Geneva Conventions (Third Protocol—Red Crystal Emblem) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: I move, That the Geneva Conventions (Third Protocol—Red Crystal Emblem) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill.

This bill contains the legislative provisions needed for New Zealand to become a party to the third additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The third protocol establishes a new Geneva Conventions emblem, commonly referred to as the Red Crystal, for use alongside the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. This emblem may be used as a protective symbol to identify medical and religious personnel, hospitals, ambulances, and other medical transports in armed conflicts where the existing Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems may be seen to have religious or political connotations that were never intended.

The new emblem is a red frame in the shape of a square on edge, on a white background. It is intended to be free from any national, religious, cultural, or political connotations. The new emblem has a lengthy history. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement recognised the need for an appropriate emblem in cases where, for various reasons, parties to conflict did not want to use either the Red Cross or the Red Crescent emblem. The lack of a suitable emblem in such situations significantly diminishes the protections that can be afforded to victims of war and to medical personnel, hospitals, and medical transports.

The development of the new emblem also recognises the needs of countries where other emblems have been used for many years. One example of this is in Israel where an organisation that is the equivalent of national societies in other countries such as the New Zealand Red Cross Society asserted that it should be able to use the Red Shield of David in its domestic activities. Meanwhile other national societies, such as in Eritrea, wished to use both the Red Cross and the Red Crescent together. Such arrangements were not possible under the previous rules.

The adoption of the third protocol and the recognition of the new Red Crystal emblem mean that those national societies are no longer required to choose between the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. Instead they can use the appropriate emblem consistently with the Geneva Conventions, their own traditions, and the rules of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Any other national society that wishes to can use the Red Crystal in accordance with the provisions of the third protocol. I am advised that following the adoption of the third protocol, both the Magen David Adom of Israel and the Palestine Red Crescent Society were admitted as full members of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies for the first time, and were formally recognised by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

New Zealand signed the third protocol in 2006, and the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, as members will know, conducted the international treaty examination of the third protocol in 2007 and reported that it had no matters to bring to the attention of the House. Although not considering ratification of the third protocol to be a matter of urgency for the Government, the committee stated that it supports the ratification.

The ratification will mean that New Zealand will be party to all the treaties that comprise the Geneva Conventions and their protocols, which are the core instruments of international humanitarian law. Although the New Zealand Defence Force will continue to use the Red Cross symbol, it is essential that our armed forces personnel know the significance of the new Red Crystal symbol when used by other forces or civilian facilities, and that they respect the legal protections that apply to it afforded by this legislation. To date the third protocol has been signed by 90 countries, while 60 countries have either ratified or acceded to it, including Australia, Canada, the United States, and many European countries.

The bill itself amends the Geneva Conventions Act 1958 and extends to the Red Crystal the protection provided to the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. The bill also makes a number of minor and technical amendments to existing legislation, and I just thought I would run through those. The bill amends section 2 of the Geneva Conventions Act by including and adjusting definitions relevant to the third protocol. The bill amends section 8 of the Geneva Conventions Act to include the Red Crystal in the list of protected emblems. The bill also updates some of the language in section 8, and provides an exemption from the offence provisions where a trademark was registered prior to this amending bill entering into force.

The bill also increases the penalty for an offence under section 8 of the Geneva Conventions Act, from a fine of up to $1,000 to a fine of up to $10,000. This level of maximum penalty better reflects the seriousness of the misuse of any of the emblems, and brings the level of penalty into line with contemporary law. The bill repeals section 10 of the Act, which provides for the Act’s application to the Cook Islands, Niue, and Tokelau. The replacement section provides for the Act’s application to Tokelau alone, as both Niue and the Cook Islands have equivalent stand-alone legislation. The bill also adds a new schedule to the Act, which consists of the text of the third protocol itself. Finally, the bill makes a number of consequential amendments to the flags and emblems legislation.

