailand our Ambassador and his team worked closely with partner countries to support three human rights defenders who on 26 July 2016 were charged with criminal defamation for reporting allegations of torture.

The Embassy stood by them in public and importantly in private to provide the support they needed. We took to social media to say that it is not a crime to report torture. We used our contacts to raise the case in a range of forums and thankfully, on 24 October this year the charges were dropped.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are but two examples. I am proud to say that there are many more. Indeed in virtually every country with human rights challenges you will find that our Head of Mission is in contact with the main civil society actors and leading human rights defenders, and of course the governments themselves, promoting the importance of the work of human rights defenders and defending their right to carry it out.

Conclusion

If I may in conclusion, I would like to end by directly addressing individuals in this room and beyond. Selfless individuals around the world who are willing to speak out and be counted, who are willing to speak out and defend the human rights of others, who are willing to speak out and stand up often at the risk of their own safety or freedom.

Your and their courage and commitment are a shining example to us all. Sometimes you speak for those with no voice and give them that voice. You stand up for the downtrodden; you bring us a step closer to freedom, equality, and justice. Therefore we not only commend you, we salute you. From my heart and on behalf of the Government we thank you. And let me assure you ladies and gentlemen, wherever, whenever we can, Her Majesty’s Government will continue to stand with human rights defenders in solidarity.

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[ukipnfkn]

Brexit Minister Baroness Anelay Quits Government Over 'Worsening Of Injury' via @HuffPost #StopBrexit https://t.co/sNDN2ZasUg

Brexit Minister Baroness Anelay Quits Government Over 'Worsening Of Injury' via @HuffPost#Brexit #StopBrexithttps://t.co/sNDN2ZasUg

— BluKIP Nonsense ❄ (@UKIPNFKN) October 28, 2017

via Twitter https://twitter.com/UKIPNFKN Published: October 28, 2017 at 03:30PM

[calvinzeepeda79]

UK Brexit department loses third minister in four months

Baroness Anelay resigns for health reasons

from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2i8SvGc

[littlemissmehere-blog]

Brexit minister Baroness Anelay resigns after five months over 'injury sustained in 2015' | The Independent

Brexit minister Baroness Anelay resigns after five months over ‘injury sustained in 2015’ | The Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-minister-resigns-baroness-anelay-injury-david-davis-eu-talks-leave-uk-government-house-lords-a8023326.html

[totallyhussein-blog]

Iraq’s Yazidi's seek justice from international courts

British lawyers have told The Guardian, that countries failed in their obligations to prevent genocide against Iraq's Yazidis. There has been little accountability for the Yazidi Genocide. It is also widely acknowledged that more than 5,000 Yazidis have been killed.

The lawyers, who formally announced their collaboration as the Yazidi Justice Committee on Tuesday, have been working over the past two and a half years to investigate the genocide committed by Islamic State.

The YJC lawyers have examined evidence that as many as 10 countries could be deemed responsible for the failure to prevent genocide under the UN’s Genocide Convention, and could be brought before a court of law.

The aim is to bring those states before the international court of justice (ICJ) and if the case was successful, the respondent states might then be required to pay reparations to the victims of Islamic State's genocide.

Back in 2016, Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad came to the UK where she met the AMAR Foundation's chair Baroness Emma Nicholson and Baroness Anelay of the UK’s Foreign Office, to discuss the plight of Iraq's Yazidi women. 

As Baroness Nicholson stated; “What happened to Nadia and the thousands of other poor Yazidi women was absolutely shocking. Now, the world is finally waking up to the enormity of the crimes perpetrated against them. It is a Genocide. The sheer murderous brutality of the vile Daesh is almost beyond words.”

[gershonposts]

U.K.’S Baroness ANELAY Resigns AS BREXIT Department Minister: BBG

U.K.’S Baroness ANELAY Resigns AS BREXIT Department Minister: BBG

BREAKING

[caymannewsservice]

UK agrees to consider BOT concerns over Brexit

UK agrees to consider BOT concerns over Brexit

Special JMC meeting in London, Feb 2017 (CNS): The Cayman Islands premier says that the British government has agreed to take under consideration the priority areas identified by the British Overseas Territories (BOTs) when it begins the negotiations with the European Union. Premier Alden McLaughlin is in London for a special Overseas Territories Joint Ministerial Council, where ten territory…

[peterjohn0]

Don't forget to register for our virtual event!

