Impact of Conflict on Women and Girls

Thursday 9th January 2025 Westminster Hall

13:30

[Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of conflict on women and girls.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. There are many things that we disagree on in the House, but I hope we will find some clear areas of agreement in this debate. I hope we agree that the impact of conflict on women and girls is undeniable and unacceptable; that women are not only victims but survivors, combatants, leaders and human rights defenders, and their role in preventing and resolving conflict and in peacebuilding is key; and that the UK has a crucial role to play in this area.

I am sure that Members will want to focus on specific geographical areas. I will focus on the overall situation, as well as on two specific conflicts in Sudan and Afghanistan. First, let me set out the situation globally. It only takes turning on the news or scrolling on social media to see that conflict is raging all around us, from Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine. There are many other conflicts that we barely speak about any more, such as that in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by conflict. According to the UN, in 2023 an estimated 612 million women and girls lived within 50 km of a conflict—an increase of 41% since 2015. That number is more than the population of the United States of America and Brazil combined.

The impact of conflict takes multiple forms, from sexual violence to girls losing years of education. Women are dying because of the impact of war. The proportion of women killed in armed conflicts doubled in 2023, compared to the previous year. Sexual violence in conflict has also risen dramatically, with UN-verified cases soaring by 50%—and those are only the ones we know about. Half of those displaced because of persecution, conflict and violence are women and girls who are forced to live far from home or in refugee camps, where often they are still not safe.

Those are some of the most direct impacts, but there are so many more impacts on women’s health, education and freedoms. Women and girls are more likely to go hungry in conflict, and attacks on health facilities impact women and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health care. As Plan International has highlighted, the impact on girls is devastating. Girls schools have been deliberately targeted to stop them going to school, and of the 119 million girls who are out of school, more than a quarter are in conflict or crisis-affected countries.

[Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and on her excellent speech.

One of the consequences of war and conflict is disruption to education. The educational void is catastrophic, not just for girls themselves but for their families, communities and nations, too. A lack of education for girls also undermines peacebuilding. Studies show that educated women are key to rebuilding post-conflict societies, participating in governance, and preventing the resurgence of violence. Does my hon. Friend agree that the UK must champion the protection of education in conflict zones and hold Governments and militias to account when they attack schools or use them for military purposes?

[Alice Macdonald]

I do agree. Like the previous Government, this Government have done a lot on girls’ education, as did former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who continues to do so. There is not only an impact on girls’ present; it is an attack on their future and on the future of us all.

We have seen the rolling back of women’s rights, and nowhere is this more evident than in Afghanistan, described as the worst women’s rights crisis in the world. The Taliban are steadily erasing women and girls from public life and suppressing every single one of their rights. A female in Afghanistan cannot go to school, cannot go to the park and cannot travel or leave the house without a male chaperone. She cannot work for a non-governmental organisation, which will have a devastating impact on the delivery of aid; she cannot study midwifery or medicine; and over Christmas it was reported that the Taliban have banned windows to stop women even being seen. This is gender apartheid.

I went to Afghanistan in 2011 and met many women who were determined to shape the future of their country. The politicians I met are no longer able to serve. The women who were working in domestic abuse refuges are not working any more—indeed, those shelters are shut. Those women are still fighting for the future of their country; it is their voices and demands that we must listen to, and we must act. That must include heeding their calls to recognise what is happening as gender apartheid, and as a crime under international law. That would mark a historic step towards ending this abhorrent discrimination and send an important message to Afghan women and girls that we stand with them.

The international community and the UK must also make it clear that we will not normalise relationships with the Taliban unless they end their war on women. I know the Minister cares passionately about this issue. Will she tell us what specifically the Government are doing, and whether they will support the calls to recognise what is happening as gender apartheid and pursue it through the UN so that it is treated as a war crime?

We can all do our part. Like others present, I joined many Members of Parliament in signing a letter, organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), to the England and Wales Cricket Board, asking it to speak out and boycott the match against Afghanistan—because all action matters.

I turn now to Sudan, where an estimated 6.9 million people are currently at risk of gender-based violence; where 75% of girls are not in school; where there is evidence of mass and systemic rape; and where women are reportedly committing suicide out of fear of that rape. Evidence shows that women and girls from ethnic minority groups are being deliberately targeted. The accounts are horrific. I read one from a 35-year-old Nuba woman who described how six Rapid Support Forces fighters stormed into her family compound. She said:

“My husband and my son tried to defend me, so one of the RSF fighters shot and killed them. Then they kept raping me, all six of them”.

Sudan has been described as the world’s forgotten conflict. As the UK is the penholder on Sudan in the United Nations, will the Minister set out what we can do now to support women in Sudan and change the situation so that it is no longer the world’s forgotten conflict? Does she agree that the United Nations and the African Union should urgently deploy a mission to protect civilians in Sudan that is mandated and resourced to address sexual violence? Does she think UN member states should bolster support for the UN fact-finding mission, as the Secretary-General has urged, to help to pave the way forward towards meaningful accountability?

Let me turn to Gaza; I know that more Members will speak about the situation in the middle east. As I said in the Chamber recently, there are 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza right now who cannot access the care that they need. Imagine giving birth in the hell that is Gaza right now. If the ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East goes ahead at the end of this month, that will have a devastating impact on everybody, including women and girls, so I hope the Minister will update us on what we are doing to push harder on that front.

Many people may ask why we in the UK should care about this. Why should we care about what is happening to women in other parts of the world? Well, it is the right thing to do, as was set out by the previous Government in their national action plan on women, peace and security. It is also the smart thing to do, because empowered and engaged women mean more secure and prosperous societies. When women’s rights are rolled back anywhere, they are rolled back everywhere.

[Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this vital debate. As she knows, the ongoing climate crisis is making more regions of the world uninhabitable, fuelling conflicts that disproportionately affect women and girls. In humanitarian conflicts, up to 70% of women and girls experience gender-based violence, and we must empower them by elevating their voices and leadership in times of crisis. Does my hon. Friend agree that robust systems must be in place to provide the vital support necessary for women and girls in these times of crisis?

[Alice Macdonald]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution and for raising that important point about climate change, which has a very detrimental impact on women and girls everywhere, and particularly in conflict situations. Indeed, it is a driver of conflict, as we see when it comes to, for example, resource scarcity. I welcome that point and agree that it must be a key part of these conversations.

Let me turn to the action needed. I will focus on three specific areas: international leadership, aid and peacebuilding. This year marks the 25th anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. It was hailed at the time as a landmark agreement and included really important measures on protecting women and girls in conflict and supporting their leadership and their role in peace processes.

This year is a golden opportunity to renew the UK’s leadership and, indeed, the international community’s leadership on this important agenda. It is also an opportunity to review the plan that the previous Government set out, because we know that, on many of its elements, we need to do much more. For example, we know that men who commit sexual violence and other atrocities against women and girls still have impunity, so will the Minister update us on what is happening to tackle sexual violence in conflict and hold perpetrators to account? The previous action plan did not include Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territories as focus countries; obviously the situation has changed fundamentally since then, so does the Minister think they should be included in the plan?

Secondly, we know that aid does not always reach women. Only 25% of women affected by conflict receive essential relief and recovery aid. The aid cuts under the previous Government had a devastating impact on women and girls. Will the Minister confirm that we will reverse the trends, including with a specific target for the percentage of official development assistance focused on gender equality, as organisations such as CARE have called for, and that we will invest in women-led and women-focused organisations? Will she also tell us that when we announce packages of humanitarian aid—I welcome the £50 million announced for Syria—we will also ensure that it reaches women and girls?

Finally, women’s participation is not “a nice to have” in any area that we are talking about, and certainly not when it comes to peace processes. Women’s participation is fundamental for effective peacebuilding, but women are still not adequately involved in such processes. Yet we know that when women participate in peace processes, it works. Their participation increases the probability of an agreement lasting more than 15 years by 35%. We have seen women play a really important role in many peace processes, from Libya to Libera to Colombia.

The UK must work actively to promote the fundamentals of the women, peace and security agenda: prevention, participation, protection, and relief and recovery. Women are not victims and women must not be voiceless. The progress that has been made on this agenda would not have happened without the courage and perseverance of women. We must be hopeful for change; in the words of Plan International’s report, still we dream. Indeed, a survey by Women for Women International showed that, across 14 countries, 81% of women are hopeful that there will be change, and that their circumstances will improve in the next five years. But that will not happen without the international community acting.

As this debate progresses, I am sure that we all have in our minds different women and girls who are impacted by conflict, such the Yazidi women; the girls abducted by Boko Haram; the Israeli women slaughtered and raped on 7 October; the women and girls living in hell in Gaza right now, where nowhere and nobody is safe; the women of Ukraine; the women of Iran; and the women of Syria who are hopeful for a better tomorrow. Let us resolve to do what we can as parliamentarians to tackle the scourge of violence against women and girls, wherever it is found and in whatever form it takes.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

I remind all Members that if they want to contribute to the debate, they should bob or stand briefly, even if they have already notified the Chair that they want to speak.

13:42

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing today’s important debate. Before I go further, I declare an interest, having previously been executive director of the International Rescue Committee in the UK, which is part of a global humanitarian agency that supports women in conflict and crisis around the world.

As we heard from my hon. Friend, women and girls are suffering disproportionately from rising conflict around the world. The number of women living in conflict zones has surged: in 2022 around 600 million women—that is more than one in seven of the world’s women—lived in, or in close proximity to, an armed conflict. That is double the figure it was in the 1990s. As we have also heard, conflict impacts women in many specific ways, including increased sexual violence, the loss of livelihoods and worsening healthcare, resulting in higher death rates even from preventable causes. I want to share some examples from two particularly brutal ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, and then move on to solutions.

