Foreign Secretary David Lammy's intervention on Discussions on
the Global Geopolitical Situation at the G20 Foreign Ministerial
Meeting, South Africa.
"Thank you very much, Ronald (Ronald Lamola, Minister of
International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa) and let
me say, my dear brother, what a joy is to see the G20 in Africa
at long last. And we thank Brazil for its stewardship last year.
The challenges that we face are truly global.
We will not begin to tackle them unless we harness the potential
of this continent, bursting with growth and opportunities and
with so many young people, talented young people at its heart.
The starkest challenge we face is escalating conflict, both
between and within nations, driving vicious cycles of grievance,
displacement and low growth.
Your presidency, Ronald calls for solidarity, and solidarity
starts by recognizing and naming the victims of war and
injustice.
Innocent Ukrainians enduring bombardment night after night from
Odessa to Zaphorizhya, the hostages still cruelly held
underground by Hamas, 16 months old on from the trauma of October
the 7th, and the Palestinian civilians driven from their homes in
Gaza and the West Bank, the Sudanese refugees flee their burning
villages to escape across the border to Chad, the overwhelming
majority of them, women and children having endured the most
unimaginable and indiscriminate violence.
As I said when I visited Chad, there can be no geopolitical
stability, whilst there remains a hierarchy of conflicts, with
those on this continent finding themselves at the bottom of the
global pile.
And that's why, since starting this job, I've made a reset with
the so called Global South, a central plank of the UK Foreign
Policy, and it's why I doubled British aid for Sudan, and I
prepared a conference in London to push for a political process
which will end the fighting and protect civilians.
And that's why I've called out the Rwandan Defence Force
operations in the eastern DRC as a blatant breach of the UN
Charter which risks spiralling into a regional conflict, and
that's why I will again make clear to President Kagame, that
further breaches of DRC's sovereignty will have consequences.
Because at the heart of my government's approach to foreign
policy lies the belief that regional and geopolitical stability
can only be delivered through respect for international law and
the principles of the UN Charter.
And as my Canadian, Australian, Japanese colleagues have said,
respect for international law must underwrite a free and open
Indo Pacific, just as it must underwrite the Euro Atlantic, with
the security of those two regions ever more closely linked.
And as we turn to the Middle East, the ceasefire in Gaza is
painfully fragile, I'm grateful that so many of us here today are
working together to ensure that it holds we must continue to work
together tirelessly to secure the release of the remaining
hostages, to bolster the Palestinian Authority, and to boost aid
into Gaza and to develop a long term plan for governance and
security on the strip so that we can advance towards, a two state
solution. Which remains the only long term viable pathway to
peace.
And finally, in Ukraine, the only just and lasting peace will be
a peace that is consistent with the UN Charter, and we want that
as soon as possible.
You know, mature countries learn from their colonial failures and
their wars, and Europeans have had much to learn over the
generations and the centuries.
But I'm afraid to say that Russia has learned nothing.
I listened carefully to Minister Lavrov intervention just now
he's, of course, left his seat, hoping to hear some readiness to
respect Ukraine's sovereignty.
I was hoping to hear some sympathy for the innocent victims of
the aggression.
I was hoping to hear some readiness to seek a durable peace.
What I heard was the logic of imperialism dressed up as a
realpolitik, and I say to you all, we should not be surprised,
but neither should we be fooled.
We are at a crucial juncture in this conflict, and Russia faces a
test.
If Putin is serious about a lasting peace, it means finding a way
forward which respects Ukraine's sovereignty and the UN Charter
which provides credible security guarantees, and which rejects
Tsarist imperialism, and Britain is ready to listen.
But we expect to hear more than the Russian gentleman's tired
fabrications."
