Emma Nicholson, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is a British politician. Formerly a Conservative and then Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, she is now a life peer serving in the British House of Lords. She has also served as a Member of the European Parliament for ten years, where she was entrusted with several difficult tasks including the Vice Chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights. As a politician and parliamentarian, she has been involved in various humanitarian activities serving those who in her words ‘are in some ways less well served than others’. Baroness Nicholson is the founder and chairman of AMAR International Charitable Foundation and also the Patron of, or holds honorary positions in, several charities. At present, the Baroness is focusing very much on Iraq particularly the Iraq Britain Business Council and the AMAR Foundation through which she hopes to help Iraqis and others in the region. Baroness Nicholson has worked closely with the people of the Middle East and believes there is greater need for empathy, cooperation and active tolerance to reduce hostility and generate better understanding. A remarkable woman who thrives on challenges, Baroness Nicholson was in Kuwait on her way to Basra, when we caught up with her. Following is the full text of the interview:

By Chaitali B. Roy
Special to the Arab Times

Q: You studied at the Royal Academy of Music – did you have any special interest that you were working on?

A: I studied at the Royal Academy of Music for four years. It was a very happy and exciting time in my life. I won a scholarship at the age of 16 which was unusual. We didn’t take the scholarship up because my father could afford to pay. He was a Member of Parliament, but nonetheless it was a really nice feeling that I was good enough to get a scholarship to one of the finest Music Academies in the globe. I studied piano and cello and singing with some other instruments on the side. I have kept my music up and I love it very much indeed. When I left the Royal Academy of Music I joined International Computers Limited and I used my musical training to work on computer software development. It seems that music and mathematics are very much the same form of thinking and so I fell into another very happy and intellectually very exciting time.

Q: You worked as a computer software development and system analyst for some time before joining politics. What brought you to public life?

A: I worked on computer software development. I was part of a small team. We were working on writing computer languages. My specialty was complex ways of securing swifter information retrieval. It was enormously interesting. I gained considerable training with ICL. I was working in government departments and in huge industries in the city of London and in Africa. I was heading big teams, but I found more and more that I wanted to fulfill my social obligations. I come from a long line of politicians. I am from a public service family and I always spent a considerable part of my life supporting those who are in some way less well served than others or have less chances in life than others. And I found I was so bound up with my computer work that I had no space at all in my life to help other people. I just could not fit it in. So I moved to working into computer field in charities. From that I became a Director of Save the Children, one of Britain’s oldest and biggest children’s charities which has branches or sister organizations internationally all over the world. And I spent a very happy time helping them develop their work. It became bigger and doubled and trebled and quadrupled in size. I was leading on promotion and development, fund raising and forward planning and that brought me again into a very satisfying and rich part of my life. From there I went into the House of Commons. I became Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party at the request of Mrs. Thatcher. I was so lucky to work with her. She was a fascinating woman with a most brilliant brain. I was with her for four years. Straight from there, I went into the House of Commons. I was a Member of Parliament for ten years. Then I became a Member of the European Parliament for another ten years. And now I am a politician in the British Parliament again but in what we call the Upper House or the House of Lords. It is a bit like the ‘Diwan’. I am appointed by the Queen. I am not elected. I have had a very very fortunate time full of interest and excitement.

Q: Your views on inter-country adoption have created controversy. Why are you so strongly opposed to inter-country adoption?

