Stephen Crabb MP: A growing number of Conservatives are dedicated to development work in Sierra Leone – a true reflection of Conservative values

Stephen Crabb is Member of Parliament for Preseli Pembrokeshire and a Government Whip. He has led Project Umubano since 2010.

Ten years ago, British forces led by Brigadier (now General Sir) David Richards brought an end to the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone. Operation Palliser not only bears testament to successful British military intervention; it provided the groundwork for Sierra Leone’s economic and political recovery.

Today, Britain continues to walk the path of reconstruction and development with this important member of the Commonwealth. British companies including Dawnus Construction are already helping to drive Sierra Leone’s impressive GDP growth, while a range of NGOs are contributing to a comprehensive poverty-fighting strategy that is seeing positive results. 

This week marks the start of Project Umubano, the Conservative Party’s innovative social action programme in Africa. More than one hundred Conservatives activists and supporters are once again teaming up to put their beliefs into practice and to learn about the realities of international development at the coalface - and this year sees our largest ever group of volunteers travelling to Sierra Leone.

Stephen Crabb MP: Project Umubano is a truly remarkable expression of the Conservative Party’s core values - voluntarism, compassion, enterprise and an outward-focus

Stephen Crabb is MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire and a Government Whip.

The Party is now recruiting volunteers for Project Umubano 2012 in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

Now in its sixth year, Project Umubano is a truly remarkable expression of the Conservative Party’s core values: voluntarism, compassion, enterprise and an outward-focus. It is also combines a lot of fun and hard work.

Umubano brings together the most diverse groups of Party members and supporters, working for two weeks each July in challenging environments alongside African partners focused on tackling the root causes of poverty. (A video snap-shot of last year’s project can be viewed here)

The scope of the Project continues to grow in response to requests from our partners. There is a strong focus on training to ensure there is a lasting benefit to the work we do.

In a number of Project areas we require specialist skills and experience: Healthcare, Law, Business & Finance, and parliamentary support. But there is also a wide range of opportunities for the generalists among us.

Stephen Crabb MP: British international aid ensures value for taxpayers, as well as for recipient countries

Stephen Crabb MP is an Assistant Government Whip and is Leader of Project Umubano, the Conservative Party’s social action project in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

Overseas aid is quickly becoming something of a totem for those who want to avoid difficult budget decisions at home. In their eyes, whatever real or imagined pain arising from fiscal restraint could be avoided if only we didn’t have a budget for assisting the poorest countries on earth.

Yet, as Tim Montgomerie said here two weeks ago, cutting the aid budget would still leave 90% of the UK deficit untouched. But doing so would come at the price of depriving many of the world’s poorest and hungriest children of life-saving medicines and food. 

Overseas aid, when delivered effectively, serves a clear national interest and is supported by a strong business and moral case.

Stephen Crabb MP: A record number of Conservatives are joining Project Umubano 2011 - but there is still time for you to be a part of it

Stephen Crabb has been MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire since 2005 and is an Assistant Government Whip.

Since 2007, Project Umubano, the Conservative Party's Project in Rwanda and Sierra Leone, has served as a powerful demonstration of the Party's commitment to social action and international development. We focus on teaching skills to provide long term sustainability, and through the project our teams of volunteers have been able to make a modest but lasting difference.

This year that's set to grow, with a record number of volunteers signing up to join us. Over 100 Conservatives will join us for Umubano's fifth year and we are continually overwhelmed by the effort and enthusiasm of our participants.

Leading the way on our projects as ever are a dedicated group of MPs. Dr Daniel Poulter MP will lead a team of medics delivering training to doctors and nurses with specific emphasis on rural health clinics. Fiona Bruce MP and Jeremy Lefroy MP will be returning to Rwanda this year to lead an expanded Business project in conjunction with the Private Sector Federation of Rwanda and the Capital Markets Advisory Council. They have put together a superb programme which builds on the success of their entrepreneurship workshops last year.

Stephen Crabb MP: Conservative volunteers with Project Umubano are leaving a lasting legacy in Rwanda - and you could still join us this summer

Stephen Crabb has been MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire since 2005 and is an Assistant Government Whip. He is leading Project Umubano 2010.

