Nurse, Social Scientist, Diplomat, Humanitarian—Baroness Caroline Cox Is On A Mission

She’s been shot at, illegally crossed borders into war zones to deliver direly needed humanitarian aid and is a fierce “voice of the voiceless” advocating for the neglected victims of genocides, wars, religious and ethnic cleansing. And at 84, Baroness Caroline Cox, who prefers to be called Caroline, is not about to retire soon.

“As a crossbencher, I’m an Independent which gives me the freedom to act. I work for human rights and victims of persecution–it’s more fundamental than party politics. I can criticize the British government about their inactions in Nigeria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria among others,” says the energetic Baroness Caroline Cox who since 1983 has been a Life peer and Deputy Speaker (1985-2005) in the House of Lords contributing to debates on conflicts zones.  

Confessing “I was the first Baroness I met. I’m a nurse and social scientist by intention, a baroness by astonishment,” Baroness Cox holds a nursing qualification from The Royal London Hospital, a University of London First Class Honors Sociology degree and an M.Sc. in Economics, specializing in criminology and the sociology of education. She studied as a part-time student at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now University of Westminster). While Head of the Sociology Department at the Polytechnic of North London her battles against hardline Marxist staff and students for academic freedom and truth led to the 1975 publication of “The Rape of Reason: The Corruption of the Polytechnic of North London” which she co-authored with colleagues Keith Jacka and John Marks. She later directed the Nursing Education Research Unit at Chelsea College, University of London, co-edited the International Journal of Nursing Studies, and has authored several books on education, health care, slavery, persecution, conflict zones and wars.

In 2004 Baroness Cox founded Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), leading countless missions to the world’s most dangerous conflict zones to witness first-hand, document human rights violations and humanitarian needs. Supported by donors, individuals, churches and grants, her published eyewitness reports verify humanitarian needs. Risking her life many times to bring aid to areas blockaded by authoritarian governments, she has led 50 visits to Sudan during the war raged by the Islamist regime in Khartoum (1989-2005) and continues to support the people of Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile States; 89 visits to war zones of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, 50 trips to Shan and Chin villages Burma’s jungles, and “countless trips” to assess Nigeria’s Boko Haram and Islamist Fulani violence–and many visits elsewhere, including Uganda, Syria and Indonesia. 

During her three visits to North Korea with Lord Alton of Liverpool, she raised concerns over human rights violations, persecution of Christians and the humanitarian needs while in meetings with senior politicians including President of the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly. She has played a critical role in changing Soviet policies on orphaned and abandoned children from institutional to foster family care.

“HART works with local partners–the real heroes and heroines. We ask them what their priorities are because they know their own situation best,” Baroness Cox 1990s visits to the war-ravaged Nagorno Karabakh included meetings with political leaders and healthcare providers who prioritized needs for the disabled. The “inspirational Director, Vardan Tadevosyan” turned a bombed building in the enclave’s capital city of Stepanakert, into the Lady Cox Rehabilitation Centre.  The Center, under his leadership was recognized by one senior professional representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross as “40 years ahead of any rehab centers” in the countries where she had worked, and has been visited by specialists from many countries, including Japan. Damaged again during last year’s 44-day Turkish-backed Azerbaijani onslaught of the region, the Center continues operations with more disabled civilians and injured soldiers.

Upholding Truth For the Voiceless

Starting her humanitarian missions in 1983, after becoming a Baroness and invited to be a patron for the Medical Aid for Poland Fund, Baroness Cox decided instead of putting her name on the paper, to travel there to “say I’ve been, and I’ve seen.” Traveling and living in a 32-ton truck distributing medical supplies to people in acute deprivation during the martial law of the 1980s, her “huge admiration for Poland” led to many return trips and participating in a virtual conference in Warsaw last month.

After the fall of the iron curtain in 1989, Baroness Cox was invited to research and report on the abhorrent conditions of the orphanages across the former Soviet Union. Her visits and in-depth report ‘Trajectories of Despair: Misdiagnosis and Maltreatment of Soviet Orphans’ led to an invitation to meet the Minister of Education in the Kremlin who praising her report, gave her the “formidable request to help change the policy of care for orphans in the Soviet Union.” Moscow City Government offered a building to establish the first Center.

In April 1990, political activist Elena Bonner, widow of Soviet-Russian nuclear physicist and 1975 Nobel Prize for Peace recipient, Andrei Sakharov, initiated the first truly independent, high level Conference on Human Rights in the Soviet Union. She invited Baroness Cox to participate.

“During the conference, a passionate man named Zori Balayan, a physician and an author explained how neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan had started its brutal operations in the Azeri controlled, predominantly Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno Karabakh,” says Baroness Cox. She led a delegation to Armenia in 1989 and later to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Requesting to visit the enclave’s capital city of Stepanakert, Azeri officials had said to her “only if Armenia would send a plane to Baku,” and then cut off phone lines. She managed to call Elena Bonner from a “public telephone box” who contacted Zori Balayan–and the Armenian government sent a plane from Yerevan to Baku, and then she took a “terrifying helicopter ride into Stepanakert.”

