Merci Madame la Presidente.

I will start by offering my condolences on behalf of the United Kingdom for the deaths of the two security guards at the Arusha branch of the Residual Mechanism.

Madame President, Thank you to the President, Judge Carmel Agius, and Prosecutor Brammertz for their briefings to the Security Council today.

I would like to reiterate the UK’s unwavering commitment to the Mechanism and reaffirm our willingness to assist it wherever possible in fulfilling its mandate, as extended after 30 June, and implementing its vision of being a small, temporary and efficient structure. Most recently, in February this year, we were pleased with Lord Iain Bonomy’s appointment to the roster of judges of the Mechanism.

Madame President, much has happened in this reporting period. Firstly, the recent report of the OIOS found that the Mechanism had successfully implemented most of the OIOS’s previous recommendations, which has further improved working practices, and it has set two new recommendations, which we fully support, for the Mechanism to work towards. We are pleased that work has already started to implement these. Secondly, the Mechanism has ensured that its work has continued despite the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, and I would like to support the President’s call not to lose sight of the importance of international justice during this period. Thirdly, with latest developments in the Kabuga case, the Mechanism has taken a huge step in showing that impunity is not allowed to prevail.

We congratulate the Office of the Prosecutor and the French authorities for the arrest last month of Félicien Kabuga in France. The UK is proud that it was among the states and entities that cooperated in the investigation leading to the arrest. As noted in the report, this arrest again demonstrates that international justice can succeed when it has the international community’s support, even decades after the events. In this spirit, we welcome the preparations underway to establish an international investigative task force focusing on Rwandan genocide suspects present in Europe.

We welcome the progress made on the first major contempt case of Turinabo et al. The United Kingdom notes the work of the Prosecutor’s office, assisted by the international community in confirming the death of the indicted Augustin Bizimana. Six fugitives now remain, and a number of cases require specific actions by certain states. It is disappointing that a lack of cooperation from some Member States has hindered the Prosecutor’s efforts. We call on all Member States to assist the Mechanism; it is our collective responsibility to seek justice for victims and our obligation under the Charter of the United Nations to cooperate with the Mechanism.

The United Kingdom is among the States which are assisting the Mechanism with enforcing sentences and hopes that other States will also assist the mechanism as needed. We note the positive steps that the President has taken through the revised practice direction to ensure greater transparency and efficiency on conditional release. We are disappointed that no progress has been made on relocating the nine acquitted and released persons still in the safe-house in Arusha, despite efforts by the President and Registrar to resolve this untenable situation. We appeal to States which are in a position to do so, to help resolve this problem.

We are pleased with the Mechanism’s progress in The Hague on the Mladić and Stanišić & Simatović cases, and note the Mechanism’s efforts to minimise delays to these trials caused by COVID 19. We also commend the Mechanism for its work to build capacity with state prosecutors in the Western Balkans. However, despite some progress, we are disappointed that regional judicial cooperation still remains inadequate. It should not be possible to evade justice simply by residing in a neighbouring country. We call upon the countries of the Western Balkans region to ensure they honour the commitments they made when they signed the Joint Declaration on War Crimes at the 2018 London Western Balkans Summit and committed themselves to supporting, and removing impediments to, effective regional cooperation in the field of justice.

In relation to both the events in the Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, it is deeply concerning that the glorification of war criminals continues on all sides, making reconciliation elusive. It is unacceptable that individuals and sections of society continue to deny what happened in Rwanda and in the Western Balkans, and the UK will continue to condemn instances of denial in its all forms.

Madame President, it is almost 25 years ago in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, that 8,000 men and boys were massacred, and over 20,000 women and children were forcibly deported. On behalf of the United Kingdom, I would like to pay tribute to all the victims of Srebrenica, who remain at the forefront of our thoughts. The ICTY, and now the Mechanism, have pursued justice for the victims and their families for the heinous acts committed against them. This, of course, would not be possible without the survivors and witnesses who have so bravely testified, and without whom there could be no justice. We must ensure that nothing like it ever happens again. It is vital that we all recognise the events at Srebrenica for what they were, a genocide.

There is still more work to be done by the Mechanism in relation to the awful events which took place in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, and States must continue to support it as it completes its work.

I thank you Madame President.

Caroline Cole

Caroline Cole read architecture at the University of Cambridge and during her professional life has worked both as a design consultant and as a client, commissioning design professionals for the built environment.

She is Founder of Colander Associates, a business that has advised many of the UK’s most acclaimed architectural and engineering practices, and works with building owners, developers and government agencies, helping to formulate their approach to architecture.