In Gaza, women are being impacted in so many ways, but let me talk about reproductive health in particular, having heard some very powerful testimony at the International Development Committee. Pregnant women living through that conflict are three times more likely to miscarry, and if they do carry their babies to full term, they are three times more likely to die in childbirth due to lack of access to appropriate antenatal and post-natal medical care, and lack of access to basic medicine, safe shelter and adequate nutrition.

Nebal Farsakh from the Palestine Red Crescent told us at the Committee evidence session:

“Almost 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza are lacking everything. They are malnourished, not able to receive the food they need and not even receiving the proper healthcare service they deserve. They are living in shelters, thousands of people are sharing one toilet and you cannot even imagine…how a pregnant woman has to endure such inhuman conditions”.

As well as that,

“because of the collapsing healthcare system, as a pregnant woman, you barely have the luxury of delivering your baby in a hospital.”

If pregnant women are “lucky enough” to, they cannot stay and

“many women have had c-sections without anaesthesia because it had run out.”

That is one of many “continuous struggles”, with

“hospitals lacking anaesthesia, painkillers and other basic medications and medical supplies.”

Israeli authorities have denied entry to many of those critical supplies, including anaesthesia supplies, oxygen cylinders, ventilators and other medicines. According to UNRWA, of the total—extremely limited—humanitarian supplies that have entered Gaza since October 2023, just 2% were medical supplies. On 4 November last year, the United Nations Population Fund announced that attacks on hospitals have forced the only functioning neonatal intensive care unit in northern Gaza to close. The denial of access to newborn and maternal healthcare and the removal of the conditions necessary to give birth safely represent a grave threat to the survival of pregnant women, and Palestinians more widely, in Gaza.

Let me also touch on the impact of the conflict in Sudan—mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North—which is having similarly grave consequences for women and girls. For example, reports of gender-based violence in Sudan have drastically surged, encompassing alarming incidents such as kidnapping, forced marriage, intimate partner violence, conflict-related sexual violence and child marriage. The UN has witnessed a staggering 288% increase in the number of survivors seeking case-management services for gender-based violence, and at least 6.7 million people in Sudan are at risk of gender-based violence. There are also cases of sexual exploitation driven by food insecurity and water scarcity, and there is severely limited access to essential post-rape care and support services for survivors, who are in desperate need of medical, psychological and mental health support.

Despite the horrific impacts of conflict on women that we have heard about, often it is women in conflict zones who lead the response. Women are often the first responders. In Gaza, women make up 70% of frontline healthcare workers and 60% of caregivers. We know that that can lead to improved healthcare outcomes. For example, in Niger and Burkina Faso local organisations are nearly twice as likely as international organisations to report increased GBV caseloads, which suggests that women are more likely to report violence to those local women’s organisations. Women are also some of the chief advocates. For example, in Niger, when groups of women who were IDPs—internally displaced people—were excluded from receiving humanitarian aid, they lobbied district authorities to officially recognise their community, and in doing so secured services for people with disabilities and cash assistance for their community.

When I spent time with Syrian refugees in Jordan in my previous role at IRC, I met incredible Syrian refugee women who were there without partners, or had lost their partners in the war, and who had set up their own businesses on top of caring for their families; and not only doing that but pushing donors to change their approach to better support women refugees to be entrepreneurial and to earn a living alongside looking after their families. Women, showing such great leadership, are proving absolutely critical to building lasting peace in places where conflict is being brought to an end.

There is strong evidence to demonstrate that the involvement of women and girls in peacebuilding is key to achieving successful outcomes. Research shows that where women lead and participate in conflict prevention, response, recovery and peacebuilding, societies are more stable and peace is more durable. Women’s participation in peace negotiations results in peace agreements being 35% more likely to last at least 15 years, while the participation of civil society, including women’s organisations, in peace processes makes them 64% less likely to fail. Yet despite the huge volume of evidence showing that women are best placed to understand and meet the needs of their communities before, during and after conflicts, too often their voices are still ignored.

I will highlight two key solutions. I have been pleased to hear the Minister speak passionately about her commitment to gender equality and I know that she has hit the ground running to make that commitment and ambition a reality. I also welcome the Prime Minister’s appointment of Lord Collins as the special representative on preventing sexual violence in conflict. I pay tribute to the many brilliant NGOs that are delivering important support for women in conflict and championing the rights of those women, including with funding from our Government. They are not only international NGOs such as IRC, Co-operative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Plan and Save the Children but, most importantly, women-led local groups like the International Committee for the Development of Peoples in Somalia and Right To Play in Pakistan and elsewhere. They are doing fantastic work, but there are two particular ways in which we can do more.

The first is funding. Of course, we must recognise that all Government budgets are limited, and that there are many competing priorities for those budgets, including for the global humanitarian and development budgets—that is just the reality that we are living in—but we can get our limited budgets working harder. We can expand the amount of multi-year funding available to organisations that support women and girls in conflict—that makes a real difference to their ability to plan and deliver their work effectively. We can ensure that funding is flexible to adapt to the evolving needs of women and girls at different stages of conflict and crisis. We can introduce measurable targets to increase the amount and quality of funding that goes to women-led organisations within a particular humanitarian budget. We can use our influence within the UN to reform the multilateral funding mechanisms that are absolutely crucial in some contexts where funding is otherwise very difficult to get in—such as the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ country-based pooled funds. That would make it easier for women-led organisations to apply and succeed in receiving funding.

The second point I want to touch on is how we think about and categorise the issue of women and conflict in the first place. We must start thinking about women in conflict as central, not just to our development work but to our foreign policy. We have such a great track record and reputation to build on, and real, live opportunities to make progress, for example, through our work through as penholder on women, peace and security at the UN Security Council.

But it means much more if we encourage countries to adopt and adhere to international human rights treaties that cover the rights of women in conflict; it means increasing pressure on perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict and external parties that back those perpetrators through sanctions, where appropriate. It means using the UK’s voice at the UN Security Council to continue shining a light on this issue and calling for accountability. It means fully supporting UN fact-finding missions so that evidence is compiled and perpetrators are deterred through monitoring. Another example is to facilitate meaningful participation of diverse groups of survivor-led organisations and women’s rights organisations in conflict prevention and peacebuilding processes.

I look forward to our Government’s continued progress on this important matter. I believe those two things—reforming the way we think about funding for women in conflict, and elevating women in conflict—are not just a development priority but a diplomatic one, and are the right places to start.

13:51

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure, Sir Jeremy, to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for leading the debate with passion and interest, and setting the scene so very well. These are always hard subjects to talk about. I find it incredibly difficult to comprehend the violence that is shown towards women and children. I find it unfathomable, but it happens across the world with a violence and brutality that shocks me—and, I know, everyone else here—to the core. Thank you for giving us a chance to participate in this debate.

This issue is not only a matter of human dignity. It also demands urgent action from Parliament and the international community, so it is good to be here to discuss it. It is a pleasure to see the Minister in her place; I look forward to her contribution. I know that the right hon. Lady has the same qualities of compassion and understands things with an honesty that we all try to express, in broken words, here and in the Chamber. It is also a pleasure to see the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), and I look forward to her contributions. She and I have been friends for many years and have participated in debates alongside each other, so I am confident that she will deliver as well today.

The Library has sent some very helpful stats. Some people say, “Stats are stats,” but they can illustrate where the problems may be; some stats were shocking for me to read today and yesterday. Four out of every 10 people killed in conflict are women, which puts things in perspective; of the 117.5 million people displaced, half are women, and last year there was a 50% increase in sexual violence. I find it particularly difficult to read the papers whenever these stories are apparent, because I cannot fathom the horrors those women experience—I have had difficulty understanding it. I remember when the Yazidi ladies came here a long time ago—it must have been over 10 years ago, or thereabouts—and I met some of them. To tell the truth, I almost felt like I was intruding by listening to their stories, because what I probably did—unknowingly—was to make them relive all the horrors that they had been subjected to. But that is the world we live in.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on freedom of religion or belief, I particularly look at how conflict impacts women of different faiths. In the rest of my short speech today I will focus on that issue, and most importantly on how it impacts their lives daily, because it does—with a vengeance.

Such conflict, which includes the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, spans regions and affects women in particular. Some of the horrors of 7 October come to mind. Last year at Easter, I visited Israel, including some camps where the people were brutalised and the women sexually abused. Some women were burned; their bodies were burnt to a cinder. I find such things incompatible with life; the life that I lead is certainly very different from the lives of the people who carry out such crimes.

Women almost always bear a disproportionate burden of the suffering in conflicts, as they often traverse the dangerous terrains of conflict zones to support their families. A critical perspective must not be overlooked when addressing the issue of unexploded ordnance, which has been left, for example, in the aftermath of war. The alarming reports of increased sexual exploitation and trafficking of Ukrainian refugee women, particularly young and vulnerable women, highlight the critical need for immediate targeted action.

When I was in Israel, I met some people involved in groups that addressed or tried to address the issue of sexual violence and attacks on women and children. I was made aware by some people in the delegation—they were similar to me, but from a different country—that children as young as eight and women as old as 80 had been sexually abused by some Russian soldiers. Not every Russian is a bad Russian, but the ones who carried out those actions need to be held accountable for their brutality, their violence and their depravity against young girls of eight years old—my goodness me—and 80-year-old pensioners. Of course, as a Christian I know that a day of judgment will come, and that those who carried out such actions will all be held accountable, but I would like to see their day of judgment come quicker, and in this world; that is what would happen if I had my way.

