Jo Cox report urges UK to help world's troubled regions

A report started by murdered MP Jo Cox will be published today, calling for the UK not to turn its back on the world's troubled regions.

The Batley and Spen MP had begun working on the paper in the weeks before she was killed by far-right terrorist Thomas Mair in June 2016.

It was discovered by her husband, Brendan, and finished off by Cox's colleague, MP Alison McGovern, and Conservative MP Tom Tugendh.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Her widower said: "I was clearing some of Jo's things and found the first draft of the report that she had scribbled all over.

"At the top she had written, 'Britain must lead again'. Although she isn't here to advance that argument, she'd be delighted that her colleagues and friends are able to do so in her stead."

The report discusses the damaging effects of UK isolationism and makes the case that doing nothing can have more damaging effects than intervening, citing the "devastating consequences" of inaction in situations including the genocide in Rwanda and the ongoing Syrian civil war.

It points to a number of conflicts where intervention has worked, including Nato's efforts to protect Kosovans from ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic and the introduction of a no-fly zone over northern Iraq in 1991 to protect the Kurds from air attacks by Saddam Hussein, The Guardian reports.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown, who will launch the paper alongside former foreign secretary William Hague today, said: "In her last speech in the House of Commons, Jo Cox said that, 'Sometimes all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.'

"Nothing is more important than the responsibility of each state to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and the responsibility of the international community to act if a state is unwilling or unable to do so."