Caroline regularly publishes articles and speaks at conferences to promote good design to clients, and good business to the professions. She is committed to integrated design and gender diversity, establishing Equilibrium Network, to promote gender diversity within the built environment. She also sits on the Steering Group of the climate emergency network, Architects Declare.

She is Chair of the Industry Advisors to IDBE at the University of Cambridge; Trustee of the Ove Arup Foundation; Chair of SPACE Studios; Honorary Fellow of the RIBA; a Professor at IE University, Madrid; Fellow of the RSA, and sits on the Design Review Panel for HS2. She is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects and has received the Freedom of the City of London.

In her spare time, she is a ceramicist.

Surojit Ghosh

Surojit Ghosh has a background in finance and is currently a Senior Advisor for CQS Fund Management.

He has previously worked for organisations including Credit Suisse and CS First Boston. Surojit is a Governor for Dulwich College (independent school) and a Non-Executive Director for Dulwich College Management International.

Nico Lacuzzi

Nico is an investment professional with considerable experience in fund management, structured finance, and strategy consulting. He is currently an Investment Director at Inter Fund Management SA, the independent investment arm of a large European corporate, where he is responsible for sourcing, executing and managing private equity investments on a global basis. He was previously a Managing Director at Change Capital Partners, a private equity fund focused on consumer and retail investments in Europe. Prior to this, Nico worked in the Leveraged Finance team at JP Morgan and the Strategy and Operations group at Deloitte. A graduate of the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School, Nico lives with his wife and three sons in Dulwich.

These roles are not remunerated. These reappointments have been made in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments, the process is regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Government’s Governance Code requires that any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years is declared. This is defined as holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation or candidature for election. Caroline Cole, Surojit Ghosh, and Nico Lacuzzi have not declared any activity.

Heather Blyth

Heather has delivered many successful strategic initiatives in the media and cultural sectors. She has experience working for large multi-national organisations including Sky and Virgin Media and has consulted for a range of other broadcasters and media companies. At Sky, she was part of the launch team for the much-loved Sky Atlantic and she facilitated the creation of Europe’s biggest on-demand library of arts content under the Sky Arts banner. She also supported the business case and delivery of Sky’s investment into original content, which is set to more than double by 2024. This has resulted in award winning programmes such as Chernobyl, Patrick Melrose and Portrait Artist of the Year.

She is experienced across strategy, transformation, operational and insight roles and is skilled at bringing diverse teams together and creating frameworks that enable creativity to thrive whilst delivering strong business results.

Heather has two big passions. Firstly, ensuring we have a strong, enriching arts and cultural sector, open to all. Secondly, she is dedicated to helping empower girls and young women to reach their potential. She has a master’s degree from Oxford University and an MBA from Durham University. She lives with her husband and young daughter.

Paul Eccleson

Paul Eccleson is currently Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Munich Re’s Legal Expenses Insurance arm. He is also Finance Trustee for The Natural Theatre Company in Bath. He lectures at Postgraduate level in the Psychology of Financial Crime and Corporate Ethics at the International Compliance Association Paul is a financial crime and fraud investigation consultant, having successfully led one of the UK’s largest private prosecutions. His work has also included award-winning behavioural economics research in the area of customer understanding of complex products.

Paul has worked in senior positions across a range of industries. His early career was in artificial intelligence and e-commerce. Whilst a senior research manager with Hewlett-Packard, he led the implementation of one of the UK’s first e-commerce sites, winning the 1999 Financial Times Public Sector Website award for innovation.

Paul was born and raised in Birkenhead and has maintained close contacts with National Museums Liverpool, who he still sees as his cultural parent.

Rita Mclean

Rita McLean is an independent museums and heritage consultant with over 30 years experience of working across the UK heritage and cultural sectors in a range of strategic, advisory and operational roles. She was Director of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery from 2004 until 2012 and during this time responsible for initiation and delivery of a number of major capital development projects, collections development and interpretation programmes, workforce and audience diversity initiatives. She was awarded an honorary doctorate for services to heritage and culture by the University of Birmingham in 2010.

Current consultancy work includes assignments for the National Lottery Heritage Fund as a project consultant and expert adviser. She served for several years as an Artistic and Quality Assessor for Arts Council England.

Rita is a member of the National Trust’s Collections and Interpretation Advisory Group and Midlands Region Advisory Board. She is also a member of Birmingham Cathedral’s Fabric Advisory Committee.

Tony Wilson

Tony was born and educated in Liverpool. He studied a degree in law at the University of Nottingham before returning to Liverpool to commence his legal career.