I remember visiting a refugee camp in Poland a couple of years ago. Along with some other members of the delegation, I noticed these guys—I would probably call them predatory males. Remember that the people who were in that camp were there just a matter of months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. These guys were pushing trolleys around, supposedly collecting laundry and so on, but we noticed—not that we are smarter than anybody else; I am not smarter than anybody else, but I do take note of things that happen around me—that some of those men were not actually doing anything. They were just watching to see what the women and girls were doing. It was obvious to me that they were predatory. When we left the camp, we made sure that we told the police people in charge. Whatever those men were doing there, it certainly did not look like they were there to help anybody.

With reports from Germany indicating that only 14% of female refugees are employed, the risk of female refugees’ falling prey to human traffickers has grown, and that situation has been exacerbated by a lack of adequate accommodation and economic support. A busy mind and a busy person cannot always be distracted by things that happen around them, so it is important to focus on that as well. In conflict zones worldwide, the experiences of women and girls are shaped by a convergence of vulnerabilities, gender, faith and socioeconomic status. Tragically, these intersecting identities often make women and girls the first and most enduring victims of violence, coercion and systematic discrimination.

One of the most harrowing manifestations of freedom of religion or belief violations in conflict settings is the targeted abduction, forced marriage and conversion of women and girls from religious minority communities. In her introduction to this debate, the hon. Member for Norwich North mentioned Pakistan. I have been to Pakistan twice, primarily regarding the issue of freedom of religion or belief. I would love to say that the second time I went, two years after the first time, things had changed; but I did not see any change. If anything, I saw that the situation had got worse.

I am reminded of the case of a 13-year-old girl, which is two years younger than my eldest grandchild. Her name was Kavita Oad, a Hindu girl who was abducted and forcibly married. Her family, who were already financially marginalised, faced threats of violence and theft when they sought justice for their 13-year-old, in a country that seems to think it is okay to marry off a young Hindu, Christian or Sikh girl of 12, 13 or 14 to a predatory male who should never have any say on the issue.

Unfortunately that is not an isolated case, but part of a systematic campaign to erase the religious identity of minority communities. Courts often fail to protect those girls, framing their exploitation as consensual marriages—no, they are not. Their mums and dads do not want them to be married, but when they go to the police, the police either fail or are unwilling to act, and the courts of the land do not protect them. I know that the Minister knows those things—I am not saying anything she does not know—but they disturb me greatly, and we need some idea of what those countries are doing to stop them happening.

In conflict zones, sexual violence is wielded as a weapon to intimidate and destabilise entire communities. Women and girls are targeted not only because of their gender but because of their faith. For example, in Nigeria and Sudan, Christian girls and girls from ethnic religious minorities find themselves suppressed physically, in terms of their human rights, and through their faith—something that is incredibly difficult to comprehend.

Such acts of violence aim to extinguish the cultural and religious identity of persecuted groups. I visited Nigeria about two years ago and had the chance to speak to some of the displaced people. They were not just Christians; they were also Muslims, who also find themselves suppressed because of their religious beliefs. Again, that disturbs me greatly. I know the Minister knows these things, and I would be pleased if she were to give us some feedback on this issue. Women and girls often find themselves doubly marginalised in refugee camps or in settlements of internally displaced people, such as those we visited in Nigeria.

The hon. Member for Norwich North referred to Sudan, and the stories from there are impossible to finish. The other day I read about a mum who was asleep in the house, and three soldiers from a Sudanese terrorist group, or whoever they were, broke in and abused a young girl. The family all slept in another part of the house and did not even know about it until the next morning, when they found that their wee young girl of 13 or 14 had been abused by soldiers that night.

If Members have not read the stories from Sudan, they need to—they are unbelievable. What has happened in that country is one of the worst genocides that I have heard tell of across the world. Not only are people uprooted from their homes, but they face discrimination based on their faith, compounding their vulnerability. The trauma of forced conversions, violence and displacement inflicts profound psychosocial harm on people, coupled with restricted access to education—the hon. Lady also referred to that—and economic opportunities. People need to have something to do. They need opportunity, because those experiences perpetuate cycles of poverty and disenfranchisement among minority groups.

There are pluses in this depressing and negative story, however, so I will highlight three things and perhaps the Minister could give me some feedback. The UK Government have initiated a preventing sexual violence in combat initiative, as they have done in many parts of the world, including Ethiopia, Iraq, Ukraine and Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. They need to be commended for that. We sit here and ask the Government to do things, so we should give them credit when things are done right and thank them for that.

We also need to ask how we can increase that and help more as the violence and sexual violence increase. May I say very gently that, as a Government, we need to match that with funding? Again, these are constructive comments for the Minister—they are not meant to be critical; that is not how I do things—but can the Government increase the aid available to specifically target women and children?

That last thing that I, and I think all of us, would love to see is for those who have carried out the horrible, depraved physical and sexual abuse of women and children to be held accountable. There are stories to tell—those women and those girls will tell their stories—and those who did it need to be accountable, so let us have that day of reckoning. As a Christian, I know that there will be a day of reckoning in the last days of this world, but in this case I would like to see a day of reckoning coming sooner.

To conclude, achieving gender equality and safeguarding FORB are not merely aspirational goals; they are moral imperatives. Let us commit to amplifying the voices of women and girls who have suffered in silence for far too long. I urge the Minister to work in conjunction with her counterparts to ensure that these issues are addressed and that more is done to protect women facing hardship. My job, and the job of us all here, is to be a voice for those who have no voice, and today, that is what we are doing.

14:06

[Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)]

I apologise in advance, Sir Jeremy; I am slightly under the weather today and have got a bit of a sore throat, so this might not come out quite as I intended.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this important debate. Although we often focus on issues around conflict and violence, and what can be done to resolve them, we can sometimes miss the fact that conflict disproportionately affects women and girls. During times of conflict, existing inequalities are magnified and exaggerated, leading to further insecurity, homelessness and particularly violence and sexual violence against women and girls.

We have already heard from my hon. Friend about the current situation in Gaza, which, as we know, is unconscionable. It is estimated that almost 50 mothers and their children are killed every day. According to World Health Organisation estimates, 183 women give birth every day and, as we have heard, many are enduring C-sections without anaesthesia or other medicines. Ironically, many of the supplies that could resolve that problem are probably sitting at the borders, in the convoys that we know have been sent by international agencies and Governments, including our own, and could be put to use. So desperate is the need that it is just outrageous that those supplies are not being allowed to reach the people who need them so badly.

In Myanmar, women have borne the brunt of the military oppression in that country and have been subjected to a rise in intimate partner violence and sexual violence, too. Some 3 million people have been displaced, which in turn puts women at further risk of violence and abuse, because they are separated from those who would normally, one would hope, help to defend them—their fathers and brothers, and their husbands and partners. At the same time in Myanmar, women are shut out of any discussion or high-level debate about making peace—I will return to that point a little later. I was pleased to read about the Minister’s and the Government’s ongoing commitment and work, through the preventing sexual violence and conflict initiative, which I understand remains a real priority for our Government. I hope the Minister will say a little about that at the end of the debate.

When it comes to peacebuilding—hopefully we will move to peacebuilding efforts eventually in some of these conflicts—women are often excluded from the efforts and discussions, which leads to further entrenched disenfranchisement. Women are often the people who hold together communities, and often have a deeper understanding of the whole-community needs in humanitarian emergencies in particular. As we know, in many traditions they still hold the major caring responsibilities and are very much integrated into their communities, but they are not well resourced or respected as international humanitarian actors. Our Government’s commitment to take forward resolutions to these conflicts is very welcome, and it is what we would expect, but I hope the Minister can give us some sense of how women will be involved in that work as we go forward.

Women being affected by conflict is not a new phenomenon—it has probably been with us for the whole history of humankind—but now we know how wrong and unacceptable it is. Because of social media, television and all the other media channels that we have, we know for ourselves exactly what is going on. We cannot turn a blind eye to it. If we do not involve women in resolving conflict and in peacebuilding initiatives, we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past—something I suspect none of us would wish to do.

14:11

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on securing this debate and hon. Members on both sides of the House on their fine speeches. I will touch on some of the same themes, not only because of the gravity of the topic, but because of the clarity of the problems and some of the solutions.

In 2023, over 600 million women and girls lived within 30 miles of a conflict. That figure is 40% higher than it was in 2015. The world is burning. Israel, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and the Congo— that is just a short list I sketched out from the small number of speeches we have heard, but I could fill a 10-minute speech with a list of the areas around the world where violence is being inflicted against women and girls in conflict.

As many hon. Members throughout the House have said, it is women, girls and children who suffer disproportionately in conflict. Gender roles tend to become more extreme in conflict. Men go to fight—of course, that is a stereotype, but that is what we are talking about; these stereotypes become more entrenched —and women are often left at home looking after the children and defenceless because the men are fighting elsewhere. They therefore become a target and a way to inflict pain on not just those individual women and girls but the group at large. Sexual violence in conflict is a military strategy used by actors around the world to defeat or attempt to defeat their enemies. I will draw on a couple of examples and highlight one solution that costs nothing and that the British Government should push much harder on.

One of the gravest inflictions of violence on women and girls is happening currently in Ukraine. Earlier this week, I spoke in the main Chamber about the abduction and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Rape and sexual violence are also used as systematic tools by Russian forces in Ukraine. Cases have been documented where Russian soldiers have been issued with Viagra to facilitate rape and sexual violence. The reports that we hear echo the advance of Russian forces across the country in 2022; they are so similar that we know that it is a tactic of war, rather than a few bad apples, as is so often claimed by the defenders of these heinous crimes.

In Ukraine, women ranging from 16 to 83 years old have reported being raped. This often happens during home incursions—a home will be searched by Russian troops and they will rape the occupants while doing so. One particularly sickening case was verified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Russian soldiers entered a family home outside Kyiv in the initial stages of the invasion. They shot the family dog, before murdering the father. They then raped the mother for several hours, while her four-year-old hid under a blanket and watched. While they were raping the mother, they were drinking, then they passed out when they were finished, allowing the mother to escape with her four-year-old son.