A: In the European Parliament where I served from 1999 – 2009, I became Vice President of the Committee of Foreign Affairs. It was quite a challenging job. I was given the task of assisting Romania. At that time Romania wished to join the European Union, but she was not ready to do so. There were twelve states at that time, that were trying to join and Romania was said to be at the bottom of the list and a hopeless case. And so I set them to work very hard indeed with Romania, to help them understand what had to happen to get them in. There had to be very very large legislative changes harmonizing correctly with the European Union Common Body of Law to which all EU Member States have to subscribe. The Common Body of Law is based on human rights. And one of the gravest weaknesses in Romania since the fall of Ceausescu, the terrible dictator, was the human rights of children. What I uncovered was massive trafficking of children. Some of that trafficking was going under the false name of inter-country adoption. It was a misuse of the term. It was a just a cover up phrase that was being used to sell children globally and that is what I brought to the attention of the Government of Romania and the European Parliament. And once I had identified and shown them what was happening, the Romanians settled down with EU help. So what we are talking about is not inter country adoption, we are talking about child trafficking. Many times the children have just disappeared. There are about 30/40/50 thousand children completely untraceable. Romania was being used not just as a source of child trafficking but as a railway station by some of the murkier states around her. Naturally the traffickers whom I was uncovering, hurled every amount of dirt they could and tried very hard indeed to blacken me and to get me thrown out of the European Parliament, and out of the House of Lords because I was interfering with their very evil market. Now child trafficking is much more openly discussed and it is perceived as the horror that it is. In the British Parliament we have formed an All Party Group to combat trafficking of humans particularly women and children and we have formed similar groups in other Member States Parliament. Child Trafficking is the fastest growing organized crime in the globe and so the use of the word of inter country adoption was just a false piece of sticky plaster over a very evil thing indeed.

Q: International adoption subject to stringent rules would benefit children of underdeveloped and Third World countries. Do you agree?

A: I am not a child psychiatrist nor a social worker nor a medical person but I am told by the experts that children are best brought up in their own environment, own culture, their own language, their own family. Maybe they do not have a mother or a father, but they will have cousins, grandparents and aunts. All the professionals engaged in child welfare or in child health or development will say unhesitatingly that children are best brought up in their own environment. I am absolutely sure there are some instances where there is no future for an abandoned baby. And therefore, if you get the right fit, the right people, the right altruism, the right couple then I am sure that wonderful things can happen to the child that would never otherwise have happened. But I am also told that this is perhaps a bit of a rarity and it is all too easy even with well meaning efforts for wrong things to happen. And certainly since I began looking at this and I helped Romania get it right, many bad cases have come to light. Even when people did the right thing somehow the child has been bitterly unhappy because they were far removed from their own culture and religion. I hesitate to criticize another woman but for example when I saw Madonna, the great singer, remove a little child from an orphanage in Malawi when the father was only down the road and he had just remarried and wanted this little boy back again. The child was only in the orphanage because the mother had died. It would have been so easy for Madonna to support that little family with money. It would have been so little money for her and the boy would have been brought up by his own father. Isn’t that better than losing his family, his village, country and his religion? She has a completely different and very rare form of religion of her own. He does not have anyone from his family in that massive household so that’s sad. The poor father tried to keep him. I would call this child kidnapping and not child trafficking. In Britain we have a slavery day because we politicians believe that child trafficking is the new form of slavery because thousands of children and many young women and some young men are exploited as slave labour. In Westminster a senior policeman came and talked to us about 1200 children he is looking for. All have been trafficked into Westminster, from one corner of Eastern Europe and all by a single gang and each child is meant to earn a 100,00 pounds a year for the gang either through slave labour or stealing. So with freer movement the vulnerable are far more vulnerable suddenly. I am not talking about inter country adoption well carried out through proper judicial processes. I am talking about something different.

Q: Your humanitarian work has involved the rights of children in Romania and Moldova. Your persistence paid off with a landmark legal ruling regarding adoption – Could you tell us more about this?

A: The laws that have been put in are modern laws as opposed to very old fashioned laws. All countries have signed and ratified the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child. Modern Legislation on child care must reflect completely that UN convention and so countries that have come out of repression need to look at their laws and need to see how they can catch up to be fully reflective of the important UN Conventions that their governments have signed. Such as Turkey at the moment. A lot of laws have to be changed if a country wants to be a part of the European Union. Many of those laws are to do with human rights and justice and the rule of law, separation of powers and the fundamental freedoms. So change in the mores means getting up-to-date.

Q: Could you tell us about your work with the Marsh Arabs? How did you become involved with them? Who are the Marsh Arabs?