DETERMINED: A new chapter for the UK people's movement for the United Nations

Monday 10 January, 17:00-19:00 GMT

Spaces are filling up for our upcoming event and we wanted to ensure you have the chance to join us!

If you haven't already, please register via the buttons below and secure your place to hear from our esteemed panel of speakers as they draw lessons from the past and make recommendations for the future.

This unique virtual event will be an opportunity to reflect on the UN’s mission - and the UK’s global role - at a time of rapid change and growing challenge. It will also generate recommendations on how the UN can be more effective, with a view to informing Secretary-General Guterres’ second term.

Join us as we say farewell to UNA-UK’s CEO, Natalie Samarasinghe, who will leave UNA-UK in January after 15 years of service, and welcome UNA-UK’s first female Chair, Baroness Anelay of St Johns DBE, who will join the Association in June.

With speakers including:

Natalie Samarasinghe

(UNA-UK CEO)

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

(Incoming UNA-UK Chair, former UK Minister for the UN)

Lord Malloch-Brown

(UNA-UK Patron and former UN Deputy-Secretary General)

Sir Peter Marshall

(Former British diplomat)

This event will take place online and is jointly hosted by UNA-UK and UNA Westminster. You can register for this event via our Eventbrite page.

[bradfordzone]

RECORDED | House Of Lords | Thursday 12 October 2017

RECORDED | House Of Lords | Thursday 12 October 2017

RECORDED | House Of Lords | Thursday 12 October 2017 | Started 11:05am AGENDA 11:07:20 Oral question 1: Government reporting to Parliament on a financial settlement with the EU 11:07:24 Lord Spicer (Conservative) 11:07:30 Baroness Anelay of St Johns, Minister of State (Department for Exiting the European Union) (Conservative) 11:07:49 Lord Spicer (Conservative) 11:08:14 Baroness Anelay of St…

[itsnelkabelka]

Speech: International Religious Freedom Day 2017

Lord Ahmad’s video message for International Religious Freedom Day

International Religious Freedom Day

Speech

Thank you Jim, and my thanks to you and your APPG [the All Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief] colleagues for organising today’s event. I want to take this opportunity to pay special tribute to you all for your tireless work in raising awareness of violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief around the world. This awareness is vital in galvanising support for collective action.

I am delighted to be here for the launch of your extremely comprehensive report. The analysis and recommendations it contains will further enrich the government’s understanding and help to inform our approach.

Your invitation recalled the so-called Father of Religious Freedom, Thomas Helwys – a Protestant dissenter in England at the turn of the 17th century. Unlike other reformers, Helwys did not just defend his own religious group. Uniquely for his time, he also defended the rights of others to practice their religion. Indeed he was the first person to write a defence of universal religious freedom in the English language. His experience is a reminder that religious persecution in its different forms has a long history and that this country is no exception. We all know that it continues to this day.   It could be dispiriting to dwell on the fact that we are still fighting the same battles 400 years later. However, it is my personal view that this knowledge should in fact galvanise us to be even more determined and activist in defending and protecting the right to freedom of religion or belief in the 21st century. That is what the government, through the FCO and our posts around the world, is committed to do. I would like to give you a flavour of our work today.

Government action

International law and the rules-based international system are fundamental to all our work, and on this issue they could not be clearer.

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights sets out the right to choose a religion or belief – or indeed, to have no belief at all – and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights enshrines this right into law, along with guarantees on non-discrimination, equal access to justice and the protection of the law.

Yet despite this clear legal position, people around the world continue to be denied their rights. They suffer prejudice, persecution and physical harm for their faith or belief.

We are working hard to tackle this injustice, both through international institutions and with individual countries.

Multilateral work

Multilaterally, we work with likeminded partners to build and maintain consensus on the issue of freedom of religion or belief through lobbying other countries and supporting relevant UN resolutions.

Our work on Daesh is a good example of this approach. Daesh is responsible for the appalling persecution of Yezidi, Christian and Mandean minorities, as well as the majority Muslim population, in Syria and Iraq.