While these crimes have been going on in a systematic fashion, the Russian state has also been destroying healthcare facilities in Ukraine, which obviously has a wide-ranging effect. When coupled with rape, it takes away the very treatment services that Ukrainian women rely on to offer some solace and care after the brutality and depravity of rape at the hands of a Russian soldier. These crimes of the Russian state are systematic. They are an attempt to break the Ukrainian spirit and resolve to resist.

I served several times in Afghanistan as a British officer and the tragedy that has befallen Afghanistan since 2021, when the Taliban took over, is immense. That tragedy particularly falls upon Afghan women. Women’s rights have been decimated in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over—indeed, they no longer really exist in any meaningful sense. That has been extensively documented. Many Members have commented on what has happened in Afghanistan to Afghan women’s rights, so I will not go into it in great detail. I will mention one or two particularly extreme examples.

Before the Taliban took over, Afghanistan had a system of support for survivors of gender-based violence, of which there was certainly some. There were shelters, legal aid, medical services and psychological support, which offered a lifeline to thousands of women. Since the Taliban took over, the incidences of rape have increased and the shelters have also been targeted, looted and destroyed to the point at which they are non-existent. It is the same pattern that we see in Ukraine. It is not only the crimes; the services that are meant to offer comfort, solace and care after the event are destroyed. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Human Rights Commission, of course, are no longer extant in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

One particular egregious example in Afghanistan was reported by The Guardian newspaper. In July, a video was disseminated on social media of the Taliban raping a female human rights activist at gunpoint in a Taliban prison. We should ask ourselves why that video was filmed and disseminated. It was because women must be not just violated in Afghanistan but shamed and humiliated to make a point. It is particularly poignant, given the cultural history of Afghanistan, that if someone stands up for women’s rights they will not only be violated but their family’s name will be shamed through their violation on social media. These crimes are beyond depraved.

I have spoken of conflict and of post-conflict, if that is indeed what we can call what is happening in Afghanistan. I will now talk of peace, because it is only through peaceful, stable societies that women and girls—and boys and men—can be safe. Peace must be our policy; peace must be our goal. As many Members have already mentioned, it is a fact that if there is a peace agreement that women are involved in negotiating, that peace lasts longer. By definition, if that peace lasts longer it means that more women and girls—and boys and men—will be safe.

It must be the policy of the British Government not to urge but insist that where peace negotiations are happening under the auspices of the United Nations, the African Union, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe or any other body with which we are involved or affiliated, women must be fully represented in those negotiations. That is not just a moral but a deeply practical point, and it is the one thing we can do in an age of constricted Government budgets that is free and will have a definite, practical outcome. It is crucial that the UK insists that women are involved in negotiating peace agreements.

14:22

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)]

I place on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this important debate. We know that conflict is on the rise across the world, and that with each conflict comes an increased level of vulnerability and violence for women and girls. Any discussion around conflict must therefore be conducted through a gendered lens, and today provides the opportunity for that. I thank my hon. Friend again for giving us the opportunity to shine a light on this ongoing issue.

Conflict has an array of impacts on women and girls, many of which have been covered by colleagues already. I will focus my remarks on one hugely important yet understudied problem: the impact of sexual violence in conflict on women and girls. Too often, sexual violence against women and girls is swept under the rug, and its victims are forgotten, ignored or denied. Today is an opportunity to recognise and acknowledge that it is real, it is a problem and we need to take it seriously across the world in order to end it. It is an area that I have campaigned on for a number of years, and I want to recognise how encouraging it is that so many new colleagues are in the Chamber today—the new colleagues are in the majority, which is great to see.

We have already heard today about the impact of violence on women and girls in so many countries, including Congo, Sudan, the middle east, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Myanmar, Ukraine, Iraq and probably many more that I have either missed or will be talked about following my remarks. I will focus on the terrible war in Israel and Gaza, the sexual violence against Israeli women and girls committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, and the sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls since then.

As many of the victims on 7 October were murdered or died from their wounds, we may never have an exact picture of what happened in that murderous attack. What we do know is that Hamas’s violence against Israeli women was a well-documented case of mass, organised sexual violence, not least because the perpetrators proudly filmed, advertised and celebrated their crimes. One account from a first responder at Kibbutz Be’eri reported “piles and piles” of dead women who were “completely naked” from the waist down as well as horrific sexual mutilation.

Rami Shmuel, an organiser of the Supernova music festival and a witness of the massacre, in which 360 people—mostly Israelis—were murdered, saw female victims with no clothes as he escaped. He said:

“Their legs were spread out and some of them were butchered.”

Another Supernova survivor, Yoni Saadon, reported seeing

“eight or 10 of the fighters beating and raping”

one woman. She also said:

“When they finished they were laughing, and the last one shot her in the head.”

These were not random acts, but a systematic effort that the women’s rights campaigner Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari has characterised as a

“premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war.”

We must also take a moment to recognise that Hamas’s sexual violence may even be ongoing. Around 100 Israelis —the figure may be just under that, according to last night’s news—remain held hostage in Gaza, of whom we know 12 are women and girls. Reports have indicated and survivors have confirmed that both female and male hostages have been subjected to sexual assault in their 424 days in captivity.

Likewise, I remain gravely concerned about the sexual violence that Palestinian women and girls have endured and continue to endure in this ongoing conflict. Credible reports from UN experts highlight that Palestinian women and girls in detention have been subject to multiple forms of sexual assault, including being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli officers. Photos of these vulnerable Palestinian women in degrading circumstances have also reportedly been taken and uploaded online by members of the Israeli army.

Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, argued that all those numbers are, in fact, likely to be even higher due to the secrecy with which the assaults take place and the stigma around reporting sexual violence and rape, which discourages women from speaking out—something that exists wherever they are in the world. Wherever the victims are, we as both parliamentarians and human beings should be saying, “If you are a victim of sexual violence, we believe you,” but all too often they face scepticism and even outright denial.

The Israeli women and girls subjected to sexual violence on 7 October 2023 were met with deafening silence from many agencies and organisations founded to support victims. Many organisations initially ignored or minimised Hamas’s crimes of sexual violence, or even doubted that they had even taken place. UN Women issued multiple statements following 7 October, none of which made reference to the sexual violence of that day. The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls blandly expressed concern about

“reports of sexual violence that may have occurred since 7 October committed by State and non-State actors against Israelis and Palestinians.”

Worse, many supposed feminists dismissed discussion of Hamas’s rape as colonial feminism and unverified accusations; the latter will be all too familiar to those victims brave enough to report their experiences, whether in conflict zones or non-conflict zones. We know that this is sadly all too true for most victims of sexual violence.

We know that sexual violence is perpetuated by stigma, silence, victim blaming and denial. All those prevent women and girls from getting the justice that they deserve. When we deny the reality of sexual violence, we perpetuate it, so it is incumbent on us all to ensure that we treat all victims of sexual violence with the respect and compassion that they deserve. Wherever you are and whoever you are, we believe you.

14:29

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this debate. I also thank the Minister—who I know feels very strongly about these issues, and has done for many years.

I will try and refrain from repeating anything that has been said by other hon. Members—there have been some fantastic speeches. I also say to anybody watching, that if they feel disturbed by this, there are support services that they can refer to. This is a difficult topic but it is important that we shine light on it. I know there is some detail here that can be triggering to some people.

The world is facing the highest number of conflicts since world war two, and women and girls are paying the price. Upholding the safety and dignity of women and girls, protecting them from torture and violence, is a human rights obligation, but it is one that the world—and we—often fall short of upholding. Rape in war is by no means a new phenomenon, but its escalation as a deliberate strategic and political tactic is now undeniable. That has many consequences. There are the physical consequences, the unwanted pregnancies, the sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. There is also the brutality, and the psychological consequences, that come alongside these kinds of activities. In conflict areas, what makes it worse, is the disregard of international law, the arms proliferation, the increasing militarisation and the shrinking of civic space. It exacerbates conflict-related sexual violence, and it hinders safe reporting and response. It also leads to an increase in trafficking and exploitation.

Access to healthcare is just one of the ways gender violence is perpetrated, in some cases by the lack of care for those who have been physically damaged by rape, but also for those who have unwanted pregnancies as a result. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities should be a beacon of safety and healing for those that are injured in conflict, including survivors of sexual violence. But the destruction of health facilities—and the direct and indirect killing of healthcare workers—has severely hindered the provision of lifesaving medical assistance for survivors who need comprehensive medical care, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and psychological support, as well as avenues for reporting.

The message from the #MeToo movement was that crimes of sexual violence are compounded by cultures of stigma, silence, denial and victim blaming, which often prevent women from securing justice. Yet it often feels like this is ignored when women are in a war zone. Women and girls are just seen as inevitable collateral damage.

I would like to highlight a few cases: I will try not to repeat what has been said before by hon. Members. In Gaza, beyond the impact of the loss of hospitals and healthcare workers—which has been highlighted by my hon. Friends—women and children also bear the brunt of the lack of supplies in wartime. In Gaza, millions of women and children are suffering from the inability of aid agencies to cope with the demand for supplies or to deliver them to those in need.

At the moment, we estimate that 690,000 women and girls in Gaza require menstrual hygiene products. The stocks of hygiene kits have run out, and the price of those that are available is exorbitant. Women are having to choose between buying pads and buying food and water. So instead they are cutting up old sheets or old clothes to use as pads, thereby increasing their risk of infection and the stigma that those infections bring. There is also a risk because they have not changed their clothes in over 40 days.

