The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (WCMT) organised an event at the Conway Hall, SOAS, to bring together Churchill Fellows who are interested in issues affecting BAME communities in the UK, and provided an opportunity for the Fellows to share best practice and learning from their global travels. The BAME network is aimed at encouraging collaboration and support for each other’s work in communities across the UK.
The WCMT funds British citizens to investigate inspiring practice in other countries, in order to return with innovative ideas for the benefit of people across the UK. It supports individuals, whatever their background or qualifications, to become leaders within their own communities, helping to transform and better many aspects of today’s society.
Baroness Valerie Amos is the 9th Director of SOAS, University of London. The former politician and senior UN official took up the role in September 2015 and was present at the event, speaking about the network. Asian Voice had the privilege to interview her about the launch and her role.
AV: Why did you choose to launch the BAME Network of the WCMT?
BA: For those of us from an ethnic minority background, the opportunity to go through experiences and then come back and think how they apply in our professions, and how collectively they can make an impact on our communities, is important.
AV: What has the Winston Churchill Fellowship got to offer the Asian Community?
BA: Confidence building. It gives the opportunity to go into depth in an area you care about. It gives you the ability to come back and apply that in the community.
AV: What sights have stayed with you from your foreign travels as Under Secretary General?
BA: Seeing the horrors of malnourished children, and their incredible resilience. Seeing them displaced, in camps. Traumatised, not able to go to school. The way they try and play and laugh. We see if it is possible to set up a play area.
I remember going to the Central African Republic at the height of the violence. I recall going to an inland hospital, outside the capital.
There were bedsteads, one or two had mattresses. There were many without. There was a woman who had just given birth. She had not eaten since she had given birth. There was nothing for her to eat.
She was trying to feed her baby. You go and see the resources we have. You look at that woman, her child and aid workers that are trying to work with her.
AV: What would you do if you could fix things?
BA: There needs to be greater accountability. Countries that have signed up to the UN have signed up to international human rights law. Yet we have seen pictures of food, starvation and siege being used as weapons of war in Syria. This is something I was reporting on every single month to the Security Council when I was at the UN. Sometimes it made news and sometimes it did not.
It’s a violation of international humanitarian law. Holding a government that says its first responsibility is to its people to account, is critical. This is not happening in so many countries across the world and it would make a tremendous difference to our ability to get aid to people.
These are countries that have signed up to the UN Charter. If you read the UN Charter you can’t get much better than that. The people who drew up the Charter were very forward looking.
We should all be appalled at how slow it is to get a resolution to these conflicts, which are having such a devastating impact. For the first time, we have the highest number of people displaced as a result of conflict and disasters.
It requires strong political leadership and political solution. The action is like sticking plaster and doesn’t stop these things happening. It deals with the symptoms, not the causes. If I were able immediately to produce ceasefires and bring people to the negotiating table, I would do it.