I am sure that, as many members know, in many theatres of conflict many look towards the ability of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent to provide much-needed support and care at most vulnerable times. Those are symbols that are internationally recognised; we are all aware of that. This legislation allows us to bring into effect the affording of those sorts of protections to the Red Crystal. The bill therefore reaffirms New Zealand’s longstanding position as a supporter of the conventions and the role that the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has in providing this assistance to vulnerable people throughout the world. We commend this bill to the House.

What a curious choice of Minister to introduce this bill, the Geneva Conventions (Third Protocol—Red Crystal Emblem) Amendment Bill, to the House. I want the House to listen to what Tony Ryall said just a couple of years ago in this very House: “We do not”—and I am quoting from Hansard—“believe that New Zealand should be constrained by the figment of what the United Nations may or may not state in various conventions.” That is what this Minister said in this House a couple of years ago, showing utter contempt for international conventions. What a curious thing it is in the House today that this same Tony Ryall gets up and moves the first reading of a bill implementing an international convention. What will the international community think about this House when a Minister who has shown such absolute contempt for international conventions gets up and moves the first reading of this support for a Geneva Convention?

I want Mr Ryall to stand up and apologise to this House for the contempt that he has shown in the past, out of rabid populism, for the observance of international agreements. You know, that Minister said that we should have ignored 40 years of observance by successive New Zealand Governments of conventions like the international convention for the protection of civil and political rights, and now he stands up in the House and says that this is one that we should observe. Well, that is a very bad case of double standards. How ironic, after we have just passed one bill in the House to extend a law that would have observed those conventions that the Minister spoke against 5 or 6 years ago, that he is now, in the successive bill, saying that we should observe this one. Well, enough of that Minister and those double standards.

This is a bill that the Labour Party in Opposition supports. In fact, it was under a Labour Government that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee ratified this protocol back in 2007. That might seem curious to you. That was 5 years ago, and I think this is a lesson to all select committees. This select committee said at the time that this should not be considered a matter of urgency. That is a very, very dangerous thing for a select committee to do, because 5 years later this Government, after dawdling along, has decided—after 90 countries have signed it and 60 have ratified it—that maybe New Zealand should do something about it. Again, you have to worry about a Government that cannot handle its legislative agenda competently in that way.

This is legislation that will not unduly encroach upon the time of this House. It is very straightforward. The third protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which can be ratified following the passage of this legislation, is straightforward, and it is worthy of support.

I do not think there is a member in this House who would not respect the work that the international Red Cross and the international Red Crescent do around the world. That symbol, in each case—the Red Cross and the Red Crescent—is a symbol of an organisation whose impartiality and independence and safety should be respected. The work that those organisations do in situations of conflict and in humanitarian crises is to be deeply respected.

What this bill does is enable us to ratify the third protocol, which establishes a third emblem. There is not only the Red Cross and the Red Crescent but also this third emblem, which has been called the Red Crystal. Why is it necessary to have a third emblem? Well, there are countries like Israel, which is neither Christian nor Muslim, that find it difficult that either of those emblems should be used in a protective way in regard to their country. Equally, Eritrea, I think, was the other country that found it difficult to use the emblem of either the Red Cross, which has Christian connotations, or the Red Crescent, which has Muslim connotations.

Way back in 1992, I think it was, people got together and said: “Well, how do we address these sorts of situations?”, and in 2000 a joint working group proposed the third additional protocol. In 2005, 5 years later, that was adopted by a two-thirds majority at the international convention. Even then, consensus was not achieved—again, largely because of conflict in the Middle East. A number of States representing the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Conference voted against the adoption of this protocol. That was less about the protocol itself than about a desire by those States that there should be progress in addressing Geneva Convention breaches in the occupied Palestinian territories, and a need for improvement in the humanitarian situation in those areas. I respect both of those concerns; I think both of those concerns are well-founded. But that should not prevent New Zealand from supporting the adoption and the ratification of this protocol, because it addresses a situation that does require a solution.