In 2007, 43 Conservative Party members, activists, MPs and staff travelled together to Rwanda to participate in the Conservative Party’s international social action project. They spent two weeks working as volunteers alongside communities still recovering from the 1994 genocide.

Led by Andrew Mitchell, the then Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, Project Umubano was the first time any British political party had embarked on a major social action project in the developing world. Volunteers with specific skills were given demand driven work in the education, health, justice, community and private sectors alongside partners such as SURF, the Survivors Fund which supports survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

The people of Rwanda - from Ministers through to the widows and orphans of the genocide befriended by our volunteers - embraced Project Umubano.

Umubano means ‘friendship’ or ‘co-operation’ in Kinyarwandan, the mother tongue of Rwanda, and the legacy of that co-operation between our Party and the Rwandan people is already profound and lasting.

Stephen Crabb MP: Should the Tories abandon the UK's overseas aid target?

In the wake of the financial crisis Stephen Crabb MP asks if we should now abandon the UK’s ambitious overseas aid target.  Stephen is a member of the House of Commons International Development Select Committee and chairs the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

The public finances were already constrained even before the onslaught of the banking crisis and the vast new liabilities being heaped onto the taxpayer. Long before the economic chill set in, the spending taps were being turned down all across Whitehall.

Everywhere, that is, except at the Department for International Development.

The commitment made by the Government in 2005, and supported by all parties, to increase overseas aid spending to 0.7% of Gross National Income by 2013 means that DFID will continue receiving bumper increases in its funding for the next three years. In fact DFID is receiving the sharpest and fastest increase in budget of any governmental overseas development agency.

The full consequences of the bank bail-out will take time to be properly understood but long-term tax increases and spending cuts may be inevitable to restore fiscal stability and avert future inflation. Many policy assumptions are understandably being questioned in the current climate and it is right that every single area of public spending should be scrutinised for the savings that will be necessary in future.

Stephen Crabb MP: My colleagues on the international development committee are wrong to back talks with Hamas

Stephen Crabb has bravely dissented from a report from the Commons' International Development that calls for direct talks with the terrorists of Hamas.  ConservativeHome congratulates him on his dissent and publishes this explanation from the MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire:

Hamas is a violent and ruthless offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.  Rejection and destruction of Israel is a core element of its rock hard ideology. In its twenty years of existence it has established a menacing track record in carrying out terrorist atrocities.  It also provides cover for groups like Islamic Jihad to carry out their own attacks, especially at times when Hamas agrees to a ceasefire.

It was a Hamas crew that pulled off the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit in June 2006 (still being held) which precipitated another round of fighting between Israel and Palestinians that summer. Unsurprisingly, Hamas receives hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the Iranian government – some of which is used to fund a programme of ‘hate education’ among Palestinian children.

But, whether we like it or not, Hamas now runs Gaza.

It surprised many by winning the 2006 elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council over a corrupt Fatah and, following the collapse of the Government of National Unity, seized control of Gaza in a bloody shoot-out with Fatah security forces. They won at the ballot-box and then showed they had the muscle in Gaza City. More than a third of all the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories now live under the rule of Hamas.

The response of the international community has been to isolate Hamas diplomatically and economically while trying to find ways to ensure that the Palestinian people are not made to suffer.  Israel, which faces daily Qassam rocket attacks from inside Gaza, has gone further by trying to physically isolate Hamas through a painful blockade which has reduced to a trickle the flow of goods going into Gaza.   

In a rare show of international unity, the Quartet of the US, EU, Russia and the UN laid down three principles which Hamas should accept before it is brought into the negotiating tent: rejection of violence, recognition of Israel, and respect for previous Israel-Palestinian peace agreements. This consensus is creaking.

When I asked Tony Blair, the Quartet’s Special Representative in the Occupied Territories, if he believes a peace deal can be struck which does not include Hamas he more or less held to the Quartet line in his reply. But he is thought to question the wisdom of the strategy and is coming under huge pressure to come out in favour of formal talks with Hamas even though Hamas rejects the Quartet principles.

The House of Commons International Development Committee has today followed the Foreign Affairs Committee in advocating positive engagement with Hamas. Aside from the fact that it is not the role of the IDC to venture into foreign policy issues, its conclusion about Hamas is as wrong-headed and dangerous as that of the Foreign Affairs Committee. But, unlike the Foreign Affairs report, the IDC recommendation was not unanimous.

