Foreign Office cuts will weaken oversight of international law, MPs warn

MPs have expressed alarm at the closure of the Foreign Office’s international humanitarian law unit, warning it “will impair the UK’s ability to anticipate, assess and respond to serious violations of international law across multiple contexts”. News of the closure, revealed by the Guardian, was raised with Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions this week by the independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley, Iqbal Mohamed. Starmer said the work would be undertaken by another team as part of a restructuring. However, he made no reference to the ending of the Foreign Office contract with the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project, run by the Centre forInformation Resilience, which monitors incidents of concern in Gaza, the West Bank and, more recently, Lebanon. In a letter to the foreign secretary, Yvettte Cooper, the cross-party group of MPs asked how the closure aligned with the government’s stated commitment to upholding international law and ensuring rigorous compliance with the UK’s arms export licensing criteria. They also questioned what steps the Foreign Office would take to retain access to the database of 26,000 incidents dating to 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched its attack on Israel, prompting Israel’s military response in Gaza. According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 70,000 people have been killed since then. The MPs asked what other data sources the department intended to use to monitor breaches of international humanitarian law. …