In every humanitarian disaster, in every sense, women pay the biggest price. The UN is working with over 30 women-led organisations in Gaza to provide gender-based violence services, and last year, over 159,000 women and girls used those services in Gaza. If the ban on UNRWA comes in, I dread to think where those women and girls will go for support.

We have heard a lot about Afghanistan. Under the Taliban’s apartheid of women, women and girls have been denied access to learning, employment and travel. They have been excluded from public spaces and banned from singing—I find that one the hardest to understand—although they may not want to sing. They have been banned from attending medical institutions and from seeing male doctors. Despite those restrictions, Afghan girls, many of whom were already in school when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, continue to dream, but they have to attend underground schools or participate in local home schooling or remote learning, which puts them and their teachers at risk.

There have been other consequences. Child marriage has increased by 25%. I am not even talking about forced marriage, which is bad enough. Those children should not be forced into marriage and everything that comes with that. The risk of maternal mortality has surged by 50%.

As we have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), rape was used as a weapon in Israel. I do not want to repeat what she said, but despite the fact that it has been well documented, even by the armed perpetrators, the majority of organisations still fail to acknowledge the sexual violence that took place on 7 October.

We have heard about the rapes that are happening in Ukraine. It is not just about the rapes, but the fear of rape. One Ukrainian victim of sexual violence said:

“I would have preferred to die.”

Rape has become cheaper than bullets as a means to terrorise a nation, and the aggressors know that. The psychological fear is passed on, not just from woman to woman but from women to girls. Civilian women who are not officers or soldiers are often targeted for rape and punishment to humiliate the soldiers on the frontline.

Time and again, women bear the brunt of war’s brutality. They are consistently on the frontline as soldiers, fighters, doctors, nurses, volunteers, peace activists, carers for their communities and families, internally displaced people, refugees and, too often, victims and survivors. Women confront the increased sexual and gender-based violence and its perilous health conditions while being forced to make life or death decisions for themselves and their families. At the same time, women are often excluded from the decision-making processes, and their rights and needs remain unprotected and unmet.

This culture of silence continues even though the UN officially recognised gender-based violence in 1992. It is as recently as that; for some of us it does not feel very long ago, which shows our age. Since that recognition, little has changed for women in conflict areas. There is still too much silence from international organisations, alongside a lack of moral clarity in calling out sexual violence on a global scale. Justice and any hope of healing begin with recognition. If we are a rules-based society that believes in human rights, we cannot continue to see women and girls as inevitable collateral in a conflict. We are not just victims of violence or weapons of war.

We must work with authorities, especially security forces, to reinforce the message that sexual violence, like all war crimes, is prohibited and will be prosecuted. We have to draw a clear red line against these acts. Training, awareness raising and a prompt response from those in positions of leadership in military and police units is necessary to make this happen. We need a cultural shift from the normalisation of sexual violence and the emotional battery of women and girls in conflict; they must be seen as the true victims and survivors they are. We must put pressure on international authorities to take concerted action to make protection from sexual violence a central part of their peacekeeping efforts. Finally, the UK’s contribution should be a long-term partnership with women and women-led organisations right around the world, so that we can support women in those countries to be part of a future free of gender-based violence.

14:40

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this debate on such an important topic and to all the colleagues who have spoken in this debate so eloquently and passionately. We have heard devastating statistics about the impact of conflict on women and girls. We have heard testimony about the importance of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Listening to the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), I was reminded strongly of the words of Gisèle Pelicot: “Shame must change sides”. That is key to bear in mind.

During the speeches of other Members, I reflected on the fact that conflict-related violence on women and girls is not perpetrated only by soldiers in uniforms with guns. We know that, in the context of conflict and post-conflict, there is an increase in domestic violence against women and girls. The inequalities and the injustices are writ large through societies, and that is why this debate is so important.

This is an issue of personal interest and concern for me. Before I came to this place, I worked for many years in the field of international development, including in northern Uganda during a time of conflict, so I have been thinking of the women that I knew and worked alongside during that period. I have also worked with the ecumenical accompaniment programme in Palestine and Israel that works for peace in that conflict. I was thinking of the women in Gulu in northern Uganda who I used to work with from People’s Voice for Peace and the role that they played. They were local women supporting women in their communities who had been affected by sexual violence, displacement, theft, violence, and the complete loss of livelihoods and the lives of loved ones. That work was done by women within those communities to support their sisters to endure through extremely difficult conditions.

In thinking about the remarks that I wanted to make in this debate, I thought of those women. I thought of women in Gaza, in Israel, women in conflict all around the world, and refugee women who I know in the UK—the lucky ones who have escaped from situations like this. I thought of women I know from Iran and Ukraine who I hope would support the remarks that I am going to make and my requests of the Minister. It is so important that, when debating these topics, it is those women’s voices that we have at the centre of our thinking and our discussions.

I have four key asks and key lessons from reflecting on this topic. The first is—I think Members present agree on this—the UK Government must do everything to defend, to protect and to uphold the rights of women and girls in all our international interactions, as we should in all our domestic work, too. I am sure that is difficult and complicated diplomatically sometimes, but it must be absolutely at the forefront and explicit in all our work.

The second point I want to make, echoing the call of the hon. Member for Norwich North and others here today, is that we must reverse the cuts in UK aid. The cuts made under the previous Conservative Government were, in my view, shameful. It is incumbent on the new Government to reverse those cuts as quickly as possible. I know from friends and colleagues how devastating they were.

I was interested to read prior to this debate a briefing from Women for Women International. In a very large-scale survey that it did, only 25% of women in conflict situations had received any aid at all. In Afghanistan, it was less than 10%. The quantity of aid really does matter. Aid is not the only solution to alleviating the impact of conflict on women on girls, but it is one thing that the UK can do.

My third point is that it is not just the quantity but the quality of aid. It is essential that the framing of the conflict response and the humanitarian response explicitly considers the needs and rights of women and girls. As the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central mentioned, women and girls have specific needs with regard to, in particular, sexual and reproductive health and protection against violence.

I am a big fan of the use of cash transfers in humanitarian aid. Again, bearing women’s rights in mind when distributing aid is crucial. Cash transfers can be one way to really empower women in a conflict response situation. We need to ensure that our aid programme gives long-term core funding to women’s rights organisations—women-led organisations. Having worked in the international development sector—I can see colleagues nodding; I am sure they will completely agree with this—I think that long-term funding for organisations that are working to address conflict is crucial. We all know, as Members of Parliament and as people who have worked in public services, the difficulty of doing things hand-to-mouth on a year-on-year basis. It is so important to have long-term core funding to build the capacity, particularly of women’s organisations —women-led organisations—to challenge the inequalities and injustices that they have faced often for decades in order to uplift their voices. That is my fourth and final point.

Conflict resolution is the only long-term way to get away from the disastrous stats that have been cited so far—indeed, not just the resolution of existing conflicts, but prevention of potential conflicts. Amplifying women’s voices and creating space for women’s voices and women’s participation, as the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) emphasised, is essential. Unless the voices of women and girls are heard and heeded in peacebuilding and conflict resolution, we will not be able to tackle the problems that we have been discussing today.

14:48

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on securing this critical and timely debate, and also everyone who has contributed. It has been incredibly moving to hear the very personal accounts of what people have viewed and witnessed.

Hon. Members have spoken powerfully about the brutal rape of women in Ukraine and the abomination of the kidnap of children. We heard from my hon. Friend about the attempts by the Taliban to extinguish any and all joy from the life of Afghan women—in fact, to extinguish the women full stop. As we have heard, in war zones across the globe the existing inequalities that women and girls face on a daily basis in peacetime are magnified. They are making them more vulnerable to violence, exploitation, displacement and insecurity. That vulnerability is not inevitable; it is the result of deep-seated gender inequalities that shape societies.

It is our responsibility to challenge and dismantle these structures, especially in times of crisis. Conflict amplifies the risks that women and girls endure. We know from organisations such as ActionAid and Plan International that wars lead to surges in intimate partner violence, limited access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, and heightened caregiving burdens for women due to conscription and displacement. Again, these impacts are structural, not incidental, and they exacerbate inequalities that persist long after conflict ends.

Despite bearing the brunt of these hardships, women are often excluded from the processes that shape their futures. From humanitarian relief efforts to peacebuilding negotiations, women’s voices are ignored, expertise undervalued, and leadership opportunities denied. That marginalisation is not only unjust but counterproductive. There are women-led local organisations that possess invaluable insights into the needs of their communities and are best positioned to deliver targeted and effective solutions, yet they are underfunded and under-represented in international efforts. These organisations ensure that humanitarian responses address the specific needs of women and girls, providing lifesaving supplies and essential services such as mental health support, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and psychosocial aids. By centring women’s leadership, we can not only address immediate needs, but catalyse long-term equitable change.

We have heard some stark examples of the gendered impact of conflict on specific areas. As my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) mentioned, rape was used as a tool of terrorism on October 7. That was compounded by so many people who knew better ignoring and downplaying those atrocities, adding yet another injustice to the women who suffered. In Gaza, nearly 50 mothers and their children are killed every single day according to UN Women. Displaced Palestinian women are facing extreme emotional tolls, increased risk of gender-based violence and lack of access to essential healthcare. I have three children. I cannot imagine waking up every morning with the same horrors unfolding every single day, unable to protect my children, give them shelter, water or food, and take care of their basic health needs. They have to play this out every single day and night.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) mentioned, the World Health Organisation reports that 183 women give birth daily in Gaza, with many undergoing caesareans without any anaesthesia due to restrictions in medical supplies. This place has also heard testimony from medical professionals volunteering in Gaza, who are operating under the most horrific conditions without the most basic medical supplies they need. We also heard about women in Myanmar who are facing brutal oppression, including sexual violence and intimate partner violence. The military targets women activists and peacebuilders, economic instability and food insecurity have led to a rise in early marriages, and the displacement of nearly 3 million people has left women and girls at heightened risk of abuse. Despite those challenges, women are systematically excluded from political and peace negotiation spaces.

