Sierra Leone (Hansard, 25 October 2004)

§ Baroness Crawley
My Lords, the United Kingdom provides military personnel to the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and to the UK-led and funded International Military Assistance Training Team (IMATT). UNAMSIL's mandate has been extended until June 2005 and final withdrawal is expected by the end of 2005. UK personnel deployed to UNAMSIL will withdraw in line with its draw-down plan. Our commitment to IMATT is longer term and reviewed annually. The team plans to remain in Sierra Leone until at least 2010.

§ Lord McColl of Dulwich
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for that reassuring and helpful reply. I ought to declare an interest, in that I worked in Sierra Leone a good deal with a charity called Mercy Ships, which has given me an opportunity to see at first hand the amazing work being done by the British Army and Navy there in not only restoring and maintaining the peace but in doing so much more beyond—helping to restore houses, clinics, and so on. Does the Minister agree that that has not got into the news possibly because it is good news?

§ Baroness Crawley
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord: good news is hard to find in some of our media outlets. In answering the noble Lord's supplementary question, I commend the exemplary work that he does with the Mercy Ships charity in Africa. He and his team are restoring the health of so many thousands of people through that charity work. He is an unsung hero in this House.
The Government are committed to supporting the security and development of Sierra Leone over the long haul. Sierra Leone has made remarkable progress after a decade of conflict. There is cause for optimism, but many of the root causes of conflict remain: youth unemployment, poor public services and a lack of economic growth.

§ Lord St John of Bletso
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the British troops' peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone have been a role model for such interventions? Does she further agree that the follow-through is as important as the original intervention to ensure that the police and the army are sufficiently trained to cope on their own? Also, what measures are being taken, such as the Anti-Corruption Commission, to ensure sustainable economic and legal developments in that country?

§ Baroness Crawley
My Lords, the UK is the main supporter of the Anti-Corruption Commission, to which we agreed a second phase of support earlier this year. That will include support to prepare a national anti-corruption strategy. Also included in the UK's post-conflict priorities for Sierra Leone, about which the noble Lord asked me, are reforming the security sector; strengthening the capacity of the Sierra Leone armed forces and police; bringing the diamond fields further under the control of the government of Sierra Leone; tackling corruption; and strengthening democratic institutions.

§ Lord Avebury
My Lords, although the support of the International Military Assistance Training Team is necessary for the time being, does not the timescale of 2010 mentioned by the noble Baroness indicate that the Government believe that the Sierra Leone armed forces will not be able to look after their own training needs for another six years? Should we not be paying more attention to the wider security needs of the region? Can she say anything about how the work that we are doing in Sierra Leone fits in with the United Nations' Office for West Africa, its Disarmament, Demobilisation and Rehabilitation programme and its wider work on conflict prevention and cross-border problems?

§ Baroness Crawley
My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, an enormous amount of activity is going on in conflict prevention. The United Kingdom is very content to be playing an active role in conflict prevention in Africa. For instance, we have conflict prevention training teams and advisers in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, where they are supporting the Kofi Annan training facility, Addis Ababa and Abuja. So throughout Africa, an enormous amount of training and capacity building is going on and the UK is very much in the forefront of that.

§ Lord Boyce
My Lords, I share in the compliments paid to our Armed Forces for the work that they have done in Sierra Leone. It has been outstanding. Will the Minister comment on what value the future network-enabled capability would have added to that operation, if it was available, given the operation's reliance on interpersonal skills and good basic infantry skills?

§ Baroness Crawley
My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me, but that is quite a detailed supplementary on which I shall get back to the noble and gallant Lord.

§ Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, in the light of the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers, what steps are the Government taking to monitor the situation? If trouble were to flare up again, what action would be taken?

§ Baroness Crawley
My Lords, the post-UN situation in Sierra Leone, about which the noble Lord, Lord Astor, asked me, involves a number of stages. As I said, we are assisting until 2010—that is the plan; obviously, it is reviewed annually—with the training of Sierra Leone's own forces, the training of armed forces to protect the external borders of Sierra Leone and the training of the police force, which will undertake much of the internal protection and security work.
Beyond that, we are also working with the African Union because, as the noble Lord will know, it has been developing the concept of standby forces, which will be made available to various of African regions. They are African forces that come under a standby unit and will be made available to five African regions. That has been developed by the African Union.