That was the first of the 89 humanitarian trips Baroness Cox has taken to Nagorno Karabakh–most recently in the aftermath of the 44-day war during which over 3,000 died, hundreds of thousands were displaced, and over 200 military and civilian detainees remain captive in Azerbaijan. During this year’s 106^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, when President Biden recognized the 1915 Ottoman Genocide against 1.5 million Armenians, Baroness Cox and Reverend David Thomas attended Armenia’s commemorations. Voicing her disappointment at UK’s refusal of a similar recognition, she explained how the “ongoing process of genocide” continues with Azerbaijan’s impunity of war crimes, crimes against humanity and destruction of Armenian cultural heritage sites.

The Pain And Passion Of Standing Up For Truth

Humanitarian visits are sources of “pain that gives you passion, and passion gives you the energy to continue,” says Baroness Cox who upholds HART’s four principles: Authenticity, Aid, Advocacy and Accountability.

“The House of Lords listens because I don’t just read Reuters reports. I’ve been there and seen what I report about. Authenticity is going in person where big aid organizations can’t go. I don’t believe in those borders. Our local partners in conflict zones need both aid and advocacy,” says Baroness Cox. “Our partners are at the frontline of danger holding faith and freedom–their resilience is amazing. We focus on accountability so we can be accountable for those we speak.”

Burma’s (Myanmar) current military rule after some 10 years of relative ‘democracy’ concerns Baroness Cox. HART’s primary partners in Burma are Buddhist organizations and individuals as Dr. Sasa–member of the Chin ethnic group, whose Community Health Workers center saves eight out of 10 lives who would have previously died in remote jungle villages lacking health care. When the Center was sufficiently funded and staffed, Dr. Sasa engaged in politics, and escaped the military junta. He has been elected by the new, democratically elected government (in detention or in hiding) to be their international representative.

In Nigeria’s conflict zones where Boka Haram and Islamist Fulani jihadists continue to massacre thousands of civilians, perpetrate atrocities, terrorize girls and women, and displace millions, Baroness Cox recalls meeting a young mother in Middle Belt of central Nigeria who fleeing with her six-year-old daughter, was attacked with a machete by jihadists who told her “your daughter would like to suck her mother’s finger” and amputated her finger. Passing out, she came around and found her daughter dead beside her, with her mother’s finger in her mouth. Outraged at her own government’s refusal “to stand on the side of the truth” concerning Nigeria, Syria, the Armenian Genocide, and other issues, she was told by one senior government official that “commercial interests” override human rights.

 “We all have interests in countries, commercial and others, but we can’t obliterate human rights. I don’t think the majority of Brits want their money spent to bomb children,” Baroness Cox’s three trips to Syria amidst the nine-year war, included visits to Maaloula, one of the Christian communities occupied by Jihadists. She stood in a room where three men had been killed for refusing to convert.

HART’s Syria program in partnership with the St Ephrem Patriarchal Development Committee (EPDC), empowers widows to return to Maaloula, following desecration of holy places, lootings of homes, kidnappings and murder by Islamist rebel groups. A Maaloula community leader, initially against the Assad regime, told Baroness Cox how he is now “ready to die for him (Assad)” for protecting his people against Jihadists. Along with three former British ambassadors, she signed a letter to “The Times newspaper, urging the UK Government to allow Syrians to determine their own future.” She made subsequent representations in Parliament to persuade the UK Government to lift economic sanctions against Syria, which are massively exacerbating the suffering of the people.

“We can’t condone the things Assad has done, yet he isn’t the worst monster around if we are to look at Sudan and Saudi Arabia. Assad, with Russian help, saved his people from the Jihadists. Something the BBC hardly ever reports,” says Baroness Cox who sees peace processes becoming undone with unwillingness to get engaged on the part of warring factions. Becoming increasingly hard to “mend the fractures because of the ideological difference, and the involvement of wealthy supporters such as the Saudi’s” she says well-resourced groups like Boko Haram and ISIS for West Africa Province (ISWAP) are breaking apart Nigeria while UK blames Nigeria’s problems on “land shortage, climate change, and unemployment.”

Baroness Cox says there’s “lots of talking–willingness to do things to stop atrocities. Recognition, as the UK Parliament’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide, brings obligations to protect. But when you don’t recognize it, you don’t have any responsibility. I raised the question of Azerbaijan’s genocidal campaign against a sovereign state of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) in the House of Lords to push the government to take action.”

Understanding “agendas behind agendas–it’s sad to see the suffering,” says Baroness Cox whose momentous memories are those spent with the neglected people. When she illegally crossed into Burma, struggling to climb steep mountain ranges to reach a Karen-populated village, the inhabitants weeping with gratitude, said to her “It wouldn’t matter if you brought nothing. We are just so grateful you are here with us–and that makes all the difference.”

With ten grandchildren and three children, and no retirement plans, Baroness Cox has a full agenda of upcoming humanitarian missions–Nigeria, Burma, Sudan, Armenia and “if situation allows” Syria.

“It’s a privilege God has given me the freedom to travel. I must fulfill my obligations to be a voice for those not heard. We must do what we can,” Baroness Cox smiles, humbly crediting HART’s local partners who risk their lives to provide transformational change for their communities suffering war, persecution and some, she argues, genocide.  “World leaders must respect the rights of nations, resist aggressive military offensives that can be genocidal–as in the case in Artsakh. They have an international duty to provide and to protect–otherwise any genocide denied will be an encouragement to commit more genocides. We all have an obligation. People are getting away with illegal, often genocidal actions with impunity.”

Baroness Cox closes our interview by quoting HART’s motto: “I cannot do everything, but I must not do nothing.”