(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)
I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for permitting me to raise the desperate and continuing plight of more than 200 Nigerian girls who were abducted from school on 14 April and have been held in captivity for the past 80 days, with no sign of their imminent release. These wholly innocent young girls—Lugwa Abuga, Rhoda John, Comfort Amos, Maryamu Yakubu and 200 others—are now incarcerated in the forest areas of Borno state. Some have perhaps been dispersed across three other countries: Niger, Cameroon and Chad. Their physical and mental health is a worry for everyone.
We now know that the girls were kidnapped by the terrorist group, Boko Haram, whose name in Hausa means “western education is a sin”. They are being held hostage simply because they wanted an education. Their only crime in the eyes of Boko Haram is that they wanted to be at school. Eleven weeks in captivity will seem like an eternity for young, once-optimistic 14, 15 and 16-year-old girls, whose future was all ahead of them until that day.
I am sure that everybody in the Chamber would accept that such an outrage is every parent’s nightmare: your child leaves home and goes to school, but never comes home again; you wake up every morning not knowing whether your child is dead or alive, and spend every waking hour of the day not knowing whether your child is being molested, raped, trafficked or sold into slavery; and you have the terrible truth brought home to you that schools are no longer safe havens for your children, but theatres of war.
Boko Haram’s perversion of its faith is so profound that it is apparently unperturbed by practising violence against young girls, even rape that causes unwanted pregnancies—damage to young girls that will endure and be lifelong, and that cannot be wished away even if they are returned safely to their homes.
As we heard only a few minutes ago, in a Committee Room of the House of Commons, from Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy—my grateful thanks to you, Mr Speaker, for chairing the event—across the country, tragedy is being piled on tragedy. There has been a series of attacks: a wave of bombings in Borno state yesterday; an explosion in a shopping mall in Abuja last week, which killed 24 people; a medical college raid last week in Kano, killing eight; a hotel bombing in Bauchi city, killing 10; and attacks on four churches, killing 24. Residents of remote villages in northern Nigeria are fearful of night raids and running short of food and supplies. They are fleeing to the mountain caves, or to bigger towns. With more than 1,000 reported abductions in the past year alone, and more than 5,000 deaths at the hands of Boko Haram in the past five years, the governor of Borno state, who has courageously spoken out, is warning that failure to help his embattled schools and families will spell disaster for the rule of law in the whole of Nigeria.
The 200 girls, whose faces and names are now known to the world, thanks to the efforts of the brave chairman of the Chibok community council, are not the only victims. There is another, less obvious, set of victims: the thousands of girls, and many boys, who can no longer go to school. Schools are closed in many parts of Borno state, and teachers are in fear of their lives. Education International, the global teachers’ union, which is well organised and engaged with this problem, has reported in the past few years on the murder of 171 teachers who were shot, usually in their own home and in front of their families, who were then kidnapped by gunmen. Their crime was to dare to teach girls at all. We therefore have another emergency in Nigeria: education in Borno state is coming to a standstill for fear of terrorists, and that demands an international and domestic response.
In the days immediately after the abduction, I and many others tried to secure international attention and the widest possible global support for the Nigerian girls. A month ago, an enormous wave of concern was expressed in every capital of the world. There was, as we know, a period of intense publicity, and a worldwide campaign to bring back our girls secured 1 million supporters, but once again the attention span of the world has proved limited, and interest has ebbed. Even when it was reported last week that another 90 children—60 girls and 30 boys—had been kidnapped, there was only a flicker of attention across the world.
Following the speech by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala this evening, I wanted a debate before the summer recess—thanks to you it has happened, Mr Speaker—because it is time to wake up fully not just to the horror of what is happening, but to the ramifications for children, Nigeria and that part of Africa if nothing is done. A few terrorists can never be allowed at any time to blackmail a whole nation. We must do more to help the Nigerian Government back up the endeavours of President Goodluck Jonathan to secure the rescue of the girls and make inroads into the advances made by the terrorists.
