Ms Lynn Boylan:

It is clearly not abiding by international law when it comes to the ICJ and ICC. That is first and foremost. We have seen that six of the 11 missions in the past, before 2017, were led by the former colonial powers.

A huge amount of work goes into a UN mandate, as I said in my opening statement. It assesses the situation on the ground and has set, clear objectives. That does not happen at an EU level. There is no oversight by the European Parliament, the Court of Justice of the European Union or the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Auditors has also stated it has no way of assessing the expenditure of these missions. We do not have any transparency around the number of casualties. There is no analysis of the objectives of the mission in the first place.

Another example is that in 2020, the Malian national security forces received training and finance from the EU and then went on to be responsible for the killing of hundreds of civilians. An EU mission does not have the same level of preparation, transparency and objectives as would a UN mission. That is the clear distinction and we have not heard anything from the Government in its proposal to remove the triple lock about what would replace that scrutiny and level of analysis and research before we put troops on the ground.