MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The report, which was completed by Labour member of parliament Alison McGovern, was published by the Policy Exchange think tank and is due to be presented by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former Foreign Secretary William Hague later in the day.
"Britain has never been isolationist. It is in our national interest to be engaged with the world we helped shape. That means taking responsibility, and influencing events and intervening when necessary. To stand aside would not make us or the world safer, but leave us vulnerable to the whims of others rather than doing what we have always done – shape our own destiny and be a force for good," Conservative lawmaker Tom Tugendhat, who co-authored the paper, was quoted as saying by the think tank.
Titled "The Cost of Doing Nothing," the report argues that the United Kingdom has a duty to protect civilians from war, genocide and ethnic cleansing. Cox examined the history of British interventions abroad, listing the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo, the 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone and the 1991 no-fly zone over northern Iraq as examples of successful "responsibility to protect" missions.
The paper went on to condemn the international community's failure to stop the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the inadequate response during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s as examples of insufficient protective action. The lawmaker also condemned the 2013 UK parliament vote against intervention in Syria, linking the lack of intervention in the country as a factor behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
“We cannot simply look the other way in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. 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," McGovern said.
The report was written as a response to the 2016 "Chilcot report" Iraq Inquiry which found that the UK government made a mistake invading Iraq, as the decision to join the war was made on the basis of flawed intelligence data and assessments. Cox's report acknowledged the Western campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan as failures but stressed that this should not discourage the United Kingdom for humanitarian intervention in the future.
The United Kingdom was part of a US-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003, without a UN mandate, after accusing then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