I am here to thank the Government for what they have done so far, and for their moral, physical and military support to the Nigerian people. I know that the President of Nigeria wishes to give thanks for the offers of support from China, the United States, France and Israel, as well as Britain. I have met the President on three occasions recently, and he has sent an additional 5,000 troops to the Borno state and is ready to do more. As a result of his pleas to the international community, Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Britain and the US have already established an external intelligence response unit to share security information. While it is right to recognise that there has been a great deal of international support, it is also right to acknowledge that in its hour of need, Nigeria requires more helicopter support, more aircraft cover, and more surveillance equipment. I believe that we should also support President Jonathan’s call for a better co-ordinated system for sharing intelligence across borders, and for, if necessary, the use of special forces and law enforcement agencies to help Nigeria confront terrorism.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I sought the right hon. Gentleman’s permission to intervene, and I thank him for bringing this matter to the House. The House is filled with Members who are equally concerned about this issue, and on behalf of the Church groups and my constituents, I want to share the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns publicly in the Chamber today. There has been an unwillingness, or perhaps the Nigerian Government have been unable, to respond in the way that we back home think they should. Is that because they are unable to seek the covert assistance that they need in order to ascertain where the schoolchildren are and bring them back? Does he feel that perhaps the covert assistant that this Government could offer is one way forward?
Mr Brown
I am grateful for the support of the Churches in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and elsewhere. Support from around the world is giving succour and confidence to the Nigerian people. I met schoolchildren who have been writing letters to the Nigerian President in support of Nigeria’s efforts to try to capture the terrorists and release the girls. He is absolutely right that there is a real problem. If the girls have been dispersed to a number of different places, a rescue mission for one group would immediately put the other groups at risk. That is the dilemma that confronts the Nigerian Government, as I understand it. That is why they need additional support to monitor what is happening and, if it is necessary to intervene, the troops, security services and the air cover to do so.
There is a second thing that we can do to help. We cannot have safe schools if we do not have safe communities. In addition to the rising military and security presence in these towns, we need to allocate extra resources to reassure parents, teachers and children that they can go to school. The safe schools initiative, launched this afternoon in Britain by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is a plan to rebuild the burnt-out schools that have been the casualties of terrorist incursions, starting with the Chibok school. Our promise must be that it will be rebuilt immediately and made safe, so that when the girls are returned to their homes, their school at Chibok is safe for them to learn in without fear. The worry for many in northern Nigeria is that their school will be the next to face a terrorist raid.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for securing such an excellent debate. Does he agree that in the north some of the problems arise from illiteracy, from the fact that people cannot find jobs, and from extreme poverty? Sadly, this is encouraging some people to move towards religious fundamentalism.
Mr Brown
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. He has a very honourable record in fighting for the causes of poor people in Africa, Asia and every part of the world, and I want to acknowledge the work that he has done over many years. He is absolutely right. Ngozi, the Finance Minister, referred to that point only a few minutes ago. The Government of Nigeria have to do more—she says they will do more—to help young unemployed people to get work, and to enable young ambitious girls and boys to complete their education by having safe schools, and universities and colleges, to go to.
The whole world should help Nigeria in this emergency. It has to make its schools safer, so that there is confidence among pupils and families that children can go to school. That may mean better perimeter fencing, walls, lighting, and communication and security systems to keep people in touch. We have to reassure people that everything possible is being done, otherwise we will give a propaganda advantage to the terrorists.
The Safe Schools fund has already attracted $10 million from the Nigerian Government, $10 million from the business community, £1 million from the UK and $1.5 million from Norway. Money is coming from other countries in the EU, and there are promises from the United States of America. I hope that one outcome of the debate will be to convince the Government that it is worth providing more than £1 million. Without this initiative, many of the other measures in which we are engaged to help education in Nigeria cannot be successful.
The United Nations has just passed a Security Council resolution that says that schools should have the same legal protection in conflict areas as hospitals. The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack is calling on each nation to introduce and integrate guidelines into their military manuals’ rules of engagement and operational orders, so that schools have the chance of being safe havens, rather than being militarised. I hope the Government can encourage every Administration in Africa to do that.
As we heard this evening from Ngozi, and in speeches by the Secretary of State for International Development, the deputy leader of the Labour party and the Chair of the Select Committee on International Development, the kidnaps are part of a wider problem. In the last few weeks alone, we have seen reports of young girls raped and then murdered in India, and we have seen public outrage at the death sentence passed on a young Sudanese mother simply because a woman is considered to have no right to choose her own religion. Attention is now moving to Iraq, where extreme Islamists are fighting for demands that include changing the Iraqi constitution to legalise marriage for girls at the age of eight. This week and every week, around 200,000 school-age girls—some only 10, 11 or 12—are married off against their will because they have no rights that properly protect them. For many, child marriage will be preceded by genital mutilation—still to be successfully outlawed in many African countries.