We have been at the forefront of the international campaign to defeat Daesh, joining with others at the UN General Assembly last year to launch a campaign to bring Daesh to Justice. More recently, we drafted a ground-breaking UN resolution that will ensure Daesh’s crimes do not go unpunished. The resolution will send a UN-led investigative team to Iraq to assist with the vital work of gathering evidence of Daesh atrocities and help Iraq to bring Daesh to justice. The UK has contributed £1 million to get this team up and running.

We will continue to work with the Iraqi government, the UN and the international community to deliver justice; to promote the rights of all minorities; and to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches those in greatest need.

Bilateral work

We also use our extensive diplomatic network to engage with countries individually. In Bangladesh, where the Ahmadi community faces significant persecution, I visited their Mosque in Dhaka and made a call for religious tolerance.

In Russia, following the Supreme Court’s ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses as ‘extremists’, we continue to call on the state to uphold religious freedom.

In Eritrea, we have called on the government to release all prisoners detained without due process, including the Orthodox Patriarch, Abune Antonios, and others detained for their religious beliefs.

We remain deeply concerned by violence against Christians and Muslims in Burma, and particularly the Rohingya in Rakhine State. We have been active on this issue for some time. Successive ministers, including my predecessor Baroness Anelay last year, the Foreign Secretary in January, and my Rt Hon Friend the Minister for Asia Mark Field last month, have met Burmese community leaders to listen to their views and encourage greater tolerance.

We also continue to press for religious freedoms in Iran. Members of the Baha’i community recently expressed their thanks for our lobbying work which they said had played a significant role in the release of Mahvash Sabet. I am pleased to be addressing a parliamentary seminar organised by the UK Baha’I community next month.

Programme work

Projects that directly support freedom of religion or belief remain an important element of our Magna Carta Fund human rights programme. One project that we are particularly proud of is helping secondary school teachers in the Middle East and North Africa to create lesson plans that promote tolerance and freedom of religion or belief.

Report recommendations

Before I finish I would like to address one of the recommendations of the report that relates directly to our work: that UK government staff should have an extensive knowledge and understanding of religion and Freedom of Religion or Belief.

I agree and indeed we have for several years been running religious literacy training to enhance the expertise of our staff. We recently launched our re-designed ‘Religion and Diplomacy’ course in association with LSE Faith Centre. We strongly encourage FCO staff to participate, and we also open it up to those in other government departments who are working on similar issues. Feedback from recent participants has been overwhelmingly positive. We will continue to review the course to ensure it is as effective as possible.

We have also developed detailed guidance for our staff – a ‘toolkit’ in Whitehall jargon – something that we regularly promote to ensure that staff are making the most of it. There is always room for improvement, and in this as in other areas we continually strive to enhance our corporate expertise.

Working with civil society

We agree, that engagement with government and non-governmental actors working on country-specific issues is important for advancing freedom of religion or belief. That is why ministers and officials regularly meet with faith actors and civil society to discuss areas of concern and identify ways to address them.

I want to take this further. That is why we are developing a new strategy to increase this engagement across our network. Just a few days ago, I held the first in a series of roundtables with faith representatives. We had useful discussions on Burma, on freedom of religion or belief more generally, and on how we can work together in the future. This new initiative provides a powerful platform for an exchange of views from faith perspectives, an opportunity to champion the rights and causes of others, as Thomas Helwys did. There is no greater example of the positive power of faith than when we speak out with one voice in defence of our common humanity. If I as a Muslim speak out for a Hindu. If Elizabeth as a Christian speaks out Sikh. As we look across this great and diverse city of London, we see churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other buildings of religious worship. The modern tapestry that defines the UK today rests on the values of humanity that all faiths share.

Conclusion

I am going to hand over to Baroness Berridge in a moment. I will conclude by thanking the APPG once again for their report. We will consider its recommendations carefully and look forward to continuing to strengthen our collaboration and partnership with you in this regard.

As Minister for Human Rights, and as a man of faith, I give my personal commitment to work tirelessly to promote and defend freedom of religion or belief for everyone, everywhere.

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