Lord Alton's Genocide Determination Bill Completes Second Reading in the House of Lords

On 17 July 2026, and shortly before the House breaks for summer recess, Lord Alton's Genocide Determination Bill has its second reading in the House of Lords.

The UK Government has a long-standing policy on leaving the question of genocide to courts. This position is not enshrined in international or domestic law, but was adopted by the UK Government several decades ago and became the mantra repeated again and again. 

Despite being the Government's default position for some four decades, the Government failed to introduce any legislation that would give effect to the policy. As a result, the Government relies on external competent courts - whether international courts or domestic courts. (The only UK legislation pertaining to the crime of genocide is the International Criminal Court Act 2001 (ICCA 2001), which limits courts' jurisdiction to cases where the alleged perpetrator is a British citizen or resident.)

The Genocide Determination Bill aims to establish a formal legal mechanism allowing British domestic courts to make preliminary determinations on whether genocide is occurring or has occurred abroad.

Once a determination is made, the Secretary of State will be required to act, for example, by way of referring the situation to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and other international bodies. This is to implement HMG's duties under the Genocide Convention. The overarching objective is to ensure that the UK Government acts quickly on its existing obligations under the Genocide Convention, which legally binds signatories to prevent mass atrocities the moment a serious risk is recognised.

The Genocide Determination Bill is designed to empower victims/survivors to seek a determination of genocide or the risk thereof - not politicians, not civil servants. It is in line with the victims/survivor centric approach we have been hearing about. 

Bottom line, if the UK Government wants to continue to rely on the long-standing policy of leaving the question of genocide to courts, it needs to introduce a law to give effect to it. If not, the only option is to change the long-standing policy. Inaction will only empower perpetrators who see that we are unable and unwilling to do anything to address the crime. 

Speaking during the second reading, Lord Alton said:

I first introduced the Genocide Determination Bill only a few months after I laid amendments here and with colleagues in another place following a unanimous vote that had determined that the atrocities committed by ISIS against Yazidis, Christians and other minorities in northern Iraq and Syria was a genocide. It was the first time that the House of Commons had made such a determination. But, despite the calls from across the political spectrum for genocide determination and action to stop those atrocities, to prevent further atrocities, to protect the populations at risk and to avert the risk that the communities would be annihilated, the Foreign Office refused to accept the determination made in another place, arguing that such a determination could be made only by an international judicial body or a competent court, despite knowing only too well that there was no international judicial body that was going to look into those crimes committed by ISIS in Syria or Iraq. The Government also made it clear that they were not willing to move on that position.

That made me consider what would need to happen to implement the Government’s declared policy that only a court can decide and how we could create a route into our own courts to make that happen. If indeed the Government wanted court determination, my question was: could our domestic courts make such a determination? As it stood at the time, the only legislation pertaining to genocide was the International Criminal Court Act 2001, legislating and domesticating the Rome statute of the ICC. It enables our court to prosecute individuals for their involvement in international crimes such as genocide, but it equips domestic courts with only very narrow jurisdiction over international crimes: namely, active personality jurisdiction, which means that the alleged perpetrators must be British citizens or residents to fall within the purview of the legislation.

In the case of the Yazidis, it is very significant that the Foreign Office has changed its position and has said that a genocide is under way, and has done so because a court in Germany has declared it to be a genocide. While I welcome that, why is it that we are closing off a route to our own English High Court and to the Court of Session in Scotland: courts that would be more than competent to deal with this matter here? It was my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead who said that the 1948 convention was no longer fit for purpose—his words. He gave us his valuable expertise and help in drafting the original Bill, and I have talked this Bill through with him. I hope we will not hear from the Government that this is not practical or doable when such an illustrious Member of your Lordships’ House is one of the many who have given it support.

Instead of the cynical merry-go-round that we have at the moment, we need to establish an independent British judicial process to sift the evidence and make a preliminary finding triggering the provisions of the convention. If this is the apex crime, genocide has a high burden of proof, and rightly so. It is not a term to be thrown around lightly or to be misused. My Bill seeks to give force to the hopes of Raphael Lemkin and of Winston Churchill, who said that there was not a word in our language capable of describing the monstrosities which had occurred in the Holocaust. There were genuine attempts in the post-war period to address those questions. We need to return to those issues now and do something practical about it. I commend this Bill, which enjoys all-party support, to the House, and I beg to move.

(Hansard, HoL, Volume 858)

Hansard from the session is now available here.

The Genocide Determination Bill is now to be sent to Committee.