22 March 2024: Genocide [Prevention and Response Bill second reading: Treatment of Hazaras | Lord Alton of Liverpool

Today the second reading of Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws KC's Genocide [Pevention and Response Bill held its second reading in The House of Lords. At the Debate Lord Alton of Liverpool raised the findings of both the Hazara Inquiry and his Oral Question in relations to the Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability ('JACS') assessment on Afghanistan:

"Afghanistan’s Hazaras were referred to in our own International Relations and Defence Committee report on Afghanistan in 2021. Later that year, I was approached by Hazara human rights defenders concerned about the lethal targeting of their community. With colleagues, I established the Hazara inquiry. Our report, launched here by me and the noble Baroness [Kennedy], found that Hazaras, as a religious and ethnic minority, are at serious risk of genocide at the hands of the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan Province. Under the genocide convention and customary international law, this finding should have engaged the responsibility to prevent—but it did not. The return to power of the Taliban has included brutal acts of violence against the Hazaras and a return of terror, including the bombings of Hazara schools, places of worship and other centres—atrocities that continued throughout 2023 and now into 2024. On 18 December 2023 in an Oral Question, I asked whether a JACS report could be initiated, not least because Pakistan had begun mass deportations back to Afghanistan—I have never had a reply"