Under the Geneva Conventions, New Zealand has an obligation also to prohibit the unauthorised use of Geneva Convention emblems. There is a financial sanction for misusing those emblems and, unfortunately, in our legislation we put in place penalties that many years after the event no longer have a significant effect. In this case, the penalty of $1,000 was set in 1987. That is a long time ago. Properly, this legislation adopts a bigger penalty of $10,000, which is in line with penalty levels for similar breaches.

By enacting this bill, New Zealand will be able to ratify the Third Protocol, which entered into force more than 5 years ago on 14 January 2007. We should join with the other 60 countries that have already ratified this protocol. Labour supports the bill accordingly, and the sooner we can get this legislation through the House, the sooner—belatedly—New Zealand can join with other responsible members of the international community in ratifying this agreement. I just hope that the Minister who introduced this legislation has seen the error of his ways and no longer believes that you can ignore “figments” of United Nations international conventions, as he so quaintly, but rather rabidly, put it back in 2005.

It is something of a disappointment to find an ex - Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade rise in this House and turn a very serious issue into a light political joke, where issues around UN conventions are being confused—absolutely wrongly—with issues around the Red Cross. The Red Cross has got nothing to do with the United Nations, and the previous speaker, Phil Goff, ought to know that. The Red Cross is an international non-governmental organisation based in Geneva. It is the only institution explicitly named under international humanitarian law as a controlling authority. But to link the United Nations and the Red Cross and then to accuse Mr Ryall, as Phil Goff has done, is absolutely wrong and simply a demonstration of cheap politics.

In our region we can think recently of events in Fiji, where parliamentarians were locked in Parliament, and where the senior Red Cross leader in Fiji, a New Zealander, made many, many journeys to provide items of comfort and to negotiate between the hostages being held by the Government in Fiji, the parliamentarians, and the outside community. We can think about the Solomon Islands, where in 2000 the then New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade botched our involvement and caused quite a lot of trouble in that country. We can also think about the activities then of the Red Cross in visiting people damaged by that conflict and very often under fire. Prior to that, we can think about events in Bougainville, where I can remember clearly that for a period the only people able to get in to the Bougainville conflict were people from the Red Cross—and, again, they were New Zealanders.

What I am saying to you is that it is really important to support the role conducted by the Red Cross. The Government back in 2007 could have moved quite quickly if it had wished to between 2007 and 2009 and given effect to this legislation, the Geneva Conventions (Third Protocol—Red Crystal Emblem) Amendment Bill, so, again, the crocodile tears being expressed by the previous speaker, in my view, are quite misplaced.

I think that this is a valuable piece of legislation. I do not think it needed to be put on a particularly fast track in this part of the world, because it is very clear that the legislation is aimed at accommodating two countries, Israel and Ethiopia, and they are not especially active in our immediate Pacific area. It is useful to pass this legislation. We should pass this legislation. We should pay due respect and homage to the great work that is done by the international Red Cross, and for those reasons I am in full support of this piece of legislation, as is our party. Thank you.

It gives me pleasure to rise to speak to the Geneva Conventions (Third Protocol—Red Crystal Emblem) Amendment Bill, but I do wonder why this bill, which was introduced on 24 August 2010, has taken till now to surface. It has been languishing at the bottom of the Order Paper for some time, and yet suddenly here today, on Thursday, 28 June 2012, the Government has seen fit to elevate it to the top of the Order Paper.

I can only imagine that it is because the Government has been so roundly stung by international reaction to its poor performance on the depleted uranium bill last night that it has, in fact, sought to redeem itself somewhat by introducing this bill. I think the posts that have gone around the world about National’s contributions—and every member’s speech has been posted on websites and can be accessed through Twitter internationally—have stung the Government, and it has now seen fit to try to redeem itself and prove that it is really not such a bad international citizen after all. I look forward to members who spoke in last night’s debate on depleted uranium searching out the reference to their own speeches on the websites of interest, because these are about international movements, and these are about international citizenship. That being as it may, I comment only on the moment of this bill coming forward, not on the fact that it has.