A: Immediately after Kuwait was invaded I found we did not have a group of Members of Parliament who had been concentrating on Kuwait. So I quickly formed an All Party Parliamentary Committee for Kuwait and chaired it. I came here as soon as Kuwait was free and I was aghast and shattered by what I found and saw. And of course I realized that this could be happening back in Iraq. So I worked hard to make sure everything I could do. The British Army and our allies had done everything possible. We were committed to Kuwait and we are committed, fundamentally, historically and today and for the future. Britain and Kuwait are very close friends, indeed like family. But I worried what was happening across the border. What had been done here must have been done on a daily basis in Iraq. So I struggled to go and have a look there and eventually I managed to see a little. I founded a charity immediately to try to help Iraqi people in their struggle. What was needed was health and education. I founded this small charity called AMAR Foundation. AMAR in Arabic means ‘the builder’ and so we were rebuilding lives. We are working in Iraq today and in Lebanon looking after health and education.

Q: Is it for the Marsh Arabs specifically?

A: It is for everybody, but particularly the Marsh people because the marshes, the famous ancient huge water and farm fisheries in the Southern Mesopotamian marshland was being assaulted and drained. One of the biggest and most wonderful marshes in the world, hugely important not only environmentally, but in terms of a whole region here, was being destroyed. I spoke up many times in Parliament and internationally, but failed to stop it. But I managed to collect a lot of good people locally, doctors, nurses and teachers and together we managed to save many thousands of lives. Today the AMAR Foundation is serving a million Iraqis. We are working through 45 health centers and we have about 600,000 patients and in the last 4 months we have given medical consultation to 245,000 people in the marshes, Basra and in Baghdad. We are only a charity. We can only go where we can find money to go, but we very fortunate indeed. We have Dr Kazem Behbehani, the very famous World Health Organization former Assistant Director General on our board. We get guidance from him. We have another expert on health and two global experts on education on our board. We work according to the principles of the WHO and UNESCO. We would like to expand to Yemen specifically where there is great poverty. We want to do simple things like training traditional birth attendants, training midwives, helping pregnant women and their babies after birth, so we carry out the full spectrum of preventive and curative health care and we also teach. We are giving 37,000 classes a week at the moment. We have a smaller effort in Lebanon. We would very much like to take our work to Yemen, if we get the funding. Yemen and Iraq have one of the highest rates of death on birth in the globe. This is why our work is so helpful. It’s a proper charity. We are very quiet, we don’t advertise, we don’t make a noise, we get on with the job. We have been working on it since 1991 and the trigger was the invasion of Kuwait.

Q: How enormous was the scale of destruction initiated against the Marsh Arabs by Saddam Hussein ? Has the situation turned for the better after him?

A: It was monstrous. It was a form of genocide. The Southern Mesopotamian marshlands were massive and half the size of Scotland in 1989. Now it is about ten percent of what it was. And these were wonderful farmers and fishermen involved in food production, food processing and food distribution. It was a hugely productive area. One of the wonders of the world. And I still hope perhaps some recovery may be possible. Saddam tried to wipe out the people. There was a trial recently in the Criminal Tribunal in Baghdad which tries Crimes against Humanity. I went twice. I went back to sit in court and hear the verdict. A number of men being tried were found guilty of crimes against humanity, of murdering the Marsh people, destroying the Marshes. They have been sentenced.

Q: But has the situation turned for the better after him?

A: Oh yes. The situation has definitely changed for the better. In the AMAR Foundation we started working with the marshes immediately in April 2003. We went straight back to the furthest part of the marshes that we had not been able to reach before. We saw the people in a terrible state. They were starving as they were not given food ration cards because they did not support the Baath Party. They were illiterate because teachers had been taken away twenty years previously. Some of the children were stunted in growth. They looked like famine victims which in a way they were. And 97 percent of the people had been forcibly relocated not once, but many times at gunpoint. They had lost their farms, cattle and family records. He was trying to wipe them out as he tried to wipe out the Kurdish people in the North. It is a steady rebuilding, but very slow. AMAR is working on health and education, but good things are happening. They are better off by far without Saddam Hussein.

Q: You were the first foreigner to testify in the Baghdad trial. You were there when Chemical Ali Majid and others sat in the dock. Having worked with common Iraqis for years, what was it like to see those men on trial?