A total of 7 million school-age children as young as eight or nine will be in full-time work, some of it slave labour in fields and in domestic service, and many will be trafficked into prostitution as part of a subterranean world of international trade in girl slave labour when they should be at school. As a result, 32 million school-age girls are not going to school today, or any other day. The basic right to be in education is denied to 500 million girls who will never complete their education.
Thus the abductions, the killings, the rapes, the mutilations, the trafficking, the exclusion from opportunity and the kidnaps are not isolated incidents, but part of a pattern whereby girls’ rights are not taken seriously enough in many countries, or indeed by the international community as a whole. The violation of girls’ rights is commonplace. In the end, in some countries, rights are only what the rulers decree, so that the opportunities for girls are no more than what a few patriarchs are prepared to bestow. Seventy years after the universal declaration of human rights, we are, in my view, in the midst of what I see as a great global civil rights struggle—a liberation struggle that has yet to establish, in every country of the world, every girl’s right to life, education and dignity. It is falling to girls themselves to lead the fight for rights, largely because of the failure of us as adults, who should be discharging our responsibility for and to them.
A few days ago, there was a youth takeover of the African Union in Addis Ababa; then 20 parliamentary takeovers by young people who occupied, with the permission of the parliamentarians, national assemblies in support of the Chibok girls. This was backed up by demonstrations in cities across the world, including in Rio, Lagos, Hanoi, Cairo and Islamabad. These young people still need the world to see their problem and their fight for what it is.
The bigger truth is that for years we have somehow assumed a clear, if often rocky, pathway towards human rights and universal education, but today in Pakistan the Council of Islamic Ideology is calling for all age limits on girl brides to be abolished; India has just passed up on yet another chance to outlaw child labour; countries all across Africa are failing to act on genital mutilation; and progress to get 58 million out-of-school children into school has stalled in recent years. We should not and must not stand by as many countries in the world lurch backwards when it comes to the imposition, preservation and upholding of girls’ rights.
In northern Nigeria today, we have on the one side terrorists, murderers, rapists and cowards hellbent on acts of depravity, and on the other side we have the defiant, relentless, brave beyond comprehension young people who are desperately fighting for a future but are too often oblivious to our attention. We must be clear that in the battle between the girls of the world and the backward-looking extremists, there will, in the end, be only one winner, but we should not have to wait another half-century with millions of lives ruined, millions of dreams destroyed, millions of hopes and aspirations crushed, for the world to deliver—as we must for the Nigerian girls, and for girls everywhere—the opportunities that should be and are every girl’s birthright.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)
I am most grateful to the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) for securing this evening’s important debate, which unites the House. I would like to take the opportunity to praise the right hon. Gentleman’s ongoing work as UN Special Envoy for Global Education to promote the vital importance of education. I pay tribute to the determination he has shown in helping Nigeria face the scourge of gender-based violence and terrorism. I am aware of the meeting that he had earlier—chaired by you, I believe, Mr Speaker—with the Nigerian Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, among others.
I know that Members on both sides of the House will join me in utterly condemning the actions of Boko Haram. Its members prey on, and deliberately target, the weak, the innocent and the vulnerable. They have no regard for religion, ethnicity, gender or human life, and, as we have just heard, they are bringing untold misery to Nigerians and people throughout the region. The appalling Chibok abductions may have focused the attention of the world on Boko Haram’s activities, but that is, alas, just one example of the death and devastation that it is inflicting on northern Nigeria. It is 79 days since the abductions—79 days, and 219 schoolgirls are still missing; 79 days during which at least another 200 people, women, girls, boys and young men, have been abducted.
I commend the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath for his important work in spearheading the safe schools initiative, which was designed to protect children at school. In recognition of the vital work that it will undertake, and of the potential that education has to transform Nigeria and the lives of individual children, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minster announced on 17 May that the United Kingdom would contribute £1 million of support directly to the initiative. That will be in addition to existing commitments to support education throughout Nigeria.
As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said at the 12 June London Ministerial on security in Nigeria,
“We want to make sure that Boko Haram does not succeed in its twisted mission to deny education to girls.”
