Gordon Brown demands action over war crimes as MPs launch Jo Cox report

The international community has a responsibility to intervene to protect innocent citizens from genocide and war crimes, Gordon Brown will say today, as he joins with Labour and Tory MPs to launch a report which was begun by Jo Cox.

Brown will quote the late Batley and Spen MP, when he warns against the dangers of “doing nothing”, at the publication of a Policy Exchange paper which highlights Britain’s role in curbing bloodshed in Kosovo in 1999, Sierra Leone a year later, as well as the plight of the Syrian people in this decade.

The Cost of Doing Nothing report was started by Jo Cox, a former humanitarian worker, and Tory MP and former soldier Tom Tugendhat last year but was put on hold after the appalling events of June 16 when the Labour MP was murdered in her constituency. It has been completed by Alison McGovern, a friend of Jo, alongside Tugendhat, and produced with the support of Brendan Cox.

“In her last speech in the House of Commons, Jo Cox said that ‘sometimes all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing'”, Brown said.

“Nothing is more important than the responsibility of each state to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and the responsibility of the international community to act if a state is unwilling or unable to do so.”

The report will also highlight examples of when a failure to intervene quickly or at all has had devastating consequences, such as in Rwanda, in 1994, when an estimated one million people lost their lives in the genocide, and in Syria, where half a million people are thought to have died under Assad.

“Jo was passionate about this piece of work,” Brendan Cox said.

“She felt deeply that the UK had a duty to stand up for civilians threatened by war and genocide. Her commitment wasn’t theoretical, it was forged by her experience of meeting survivors of genocide in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan. Last week I was clearing some of Jo’s things and found the first draft of the report that she had scribbled all over. At the top she had written ‘Britain must lead again’. Although she isn’t here to advance that argument, she’d be delighted that her colleagues and friends are able to do so in her stead.”

The event was timed to take place before Holocaust Memorial Day, which is tomorrow.

“We cannot simply look the other way in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide,” McGovern said.

“Jo never believed that simply doing nothing in the face of atrocities was good enough, and neither should we. On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, and in the light of what is happening right now in Syria, it is ever more important for us to do what we can to ensure her message is heard.”

The Cost of Doing Nothing: The price of inaction in the face of mass atrocities is available from Policy Exchange.