A: It was a shocking experience testifying against Chemical Ali and the others. I was a witness because I was on the ground and I saw the results of what they did. There were hundreds and thousands of refugees and displaced people. Mercifully the accused were not able to argue effectively against me because what I said was true. I had made records at that time. I had gone back whenever possible to the House of Commons and made speeches about what I had seen. I had taken some films. I had written articles. I showed a hundred photographs in Court which I had taken from 1991 – 2003. So they had no answer. It was not for me to judge who was guilty. It was for me to describe the huge amount for crimes against humanity that I had witnessed. And that is exactly what I did. It was also good that I was a foreigner. I was just a fellow human being who happened to be there. They could pin nothing on me. That is why I understood later that my witness had been uniquely valuable because it was completely independent. It was a grueling experience giving evidence not once, but twice against people such as Chemical Ali.

Q: In February 2010 you founded the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Economic Development in Iraq and the Regions. Could you tell us more about its activities?

A: I and some political friends formed two All Party Groups recently one on Economic development for Iraq and the region and the other one on British Foreign Policy. My colleagues in the House are very keen to help support Iraq in education and training particularly young Iraqis as there is a very high level of illiteracy in this extremely intelligent nation. We hope very much from that group to be able to support education and training in Iraq.

Q: You have been to Iraq several times both during and after Saddam Hussein. What are the differences you have noticed?

A: I have been there many, many times. Under Saddam there was nothing but fear just as under Soviet Russia. In the dying days of cruel dictatorship, fear is the only thing you can find in the air. Now, that fear is gone. People are still nervous; they don’t quite know what is going to happen. But as time goes on they will gain confidence and the systems and institutions themselves will improve all the time. It is fear that a dictator rules by. It is the only thing that a dictator really has. Terror, stark terror was the feeling in Iraq. That’s gone. There is a lot of volatility, a lot of violence, but that is different from the overwhelming “heavy in the air terror” that used to be there.
The ‘Iraq Britain Business Council’ formed a year ago is now flourishing. We have one Kuwaiti member, which is Kuwait Energy. We have other companies who have a base here in Kuwait like Zain, who have been wonderful with the AMAR Foundation. The company has a very highly developed sense of corporate social responsibility and AMAR has been fortunate enough to do some of the health and educational work supported by Zain.

Q: Are you satisfied with the way things are going in Iraq? How long will it take for a trouble free Iraq without help and assistance from the US or UK?

A: I challenge the view that any country can work independently today. We are all now interdependent. We all need each other. Trade is interdependent and so is the free market. The common denomination of democracy and fundamental freedoms is interdependence. The internet alone makes us interdependent. None of us, no country, and no individual is standing alone. Indeed isolation generally means that a country is in deep trouble. Today no country can afford to be isolated in any shape or form. So I would challenge the thought that Iraq and any other nation can be ‘free’ of the rest of the world. That is never the case. One of the most successful blocs of the world is the European Union. We are 27 member states now with the closest possible of ties. The move is away from isolation and towards interdependence. So no, I do not foresee a future where Iraq is standing alone. I foresee a future where Iraq will be a very powerful partner with other nations, a very stable and far-sighted partner because Iraqis are very intelligent people. And the links between Iraq and Europe are very ancient. The links between the Gulf and Europe are very close. I mean we are almost cousins. And the great democratic blocs of the globe like India, North America, EU, together with the Gulf countries hang together because we have the same values.

Q: You advocated the role of health in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. That was in 2002. Has there been any improvement in the situation?