Talking about those injustices and brutalities, and hearing about the horrors that are taking place all over the world, can really lead us to a place of despair, but we must have hope. We are not just bystanders watching; we have a part to play. The UK must take bold and consistent action to address those injustices. As a signatory to the grand bargain 2.0, the UK has committed to directing 25% of humanitarian funding to local actors, including women’s rights organisations, yet in 2021, only 0.2% of UK humanitarian funding went to those groups. That is not acceptable. We must consider ringfencing funds for women’s rights organisations within our humanitarian spending.

A lot of what I wanted to say has been covered, but I will say that, in addressing those challenges, we need a coherent approach to conflict prevention, peacebuilding and humanitarian aid. All UK-funded programmes must incorporate gender analysis and centre the voices of women and girls at every single stage, from policy design to implementation and evaluation. It is not only a moral imperative but a strategic one. As hon. Members have said, evidence shows that when women are involved in peacebuilding, agreements are more durable, communities are more resilient and outcomes are more equitable. The UK Government must continue to be vocal and definitive in their support for international law and their condemnation of all violation and abuses, particularly those against women and children.

All of us across the House are incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to serve our constituents, but our collective power, influence and voice stretches far beyond these isles. None of us knows how long we will serve in this place, but each of us must make our time here count. We have to lead with integrity, compassion and determination to support, protect and amplify women’s voices and their rights here and across the world.

14:57

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I thank everyone who has spoken today. I have been very moved by Members telling quite harrowing accounts of the way that women are affected by conflict around the world, some of which has brought back difficult memories of my previous life before being in this place, when I worked in conflict zones, predominantly with children and women. To echo my hon. Friend the Member for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan), I have found that I have reflected almost every day since coming here on whether I am having more impact being here than I did before. I note that five parties are represented here today, and I feel that there is a huge consensus. I certainly hope that beyond this room today there can be actions.

I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this really important debate, and I thank the Minister for being here. Until she appeared before the International Development Committee last week, I was a sceptic on the dual role of being both the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Minister for Development. I wondered whether it did not dilute the two roles, but the answer that she gave us has persuaded me that it is a very powerful thing to have her on the global stage. We all know how integral women and girls are to international development.

Many Members have raised Afghanistan, and I reflected on a time a few years ago when I was a further education teacher and had an Afghan student. She was a remarkable young woman on an access course and her ambition was to go on to be a doctor, but during that period the Home Office was trying to deport her family back to Afghanistan because it was deemed a safe country. I remember spending time with her, and she tearfully explained to me that although she probably could live there, she would not be able to continue her studies—and she had this dream of going on to be a doctor. We were ultimately unsuccessful at keeping her in the country, and I do not know what has happened to her since, but this is an important point that we note for future policymaking in that area.

I will focus my remarks today on the role of women in upstream prevention, with examples of some really heroic women that I have been privileged to know. A couple of years ago, I was privileged to work with the previous Government’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief in organising the global ministerial conference—I was part of an effort to bring women and youth from countries where there is interfaith conflict to the UK.

One of those people was Sri Lankan peacebuilder Dishani Jayaweera. She founded the Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation. She told us a story from during the war when she met a man named Ulama, who had come to one of her workshops. She would run workshops that brought together people from different sides of the conflict to help build empathy and understanding. On the third day of the workshop, he took her hand and broke down crying; he confessed that he had been sent by an extremist group to spy on her organisation. However, as he spent time in the workshop he realised the value of its mission. He ended up becoming one of its most committed members, and went on to found a school for girls and start his own organisation.

Another such person is Badung Charity Audu, a Nigerian human rights activist. Charity witnessed severe violence in her community, including Muslim houses being burned to ashes around her. Some of her friends were murdered and, beginning at the age of five, she was repeatedly raped by relatives and close friends. Due to the high standing of her abusers within her community and faith group, she remained silent in her suffering. She faced constant verbal abuse and was often called “born by mistake” because she was born out of wedlock. She did not learn to read or write until she was nine years old, and was often bullied at school for being illiterate. Eventually, she found somebody she was able to confide in and open up to, and she talked to her foster parents about her experiences. Today, Charity works mentoring young girls overcoming the trauma of abuse and sexual violence in her country. She came here to Parliament and spoke eloquently about her work.

Another person is Khalidah, who is from Iraq, and her friend, Shno Qane Qader. Khalidah is a young Yazidi woman and Shno is a young Muslim woman; they work together to promote peace in their communities and there is powerful testimony of their work. Other examples include Ghadir Hana, an Israeli-Palestinian, and Surale Rosen, a Jewish Israeli: two women working together for peace. We took them to Birmingham central mosque for a discussion on peace and the role of women in peace there. Ghadir was given a pretty hard time by some of the audience, who could not understand why she was appearing on a platform with her Jewish friend promoting peace in their community.

Another example of three outstanding women, who I, unfortunately, could not bring to the UK because we were not successful in getting visas for them to come to the conference, are three women in the Central African Republic. A few years ago, I was with them in Bangui. By chance it happened to be International Women’s Day. Their names are Marie-Therese, Aicha Baba and Clarisse Manehou—a Catholic, a Protestant and a Muslim. They are three women who represent an interfaith platform and work together. There are three male faith leaders of that platform, who have also done remarkable work, and been nominated for all the Nobel prizes, as well as all the things one would expect, and have travelled the world, but we were not able to get visas for the women due to their poverty.

As I sat with those women and asked them about their experience and what I could do, two things stood out for me. One of them was that one woman said she was grateful for the work of the men in building peace, before adding: “But I was the one who faced down the barrel of a gun and stood between the militia and my community, and persuaded them to put down their weapons.”

[Mike Martin]

I would like to add another example to the hon. Gentleman’s great list. As he knows, Somalia, Somaliland and the other Somali countries are organised by clan, and in Somali culture it is actually the women who broker peace between clans. When there are conflicts over grazing rights, it is the women who cross clan lines to broker peace.

[Sam Rushworth]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that example. Another example comes not from my own life but from Liberia, where women became so fed up of conflict that women on all sides decided to unite behind a woman—Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—for the presidency, while many men in the country voted along factional lines.

The experience I had with the women I mentioned will never leave me. I confess that I did not understand the currency I was using. I asked them whether they needed some lunch; I felt that we had been talking for a long time. I gave them what actually amounted to about $100, thinking that I was giving them about $10. They looked a bit overwhelmed. Afterwards, when they went off, my translator told me that they did not buy lunch; they came back hungry, because they said they could use that money better to benefit their community.

When I asked those women what would make the biggest difference for them, I was expecting them to make quite big financial demands. Instead, they said, “Could we have some sewing machines?” That was because, for many of them, their husbands had been killed, they had been raped, their homes had been burned and looted, and they no longer had sewing machines to make a living. For the sake of a few thousand dollars to provide sewing machines for those women, we could give them a livelihood, and that sum, frankly, is probably what we would spend on having a 4x4 on the road for a day in one of those countries. To echo the point that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) made about cash transfers, nothing is more important than getting cash to the women on the ground who know how to spend it to make a real difference in people’s lives.

In conclusion, several Members have made outstanding recommendations, so I will not repeat them all, but I will emphasise the point about upstream prevention. The previous Government rightly established that there needs to be an atrocity prevention strategy within aid spending, but now we need to take that idea forward. Part of that process must involve looking at civil society and upstream funding, and the long-term support for the women’s and young people’s organisations that are doing such vital work in peacebuilding. We need to look at the quality of aid, not just the quantity.

I will close my remarks, because I am really conscious of time. Again, I simply make an appeal that we do not just hear words here today, but that words lead to action.

15:08

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and I thank the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this incredibly important debate, in which there have been many insightful and inspiring comments.

We have heard today that women and girls disproportionately suffer the impact of the global rise in conflicts, forcing record numbers of them to flee their homes. That dramatically increases their vulnerability to sex trafficking, child marriage and other forms of gender-based violence, for which they are often marginalised and stigmatised by their communities.

Conflict does not impact women through gender-based violence alone; it brings with it the loss of livelihoods, worsening healthcare and higher death rates. It also undermines women’s ability to give birth safely and interrupts women’s access to essential supplies, such as contraceptives.

We have also seen brazen assaults on civilians, aid workers and critical service delivery points, all of which constitute flagrant violations of international humanitarian law. Essential infrastructure, such as hospitals, displacement camps and safe spaces, has also been a casualty of war, and that has cut women and girls off from vital services and emergency assistance at a time when they are most at risk. Conflict therefore increases existing structural and gender inequalities and takes decades to undo. Time and again it is women and girls who bear the brunt of the increasing number of armed conflicts around the globe. The last year has offered devastating examples. I will only touch on the current crises in Sudan and Gaza, being brief because they have been covered so much already in this debate.

Nearly 70% of those killed in Gaza over a six-month period were women and children. That is, in itself, a terrible statistic and also a disproportionately high level compared with usual conflicts. Pregnant women living through the conflict in Gaza are three times more likely to miscarry, and if they do carry their babies to full term they are three times more likely to die in childbirth due to a lack of access to medical care and nutrition. We also know that women and girls, although their nutritional needs are greater, eat less and last in these conflicts, which are already plagued by malnutrition and starvation, yet none of the UK’s humanitarian funding for Gaza since October 2023 has been ringfenced for women’s needs, women’s rights and women-led organisations. That must change.