It is an important bill. Mr Speaker, I do not know whether you will permit me to stand this iPad here or not. You may consider it to be the use of a visual aid and not appropriate, and I will certainly take it down if you tell me to do that. The three symbols that I am demonstrating here on my iPad are representative now of the people who provide medical and humanitarian support in places of conflict. Those people can be protected by the wearing of these symbols. But the point about this, which I think is a very serious point and one that the Labour Opposition supports, is underlined by the fact that human beings respond to symbols. Human beings respond to symbols. We govern our lives by symbols. We attach emotional importance to symbols. We attach political significance to symbols. And so it is unsurprising that over time the three symbols that are here have been developed in order to accommodate the different expressions, particularly of religious tradition, that we find around the world.

The Red Cross symbol has been in existence since 1864. The Red Cross has achieved a huge amount of credibility in humanitarian efforts around the world in every conflict one can name, since 1864. People marked with the Red Cross—typically medics but also non-arms-bearing humanitarian assistance of one kind or another—wear it for protection, to identify themselves as not being of any party involved in a conflict and therefore needing protection.

The Red Crescent was first used by the Ottoman Empire in 1870, and was formally recognised internationally in 1929. Of course, the symbolism of these two first symbols is clear. One looks like a Christian symbol; one looks like a Muslim symbol. We can see the crescent, for example, used widely on flags of Muslim nations, and that symbolism is redolent with all kinds of meaning and associations. We should never underestimate the power of symbols. So in order to protect people who go into war-torn areas of conflict from being associated with one side or another, particularly as religious-based conflict has developed over time—and religion and culture are frequently inseparable in these conflicts—it has become necessary to use the Red Crystal. It is called the Red Crystal. The Minister of Health in his opening speech gave a very technical description of it, but it is basically a red diamond on a white background. It is a red diamond with a white diamond inside it. It is a different symbol. Thank you for indulging me on that, Mr Speaker. I will take the visual aid away. It is a red diamond, and that allows people to associate something other than religious traditions and cultural commitments with a symbol that needs to be available for the protection of those non-combatants who go into war-torn areas to offer humanitarian assistance.

I noticed that in a couple of speeches Ethiopia has been mentioned. I think in the Minister’s opening speech he referred to Eritrea, and if I remember correctly, he referred to both symbols, in fact, being used in Eritrea. Certainly that would be true of Ethiopia, which used to have Eritrea within its border, because 64 percent of the people of Ethiopia are, in fact, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. They are not Coptics; they are Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. They have for a—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Coptic.

No, not Coptic. No, no, Coptics are quite different—quite different. There are five Orthodox—I will not go into this—Churches around the world and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the five. On the other side of the population—64 percent are Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, as I said—there is a very large contingent, some 34 percent of the Ethiopian population, who are Muslim, who came to Ethiopia for refuge at the time of Muhammad when they were being persecuted. Muhammad told them to go to Ethiopia and seek refuge because they would be well treated there. That has been the history of Ethiopia—that Christian and Muslim have coexisted peacefully in Ethiopia. The Eritrean division was something quite different. The use of the two symbols has been important, certainly, in Eritrea, but is relevant in regard to the population make-up in Ethiopia.

This is an important convention to pass. The fact that it has taken a long time to get here in the end is simply a point to note. This brings New Zealand into line with 60 other countries internationally and goes towards the safety that the international community can afford to those non-combatants, those medical personnel, who go in to assist people, whatever side they may be on and in whatever part of a conflict they may be, and gives them the kind of humanitarian assistance that all of us, at the core of our being, would wish them to be able to give without coming to harm. I support this bill. Thank you.

Debate interrupted.