Baroness Helic – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Helic on 2015-10-26.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the promotion of human rights is part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office mission statement, and what are their top five priorities in that area.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Annual Report and Accounts set out the FCO’s purpose for 2014–15. This listed eight separate commitments, two of which mentioned promoting human rights explicitly:

– Strengthen the Commonwealth as a focus for promoting democratic values, human rights, climate resilient development, conflict prevention and trade.

– Use soft power as a tool of UK foreign policy; promote British values and respect for human rights; build capacity to tackle terrorism in line with UK security requirements; and contribute to the welfare of developing countries and their citizens.

In addition, human rights are an integral part of the FCO’s work, linked with many aspects of our national interest including the stability and prosperity of our international partners. We set out in the 2014 Annual Human Rights and Democracy Report the actions we have taken to mainstream human rights across the FCO network, including ramping up our internal communications and training.

We are currently reconfiguring our work on human rights around three pillars to reflect the Government’s manifesto commitments, play to our strengths, boost our impact, and increase our ability to respond to international developments. These pillars are:

i) Democratic values and the rule of law;

ii) The rules-based international system and,

iii) Human rights for a stable world