Stephen Crabb MP: A Conservative agenda for UN reform

Stephen Crabb MP, Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and member of the International Development Select Committee, outlines the principles behind the CPHRC's report on UN reform.

On Wednesday at Chatham House in front of an audience of diplomats, academics and human rights activists, the CPHRC launched Globalising Human Rights: A Conservative Agenda for UN reform. Click here to download a copy. 

In this latest submission to the Shadow Foreign Affairs team, we argue that one powerful way for the next Conservative Government to put human rights at the heart of foreign policy is for it to lead an international effort to secure real and lasting reform at the United Nations.

For too long the UN has symbolised weakness and division in the face of the world’s most oppressive regimes.  Britain, along with the world’s other leading democracies, has too often failed to make the case for reform of the mechanisms that exist at the UN for investigating and punishing human rights abuses.

Stephen Crabb MP: The devolution experiment is leading to socialism and separatism

Stephen Crabb, MP for the Welsh constituency of Preseli Pembrokeshire, worries about the Party's wholly positive line about devolution because of its tendency to encourage continuous calls for greater spending and its potential to cause huge and permanent damage to the United Kingdom.

One of the most enduring images for me of the rugby world cup final came during the national anthems. The camera moved along the line of English rugby players who were pumping out ‘God Save the Queen’ like their lives depended on it. The camera shot then switched to a miserable grey figure in a long coat making odd mouth movements.

The reason Gordon Brown looked so painfully out of place among the excited and optimistic England fans is that he cannot escape his ‘national’ problem. When it comes to projecting an expansive aura of leadership that appeals to all parts of the UK, he just cannot pull it off. 

No amount of repetition by him of the words “Britain” and “British” can hide the fact that Gordon Brown personifies the current slide towards national fragmentation.

As well as highlighting the complex psychology that drives our PM, Tom Bowyer’s now widely-read biography of Brown has been useful for the light it sheds on the extraordinary influence wielded by the Scottish Labour Party over British politics during the last ten years. Brown is both a product and champion of this dark corner of the national political landscape and has already played a key role in undermining the Union.

Stephen Crabb MP: In defence of the Rwanda trip

Stephen Crabb, MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire, says Cameron's visit to Rwanda is exactly the kind of the thing a potential Prime Minister should be doing.

Thirteen years ago the world abandoned Rwanda.

After 100 days of brutal and highly organised killings between April and July 1994, nearly one million rotting corpses were left strewn across this beautiful country; almost a third of all the children had been made orphans and millions of traumatised survivors sought safety in disease-ridden refugee camps.

Since then Britain has played a leading role in rebuilding Rwanda and has replaced France as its closest European friend. The UK's partnership with Rwanda is a major tick in the credit column of this current government and a key feature of our foreign policy towards the troubled but highly significant Great Lakes region of Africa.

The next Conservative Prime Minister will inherit this relationship together with a whole range of choices about how to use this relationship for the benefit of Rwandans and for the wider region. It is entirely appropriate for David Cameron to visit this country, to meet President Kagame (one of Africa's most competent leaders), to spend time with DfID, NGOs and faith organisations who deliver huge amounts of aid and to return to the UK with a deeper understanding of the problems facing Africa.

Stephen Crabb MP: Caste and Human Rights in India

Stephen Crabb MP is the new Chairman of the Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission.

On 29th September last year the wife, daughter and two sons of Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, from the village of Khairlanji in the Indian state of Maharashtra, were dragged from their home and lynched in broad daylight.

After being bludgeoned to death by a mob, their mutilated bodies were dumped in a nearby canal. The female family members are believed to have been gang-raped before being murdered.

At the heart of this horrific case was a property dispute fuelled by a toxic mix of caste-based jealousy and prejudice. The killing of these Dalits, and the apathetic response by local police, led to violent protests and the case continues to receive attention from international human rights groups and media.

In February, while on a human rights visit to India with CSW, I was taken to Khairlanji by a group of Buddhist activists who had helped to disseminate information about the massacre in the first days after the event. I later met Bhotmange, now living under police protection, who fears that justice will never be served on those who murdered his family.

Khairlanji represents just one example of the systemic caste-based human rights abuse which still exists in India today, despite a constitutional and legal framework in which "untouchability" is abolished.