APPG Report on UK funding facilitating human rights abuses in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia

That this House expresses concern at the findings of the July 2021 report by the APPG on Democracy and Human Rights in the Gulf which shows that at least £53.4 million in public funds have benefited Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states since 2016; is shocked that beneficiaries of UK-funding include institutions in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia accused of facilitating and perpetrating human rights abuses and potential war crimes; is alarmed by the considerable lack of transparency and accountability surrounding the Integrated Activity Fund (IAF), despite the government recommending a root and branch overhaul to strengthen the transparency, accountability and governance of the IAF as early as 2019; is concerned that £10 million has been allocated to GCC states through the IAF’s successor, the Gulf Strategy Fund (GSF), for 2021-22, including support for abusive Bahraini oversight bodies; maintains that funding assistance to those bodies places the Government at risk of complicity in their abuses; raises concern over claims made by Ministers regarding the IAF and GSF; notes serious problems with the Government’s human rights due diligence process which the report finds is flawed, improperly applied and entirely absent in some cases and urges that it should be replaced with binding statutory safeguards; affirms that the Government’s pursuit of closer ties with the region must not come at the expense of human rights; and asks the Government to seriously consider responding to and implementing the report’s recommendations, including suspending the GSF pending an independent investigation.