A: There has been some improvement but wholly insufficient for the Afghan people. Afghanistan is a very very difficult place indeed to bring into the modern world. By modern I mean introducing education, health and fundamental basic values. There is a different kind of perspective there. I see a bright future for Iraq and indeed for the whole of the GCC and eventually for countries such as Yemen. For Afghanistan it is going to take a very long time indeed because it contains some of the most regressive thinking in the globe. Our cultures work on respect with the other. In Afghanistan a massive proportion of society works on oppression of the other as of right by the dominant one. That is so far removed from modern thinking or from any reasonable human values, that change is difficult to achieve, but I would like the AMAR Foundation to work there because we have a lot to offer.
I would like to say a word about the Kuwait Royal Family. All along Kuwait has shown the most extraordinary humane spirit, even after what happened here. The Kuwaiti Royal Family has consistently and with no publicity, quietly assisted myself for example by helping the AMAR Foundation serve the Marsh people. Kuwait and her rulers have shown great generosity of spirit. So there is a spirit of forgiveness here without which you cannot make progress as humans.

Q: Your report on Kashmir raised a few brows? Could you tell us more about it?

A: I produced a number of reports on difficult issues for the European Parliament. My colleagues allowed me to take up some very tough tasks indeed. And the one on Kashmir turned out to be a controversial one because there was so much bombardment on it by the Pakistani Government and the Secret Service. It took eighteen months to complete, three times longer than the normal six months and it was the longest European Parliament report ever and also the biggest. I didn’t set out to do that, but the bombardment against it was so great and the political argument grew bigger and bigger. Eventually the report went through in the way I had originally conceived stating the things that I knew to be correct and honest. It was passed with 552 votes in favour and 9 against.

Q: You have worked with the ethnic gypsy tribes scattered around Europe. In recent times there has been cause for concern especially with the recent expulsions of Roma gypsies from France. What are your views on this issue?

A: I have worked with the Roma people quite a lot. Most of them ejected from France are French citizens. This should never have happened. Some have lived in France for 25 years. This is ethnic discrimination. It is targeting groups simply because they have a particular bloodline. It is wholly unacceptable. It is not right to allow someone to live somewhere for twenty five years and then ask them to go because they are of the wrong colour. It is morally wrong. If people break a law to become a resident of a country, then action must be taken, but it seems that the French Roma have not broken any laws. There are groups of people who do not wish to fit into the norms of the majority, they have a different way of life, a different culture, but the European Union is about respecting other cultures not about throwing them out. We all have to learn to live together.

Q: You spent a decade working with the European Parliament. Do you look back at the years with satisfaction?

A: I loved it. My colleagues were kind enough to ask me to stand again for another five years, but I wanted to get back to working more deeply through the AMAR Foundation and to giving my time for those in need particularly health and education. My colleagues at the EU Parliament gave me very tough things to do, very tough tasks. I liked that challenge. I like doing something that is difficult. I am grateful to the European Parliament for giving me the opportunities of tackling some really quite difficult things and managing to bring them to the other side with some good conclusions. Now I am focusing very much on Iraq particularly through the IBBC and the AMAR Foundation and hope to enlarge our work to Yemen and maybe Afghanistan and Pakistan. I am looking forward immensely to working more in this region where I have been very happy and where people accept me and welcome me as if I were their sister.

Q: You have worked closely with the people of the Middle East. Do you feel this region and its problems are misunderstood by most parts of the world?

A: Yes, I agree with you. There are many misunderstandings between the Middle East and Elsewhere. Nowadays we have the opportunity of linking much more closely together. Those of us who have the chance to understand must explain and help the different parts of the world understand one another. There are many things that others do not understand outside the Middle East. There are cultural differences and religious differences so it is imperative to explain, to try and get people to understand so that there is respect and not mutual hostility. Cooperation and active tolerance is the key. I value all the good things that I have found here in the Middle East.

Q: Could you tell us more about your visit to Kuwait?

A: I have a very exciting visit planned to Kuwait on the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th of October. And I am looking forward to several meetings. I have been asked to speak to the British Ladies Society, which is the highlight of my visit. I am looking forward to that immensely. I know some of them already, they are exceptional women. I hope to visit an oil field that will be very exciting. I will be meeting important board members and supporters of the AMAR Foundation. I also hope to meet some of the IBBC members like Sara Akbar. I will be visiting Zain. I want to work again with Zain to make a film on the marshlands so people can see what AMAR exactly does.

Q: Is there something else that you would like to share?

A:I come from a very happy family. What I would really like to do is to give some of that happiness to other people.