He practiced law for 43 years. He was Senior Partner of Hill Dickinson from 2001 to 2011. During his term of office, the firm enjoyed considerable growth becoming a top thirty law firm with national and international offices. In 2005 Hill Dickinson became the first sponsor of Capital Culture 2008 and became the legal adviser to the Capital of Culture Board. He led Hill Dickinson to its current Headquarters in St. Paul’s Square, Liverpool – one of the largest office developments in the City.

Tony practiced as an Insurance lawyer and was senior legal adviser to a mutual insurer. He advised national retailers on claims handling and litigation strategies. He represented professionals with regard to proceedings before their regulators.

Tony is currently chair of the Liverpool Business Improvement District and a Trustee of the Liverpool Biennial. He has extensive board experience having previously been a board member of Liverpool Vision and the North West Business Leaders’ team. In 2005, he attended Harvard University and obtained a certificate in law firm management.

Isabel Chadwick

Isabel Chadwick has lived in the Northwest of England all her life. After graduating in Economics, she joined BDO’s Manchester Office qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in 1992.

Since leaving practice Isabel has spent the majority of her career working within the Financial Services Sector in organisations undergoing large scale change. This has included acquisitions, disposals, mergers and turnarounds, working in roles supporting the businesses through their transformation programmes. In 2013 she joined the turnaround team at the Co-operative Bank where she held the position of Commercial Operations Director.

In 2018 Isabel left the Co-operative Bank and set up a consultancy business which focuses on helping clients deliver complex change in their organisations; she is passionate about supporting businesses to achieve their potential. Isabel lives in Cheshire with her teenage daughter.

These roles are not remunerated. These appointments have been made in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments, the process is regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Government’s Governance Code requires that any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years is declared. This is defined as holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation or candidature for election. Neither Heather Blyth, Isabel Chadwick, Paul Eccleson, Rita Mclean, and Anthony Wilson have declared any activity.

Work on the Box Encapsulation Plant (BEP) and SIXEP Continuity Plant (SCP) sites ceased when the lockdown hit on 23 March 2020.

Since then the organisation has been planning a phased restart. These projects are the third and fourth to bring construction teams back on-site.

As with their predecessors, every effort has been made to ensure employees are as safe as they can be whilst at work.

Construction sites offer more outdoor work and space to move around, meaning that social distancing can be easier than in other parts of the business – especially with fewer people on-site. But there are still new safety measures for people coming back on-site at BEP and SCP that change the working day.

These include new one-way systems, socially distanced change rooms and canteens, barriers, and changes to the way people access and leave the site.

SCP construction manager Steve Gilroy said:

Our project is fundamental to protecting and enabling the site’s future mission of high hazard reduction, post operational clean out and broader decommissioning of the site, so returning the project to construction activities is time critical.

The project team have worked closely with our supply chain partners, including workforce representatives, to prepare the site to ensure our workforce can return to work with confidence that their safety is our top priority.

Learning from other major construction projects at Sellafield and nationally has been incorporated into the SCP restart arrangements, which are based on a phased approach with careful consideration of our work activities.

The work that will restart includes continuation of excavation activities that were paused in March, foundation formation works for the two main buildings and associated asbestos remediation activities. This phase is anticipated to take 6 to 8 weeks to complete, during which time we will be working up the restart plan for the next phase.

I’d like to thank the wider Projects Delivery Directorate restart cell for their support, valuable insights and learning from other major projects and the Sellafield Ltd and supply chain workforce representatives for their constructive engagement.

BEP Construction Manager Dave Beirne said:

We’ve completed the Covid-19 control measures and undertook a walk round as a management team with the project trade union safety representatives to confirm the suitability of our arrangements.

Our initial plan for construction work covers the first 8 weeks and what we will be doing has been specially selected to ensure our teams can work at distance, as well as being on or close to the project critical path.

We’ll be continuing work to close our temporary construction access opening, installing primary and secondary steelwork, painting, fire boarding and floor installation.

The first of our projects to restart construction was our Box Encapsulation Plant Product Store Direct Import Facility (BEPPS-DIF), on 11 May. Since then work there has concentrated on:

• trialling and verifying the stacking of waste stillages up to nine high in its vault
• for the first time under system control; moving the bogie which brings packages from the Direct Import Facility through the cells and into the vault
• electrical installation progressing

Senior Project Manager Mike Robinson said:

We’ve also been assessing the effectiveness of our arrangements seen during and since the restart. We want to build on the learning we’ve had as the first project to return to construction activity.

Through daily feedback sessions we’ve seen increased confidence from our workforce in the arrangements and approach we put in place and this is helping us decide on our next steps as well as helping the other projects that are set to restart.