Don’t you just love it when somebody tells you how to do your job?

Hague must prioritise human rights

The new foreign secretary can make the UK into a force for good in the world – he should start by reading Amnesty’s new report

When the one-time foreign secretary Robin Cook became leader of the Commons in 2001 he famously “read himself into” his new role with a marathon 48-hour briefing session. As William Hague takes the measure of his new foreign secretary job, I urge him to steel himself for the challenges ahead with a little light reading: the new Amnesty International report 2010 (subtitled “The State of the World’s Human Rights”) published later this week.

Hague may not wish to devour our – often grim – 400-page opus in one weekend, but here are some reasons why he should place it on a handy bookshelf in his office.

First, Hague will naturally be seeking to put numerous bilateral and multilateral relations on “reset”. Starting with the United States, the UK is re-establishing where it stands on key issues, always, of course, assessed against the UK national interest. The tools for this reassessment are many and varied – economic and military data are key – but “softer” indices of judgement play a major role. This realm, broadly “political”, must, I believe, include human rights if Britain is to make the right choices in the world.

Take Afghanistan, Hague’s avowed priority issue. Equipment for troops, dealing with the narcotics trade, assessing already complex relations with Pakistan and Iran, the US and Nato – each of these will play a part in policy formation. But what of human rights in Afghanistan? We’ve been told numerous times that UK forces are in Afghanistan to stop terrorists killing people on the streets of Britain. Yet politicians have readily cited human rights concerns – especially virulent anti-women policies from the Taliban – as further cause and justification.

As Afghanistan prepares for the “Peace Jirga” on 29 May, the question is increasingly: on what terms does the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai attempt a peace settlement with the “reconcilable” elements of the Taliban and other armed groups? The US and Nato view on this will be important, so the UK must consider this extremely carefully.

Hague will read on page 55 of the Amnesty report that in 2009 the Taliban and other anti-government groups actually “stepped up attacks against civilians, including attacks on schools and health clinics, across the country”. Worryingly enough, the report makes clear, Afghan women and girls were targeted for attack by the Taliban and were also the subject of widespread societal discrimination, forced marriage, domestic violence and other abuse.

The danger now, then, is that a rush to stem Taliban violence through a “peace” deal will mean women’s already fragile rights being traded away. The UK should have no part in this “trade-off”.

Other enormous challenges ahead require the same human rights input for any informed foreign policy thinking. Iran is far more than a “nuclear issue”, as the huge election protest movement last year demonstrated. If, for example, British personnel are again seized by the Iranian authorities, the Foreign Office needs to be thoroughly apprised of detention conditions, the risk of torture, the fairness of trials and a host of other human rights issues. Indeed the same applies to all countries: there is no clearer example of British interests intersecting with those of the citizens of other countries as when a British national is detained in a foreign jail next to political prisoners in, say, Burma, China or Saudi Arabia.

Diplomacy is a two-way street. But no meeting with a foreign leader or their foreign affairs ministers should take place without the foreign secretary being less than fully aware of what occurs in the police stations of that country (in some instances in the basement cells of ministry buildings themselves). It’s as well to know that the smiling prime minister’s own brother is accused of torture if you’re about to sign a multimillion-pound trade deal.

Meanwhile foreign powers are adept at seeing the beam in our own eye if we broach their human rights failings. Getting our human rights house in order makes good sense internationally and domestically. The unpleasant fact is that the UK’s involvement in “war on terror” secret detentions and torture left us exposed to justified criticism. Hague’s announcement last week that there would be an inquiry into this is overdue but extremely welcome. Certainly we can have no claim to the moral high ground unless our record is significantly better than it has been.

The UK can be a force for good in the world in multiple ways – from firm support for the UN millennium development goals and an effective international criminal court, to continued championing of a global arms trade treaty and of lifesaving measures on maternal health and HIV/Aids treatments. In a speech to FCO staff on his first day in the job, Hague mentioned the importance of “international organisations”, a promising enough sign that we’ll be monitoring here in terms of support for human rights at the United Nations, the EU and elsewhere.

Hague and his Conservative-Lib Dem coalition colleagues have an opportunity to pursue an agenda of law, order and human rights at home and abroad. A well-informed, human rights-aware Foreign Office is a boon to good government and much will rest on the decisions taken in the first years of the new foreign secretary’s tenure. As well as absorbing his FCO briefs, William Hague should read our report in full. I’ve already mailed him a copy.