In Sudan, since the start of the conflict in April 2023, the number of people in need of sexual and reproductive health services has more than doubled, yet only 6.7% of the funding needed for gender-based violence prevention and response has been provided. Neither Palestine nor Sudan were included in the UK women, peace and security national action plan—I look forward to hearing why, in the Minister’s response.

From Members in this debate, we have heard harrowing accounts of sexual violence in both Gaza and Sudan. I will make one addition. We hear about women in Sudan who have taken their own lives to escape rape by paramilitaries, or because of being raped, or who have experienced sexual violence to protect their children from being afflicted. That is the shocking nature of these conflicts. Through the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, the UK has been able to provide important support to survivors in Ukraine, providing expertise and material support to document sexual and gender-based violence, including through the atrocity crimes advisory group, but NGOs are unclear whether the lessons learned from that critical work are being applied to the conflicts in Sudan and Palestine. I should therefore be grateful if the Minister would confirm that the atrocity crimes advisory group has been dispatched to Sudan and Gaza. If it has not been, why not?

I would also like to hear from the Minister on the Government’s plans to pick up the commitments that the previous Government made through the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, so that the UK can again demonstrate global leadership in tackling sexual violence in conflict. When we consider how vulnerable and targeted women are in these conflicts, not only does it offend our morals and consciences but, as hon. Members have said, it makes absolutely no rational sense. In Gaza, for instance, women make up 70% of frontline health workers and 60% of caregivers. As we have heard, women are important advocates in conflict-torn places and are critical to building lasting peace, with strong evidence to demonstrate that the involvement of women and girls in peacebuilding is key to ending conflict and building long-term, sustainable peace and stability. I endorse the eminently sensible and practical suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) to give women a seat at the table. Women must always have a seat at the table, and there are many women at those tables today.

In 2021, only 0.2% of UK humanitarian ODA went to frontline women’s rights organisations and movements, so will the Minister commit to funding for women’s rights organisations that is ringfenced within humanitarian spending? As a signatory to the UN Security Council resolution on women, peace and security, the UK must lead on this issue. The UK must be vocal, clear and more consistent in its support for international humanitarian law, and in its condemnation of all violations and abuses against all civilians, including women and girls.

I hope the Minister not only agrees with but acts on my last point, which is that—as the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) pointed out— increasing international development funding is the fundamental way that the UK Government can properly tackle the kind of gender-based inequality and sexual violence that we have discussed in this debate. Prioritising development funding before a conflict breaks out, and allowing programmes to tackle existing gender inequalities in peacetime, is a far more effective way of tackling the deep-rooted inequalities that women and girls often experience in those fragile states, and it can reduce some of the gendered impacts and violence when conflict breaks out.

Gender-based violence is not inevitable; it is rooted in existing inequalities. UK aid for programmes that include a gender equality objective nearly halved between 2019 and 2021, with a devastating impact on women and girls. Funding for programmes supporting women and girls desperately needs to be restored immediately, as does the humanitarian relief reserve fund, and health programmes, which have also been cut. All those programmes have been eroded in the years since UK ODA was cut from 0.7% of GNI to 0.58% by the previous Government, and cut further to 0.5% in this Government’s Budget. It is no secret that the Liberal Democrats are pushing hard for the return to 0.7% of GNI, and remain perplexed as to why the Government insist on adopting the fiscal tests that they so vigorously opposed when in opposition. The point about 0.7% is that it is proportionate to a country’s prosperity. Will the Government commit to reviewing their use of fiscal test, and their declared goal, which is to return to 0.7%?

In conclusion, women and girls generally do not start wars, and neither do they usually have the power to end them—but they suffer disproportionately from them. It is within our gift to empower women and girls, so let us commit to doing so.

15:16

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on securing this debate. I believe she did so through the Backbench Business Committee, and I thank her for her endeavours. This has been a far-reaching debate with many excellent contributions. It has also been an excellent opportunity to highlight the plight of women and girls, listen to so many testimonies and personal experiences, share those stories, and often hear about things that, let us be honest, for most of us would be unimaginable.

We are deeply concerned about the impact that conflict has on women and girls. Reports of conflict-related sexual violence and its use as a weapon of war are particularly horrifying. We unequivocally condemn such abuses, and do not accept them as inevitable consequences of war. During our time in government, we were at the heart of the international response to CRSV. Since launching the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative—PSVI—in 2012, we continued to lead the world in addressing those crimes. In 2022 we hosted an international conference on the issue, and we launched a political declaration outlining a clear message that sexual violence must end and the steps that were required. That was backed up by £12.5 million in new funding. In 2023, we chaired a meeting of the international alliance on preventing sexual violence in conflict. It was the first of its kind and brought diverse actors together to drive global action.

Given the leadership that we showed through PSVI, I am pleased to note that the Government put on record a re-commitment to the UK’s support of the initiative. I also note Lord Collins’s appointment as the Prime Minister’s special representative. I would, however, like to ask what specific plans the Minister has to build on the work that we did through the PSVI. Can she assure colleagues that representations will be made to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury about the value of this initiative ahead of the spending review?

Tackling the issues affecting women and girls in conflict is not just limited to ending sexual violence, as we must also raise the eyes of women and girls to a brighter future worldwide. As part of the work to advance gender equality and challenge discrimination, we launched the international women and girls strategy 2023-2030. That put women and girls at the heart of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s work, and our investment, together with partners, led to more girls in school, fewer girls forced into early marriage, and more women in high political office and leadership positions. We continued our support for the three Es—education, empowering women and girls and championing their health and rights, and ending violence. We made significant progress, and this Government have a lot to live up to.

What does the Minister plan to do to advance those commitments—in particular, on each of the three Es? One of them of course is ending violence, so I would like to touch on some of the specific conflicts that we are seeing around the world. Of course, there are many, and we have heard examples today, but let me mention Ukraine. In Ukraine, there is concerning evidence of conflict-related sexual violence being committed by Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war. Some Russian perpetrators have already been convicted for those crimes. There appears to be a pattern of sexual violence being used as a weapon of war. As part of our work on PSVI when in government, we helped to build investigatory capacity to support accountability in Ukraine. I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on the steps she has taken to build capacity in Ukraine to help ensure that Russian perpetrators are brought to justice.

We are seeing in Sudan a war, driven by a man-made power struggle, that has led to a humanitarian catastrophe. The reports of CRSV are dire, and I know we all want to see an alleviation of the crisis. In government, we took steps to support partners to care for and protect survivors, and we invested a great deal of energy in trying to bring about a cessation of hostilities. We continue to call for a cessation of violence and for greater access for humanitarian aid so that survivors can access support. What steps is the Minister taking to progress those aims, particularly when it comes to upholding the rights of women and girls?

The next context I would like to mention is Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Let us be clear: we utterly condemn all alleged and reported CRSV, and call for proper investigations and a survivor-centred approach. The 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas included horrific acts of violence against Israeli women and girls and other civilians, and we express serious concerns at reports of sexual violence against the hostages still held in Hamas captivity. The hostages can and must be immediately and unconditionally released. Hamas should stop using civilians, including women and girls, as human shields.

Last year, my noble Friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, as Foreign Secretary, announced £4.25 million of UK aid to support the work of UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, which provides lifesaving support to vulnerable women and girls. That was expected to reach 111,500 women, which is about one in five adult women in Gaza. I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on the latest steps taken to build on that support.

Conflict-related sexual violence is a systemic and pervasive abuse that threatens the lives and wellbeing of women and girls. In government, we led the global conversation on this critical issue that affects millions and demands a united approach. I am proud that when we were in government, the UK reached more than 4 million people, including survivors, with vital support. Of course, there is more still to do, so I hope this Government will build on our work and strive for a future in which CRSV becomes a thing of the past. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

15:23

[The Minister for Development (Anneliese Dodds)]

It is a real pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this incredibly important debate on the impact of conflict on women and girls. I was grateful to my hon. Friend for her very powerful speech, and we have heard so many incredibly powerful speeches today. I echo the comments by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that this is an issue on which we can and must come together, and certainly today we did come together across five parties, as was mentioned. I was really pleased to see that.

As so many have mentioned, this is an incredibly timely debate. Conflict today is at the highest level since world war two. Women and girls are affected disproportionately, and we have heard so many examples today. The number of UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence increased by 50% in 2023, as was mentioned, and not a single peace agreement reached in 2023 included a women’s representative or representative group as a signatory. There are not sufficient women at those tables. The UN Secretary-General’s 2023 report highlighted that 172 human rights defenders who are women were subjected to reprisals for no other reason than that they engaged with the United Nations. Those are sobering and concerning statistics, and we heard many others.

It is 25 years since the UK played an important part in securing the landmark UN Security Council resolution 1325, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North. Thirty years have also passed since the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe met in Beijing to agree a central set of international norms on women’s rights and gender equality. Those are two significant milestones that should provide an opportunity for us to celebrate hard-won gains, but overall we are going backwards internationally.

The new UK Government will continue to build on the ambition of the fifth UK women, peace and security national action plan; I am delighted to underline that to the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton). This Government are determined to work in partnership with others around the world, not least the civil society groups and women peacebuilders, who have key roles to play and are working on the frontline in their communities.

At the United Nations General Assembly last September, the Prime Minister gave a clear commitment to work together for peace, progress and equality. It is clear that women and girls must be at the heart of that work and at the heart of our development policy—I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North on that. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) that they also need to be at the heart of our work in relation to the climate crisis, and we ensured that was the case in our representation at COP.

Empowering women and girls is clearly vital. I was pleased to hear a number of Members refer to the role of my noble friend, Lord Collins, who has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s special representative on preventing sexual violence in conflict. As the Minister for International Development and for Women and Equalities, I am determined that the UK does all it can to prevent and resolve conflict and empower women, who are vital to sustainable and inclusive outcomes from conflict situations. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) made that point powerfully in relation to Myanmar, and it was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan).