So—in addition to our support for the safe schools initiative, and in the first partnership of its kind in Nigeria—the Department for International Development and USAID will work to share resources and experiences to provide safe places in which children can learn. As a result, an additional 1 million children will receive a better education in northern Nigeria by 2020, and more than half of those children will be girls. During the current financial year, DFID will spend approximately £20 million on education projects in Nigeria. That is a signal of our determination to demonstrate that education is a right, not a privilege, and that it should be free from the fear of terrorism and abduction. Overall, we have seen a dramatic increase in DFID’s investment in education as a result of the steps that we have taken to meet our commitment of 0.7% of gross national income to international development.
The search for the schoolgirls—led by the Nigerian Government, but supported by the international community—continues. British experts are working in Nigeria alongside others from the United States, France, Canada and elsewhere to analyse and process the available intelligence and supply advice to the Nigerian authorities. We have provided, and will continue to provide, surveillance support. The resolve of the United Kingdom and the international community to continue the search and reunite the girls with their families remains unwavering. However, to ensure that the tragedy of Chibok cannot be repeated, we must end the scourge of Boko Haram.
Last week Abuja was shaken by another bomb attack, the third in as many months. More than 200 died in an attack in Jos on 20 May. A suicide bomber attacked a university in Kano on 23 June. Even those watching the World cup in public have been callously targeted and killed. Meanwhile, the murderous reported Boko Haram attacks in the north-east of Nigeria continue. The latest occurred yesterday: a car bomb attack in Maiduguri. More than 2,000 people are believed to have died at the hands of Boko Haram or others connected to them since the beginning of this year, including 59 boys who were murdered at the federal government college in February, when militants blocked the exits of a boys’ dormitory, set it on fire, and killed the boys who tried to escape the flames. Those left inside were burned alive.
The international community has mobilised to help Nigeria face this threat. Last week the UN listed Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and the terrorist organisation Ansaru on the al-Qaeda sanctions list. This followed the listing of Boko Haram on 22 May. It is now an offence for any individual or entity to provide financial or material support to Ansaru, Shekau or Boko Haram, including the provision of arms or recruits.
These latest listings were among a series of commitments made at the London Ministerial to strengthen regional and international co-ordination, and reaffirm our commitment to the fight against Boko Haram. Nigeria and her neighbours Chad, Cameroon, Benin and Niger participated, with the US, France, Canada, the EU, and our international partners the UN and the African Union. Given the Chibok abductions, it was fitting that this ministerial was held in the margins of the summit to end sexual violence in conflict.
Nigeria and her neighbours agreed to establish a regional intelligence fusion unit to share and process intelligence. Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger will each contribute a battalion to the multinational joint taskforce and increase the frequency of simultaneous or co-ordinated border patrols. The UK, the US and France will between them provide support to the regional intelligence-sharing arrangement and training for the taskforce battalions, and we, the participants at the ministerial, were united in our agreement that any effective response must be fully in accordance with human rights.
British commitments, in addition to the pledge to bring a million more boys and girls into basic education in northern Nigeria by 2020 that I mentioned a few moments ago, include: significantly expanding our training and assistance to the Nigerian armed forces, particularly helping to train those units deployed on counter-insurgency operations, to strengthen their capacity to tackle Boko Haram; and support for the Nigerian presidential initiative for the north-east—PINE—supporting development and prosperity, including the provision of basic services and infrastructure to those communities most at risk.
I am sure the right hon. Gentleman, and indeed the whole House, will agree with me that the UK should be proud of its contribution to the fight against Boko Haram and in standing alongside Nigeria in the face of extremism and mindless violence. Our commitment, and that of the international community, to defeating Boko Haram, to ending the scourge of terrorism in Nigeria, to securing the safe return of the missing schoolgirls, to preventing sexual violence in conflict, and to the empowerment and education of women and girls was underlined last month at the ministerial meeting here in London.
In the wake of the heinous abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls, I am pleased that the countries of the region have all endorsed the ending sexual violence in conflict declaration. It underlines the importance of eliminating this horrific practice around the world, and the right hon. Gentleman will no doubt be supportive of the Prime Minister’s initiative to host a girls summit later this month. This will seek global commitment on issues the right hon. Gentleman raised in his speech this evening, such as early forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for keeping this issue very much in the thoughts of everyone in this House. I have discovered in my role as a Foreign Office Minister that events overtake events and it is too easy to forget those that matter. This is one that most surely does.
Question put and agreed to.