We are determined to ensure that women are involved in peacebuilding, not just because of the moral case but, as was spelled out by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), because of the clear empirical case. When women are involved in peacebuilding in a genuine and significant way, those peace deals tend to stick far more than when they are cut out of the process. When I was in Addis Ababa, I was delighted to meet a number of incredible women from Sudan representing civil society; they must be part of that country’s future and of the peaceful resolution of the appalling conflict there.

We believe that we can make a difference as the UK, in the same way that the incredible women mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) have made a difference—it was wonderful to hear what they had done. First, we must ensure that we listen to women’s voices on the ground and amplify them. That is a core commitment of the new Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North asked about our approach to focus countries. That approach has been incredibly powerful to ensure that we are driving targeting. As the Minister for International Development, however, I am aware that conflict-related sexual violence is, disturbingly, becoming much more of a feature of conflicts around the world. We need to ensure we are flexible enough on this issue, and that is what I am determined to do as the new Minister.

We also need to ensure that there is participation in peace processes, and that it applies whether we are talking about formal or informal mechanisms. That includes, for example, in Nigeria and South Sudan. We also need to ensure that women’s voices are raised when it comes to the impact of conflict-related sexual violence. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North mentioned DRC. We have been supporting women subjected to CRSV there; their voices need to be heard on those appalling crimes.

Through the UK’s £33 million partnership with the Equality Fund, we have supported more than 1,000 women’s rights organisations, including in conflict settings. We need to ensure that those voices are heard when it comes to issues such as child marriage, which the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned. Girls in South Sudan and Zambia told me about their concerns about early marriage and pregnancy. The new Government are determined to ensure that their voices are heard.

Secondly, we need to ensure that the needs of women and girls are prioritised in the current crises. When I was in South Sudan, I witnessed at first hand the desperate situation of women and girls affected by that conflict. In a debate in the main Chamber, we went through what the Government are doing in Sudan. The UK has been taking action in relation to women and on the appalling atrocities we have seen—the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) said she is very concerned about that—and working intensively with other countries. We secured the renewal of the UN fact-finding mission on Sudan. I was pleased that other African countries supported that—that was incredibly important. Of course, it was awful that Russia vetoed the UN Security Council resolution on Sudan, which we submitted jointly with Sierra Leone. We will keep pushing on this issue, and we will ensure that in the provision of aid we act against sexual violence and support survivors. That has been the case with the UK’s support for refugees based in Chad, and we will continue to focus on that.

On Syria, we have underlined the importance of an inclusive transitional process to protect the rights of all Syrians, including women and girls, and prevent further instability. Through the Global Survivors Fund, we have provided medical, psychosocial, legal and financial support to more than 800 Syrian survivors of sexual violence in Turkey.

The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills rightly mentioned the UNFPA. We are absolutely continuing to support its incredibly important mission.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for her excellent response. Some of the stories that have come out of Syria since the Assads lost power have been to do with Christians, including those on the frontline. Christian religious views have been targeted—for example, Christmas trees have been burned. Has the Government had a chance to talk to the authorities about their role in protecting those of a Christian faith and other ethnic faiths in Syria, and particularly women, who are often at the forefront of what is taking place?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. The UK Government have raised it at an official level. It is incredibly important that the future process includes different religious and ethnic groups and women. That point has definitely been made. The voices of Syrians who have been through so much must be heard.

When I was in Jordan, I met Syrian refugees—women who had fled from Syria into Jordan. I also met a number of girls being supported by the UK to access the education that they might not otherwise have had, and we are of course working with the Jordanian Government on that. It is clear that those women and girls have to be part of the future of their country. That is in line with the new Government’s determination to support women’s organisations, including those representing women with disabilities. We are being very thorough about that.

A number of Members talked about Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Gaza was mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith), for Glasgow West, for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) and for Bathgate and Linlithgow, and by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton. We are also deeply concerned about the healthcare situation in Gaza, including for women and girls, and indeed for men and boys. I have seen that for myself. When I was in Jordan, I saw medical supplies that should have been in Gaza but had not been allowed to pass in. The Government have repeatedly pushed the Israeli Government on that. We have raised this continuously, bilaterally and multilaterally. There must be access for all the humanitarian supplies that are needed, and that must include medical supplies.

UK aid has been going to support women, particularly around sanitation, menstruation and pregnancy. I have discussed this directly with bodies such as UK-Med and others. It is appalling to see the deeply concerning reports about the treatment of Palestinian detainees. Detainees must be treated in line with international law, there must be access for the ICRC, and reports of sexual violence must be investigated.

The impact of conflict-related sexual violence on Israelis was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Gateshead South and for Milton Keynes Central, and others. I know that this issue is causing incredible pain and anguish to the families of hostages, having spoken with some of them in Tel Aviv. They are deeply concerned, understandably, about the situation for their family members. That is yet another reason why the hostages must be released, we must have a ceasefire, and we must see that surge of aid into Gaza.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North asked some questions about Afghanistan. As the Foreign Secretary has said, the Taliban’s further oppression of women through its so-called vice and virtue law is appalling. Many Members rightly raised the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan during the debate. My hon. Friend asked specifically about gender apartheid. We are aware of calls for the inclusion of gender apartheid as a new crime against humanity, and we are actively considering the legal and policy questions raised by the proposed new crime.

My hon. Friend asked for more details about what we are doing; well, we continue to condemn the Taliban’s action against women and girls, and did so most recently in a December G7+ joint statement. We have already said that as a new Government we support the initiative to hold the Taliban to account for their violations of the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, or CEDAW. I am pleased that I can report today that we will formally join the list of countries that have announced their political support for the initiative. I hope Members will welcome that.

The Government are committed to preventing conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls, particularly in instances of trafficking. In relation to Ukraine, we heard some really disturbing details during the debate. We provided up to £10.7 million to support projects aimed at building Ukraine’s capacity for the domestic investigation and prosecution of war crimes, including conflict-related sexual violence. On the issue of capacity, which was raised by the shadow Minister, a member of the PSVI team of experts has been deployed to Ukraine to support Ukrainian authorities in the investigation and prosecution of conflict-related sexual violence in a survivor-centred manner. It is really important to have that expert input, which we are supporting.

On the broader of issue of preventing sexual violence in conflict, in November, Lord Collins visited Colombia in his first official engagement as the Prime Minister’s special representative. He led the UK’s delegation to the high-level meeting of the international alliance on PSVI. I was pleased to hear the shadow Minister talk about the initiative from 2023. We very much support that agenda and are determined to enhance it. She asked about our plans to do so; when Lord Collins was in Bogotá, he called for greater international action in response to the increased rates of conflict-related sexual violence around the world. To respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, that includes determination to use sanctions where necessary against the perpetrators of these vile crimes.

We know that all forms of gender-based violence, including conflict-related sexual violence, are preventable. That is why I am pleased that we have committed a further £18 million to the UN trust fund to end violence against women, as well as providing training on sexual exploitation and abuse for more than 2,000 peacekeeping personnel in the last financial year, through the British peace support team in Africa. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central, who is not in her place—

[Emily Darlington]

I am back now.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Oh, she has come back—excellent. She was right to raise that matter.

This has been a challenging afternoon for many because we have also had a debate on violence against women and girls in the Chamber, so I know that many have been shuttling between the two. I will briefly also mention that, during the 16 days of activism against violence against women, I announced three new partnerships with women’s rights organisations in Kenya and South Africa to develop new preventive strategies.

Our commitment to halve violence against women and girls within a decade and our work with international partners to empower women globally are critical. We have talked today about how an unprecedented profusion of conflict is having a devastating impact for so many women and girls around the world, so I underscore this Government’s unwavering commitment to changing that, and to ensuring that, to reuse the quote rightly mentioned by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns), “Shame must change sides”. It should be the perpetrators who are feeling that shame, who are feeling the accountability and, above all, who are deterred from that behaviour in the first place. We are determined to work in partnership with Members across this House, with key international and multilateral partners, with civil society and, most importantly, with women and girls affected on the ground.

15:05

[Alice Macdonald]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts.

I thank all Members who have spoken so powerfully today on this subject. As the Minister noted, two debates on male violence against women and girls have been happening at the same time, and many of us would have liked to speak in them both. Although the contexts are obviously different, many of the themes will be the same—the oppression of women, systematic discrimination, and the need for leadership and determination.

I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their thorough responses to many of the questions we have raised. We see so much consensus on both sides of the House. We have covered a wide range of subjects and geographies—we have gone all around the world—and we have still not covered all the contexts in which women and girls are suffering. We have heard about many statistics and many stories, but importantly we have focused on the solutions; we can spend a lot of time in debates talking about the context without focusing on what we actually need to do. We have heard of the horrors of the direct and indirect impacts of conflict, the horrors of rape and murder, and the horrible realities of daily life for so many women and girls.

At the beginning of the debate I said that I hoped we could find consensus, and I think we have found it on many areas—on the targeting of aid, on the need to involve women in peace processes and on the need for determination and focused leadership. As the head of UN Women said:

“Women continue to pay the price of the wars of men”.

We need to be clear that we are speaking about male violence.

I want to finish by putting front and centre the women and girls who are in conflict zones and who are fighting so hard for their rights, and simply to survive, because it is them we must listen to. I will finish with the words of one of them, Leymah Gbowee, a Nobel laureate and a woman who fought so hard for peace in Liberia. She said:

“You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.”

We have heard today that we are not walking on tiptoe on this subject. We will be working at full throttle, with determination, focus and leadership, so that finally, maybe one day, women and girls are not suffering from violence anywhere.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of conflict on women and girls.

15:43

Sitting adjourned.