Women in Society

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D'Souza]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for introducing this debate, and offer my congratulations in advance to all those Peers who will be making their maiden speeches in this debate today. I start with a mantra we all know but too often do not implement—educating girls is development’s magic bullet. We all know this. Wherever you are in the world, if you invest in the education of girls, you will get development—by which I mean later marriage, better family spacing, smaller families, reduction in infant and maternal mortality and morbidity, involvement in and contribution to the economic and political development of the country, commitment to the education of the next generation, and a lessening of inter and intra-societal conflict.

Updated research tells us that women are better at consensus, interaction and complexities. On the whole, women are less aggressive and competitive than men. Given these facts, why do we not put all our aid into educating and promoting women?

We must be thankful that the Government have committed themselves to maintaining and even increasing overseas development aid. Furthermore, there is a strong verbal commitment to include gender parity in each and every DfID programme, and a focus on enabling women to have a choice in family spacing. It is reliably said that only 23 per cent of women in sub-Saharan Africa have access to contraception. The Government are also fierce about measuring outcomes in order to both justify the taxpayers’ contribution to aid, and to learn what works and what does not. To underline this, they are setting up an independent evaluation unit which will look at both outputs and outcomes. All this is more than acceptable.

However, in the light of the most recent announcement by the Government that aid to Afghanistan is to be increased by up to 40 per cent, I would like to give a very short example to illustrate some of the obstacles that might stand in the way of achieving laudable objectives, namely education. Here I would like to register an interest as co-founder and long-time supporter of a high school in Afghanistan, in a district of Kabul which was greatly brutalised by the Taliban, and before that by the civil war and before that by the Soviet occupation.

The school is based on the vision of a single man, called Aziz Royesh, who was himself a refugee in Pakistan during the time of the Soviet occupation. He returned at the end of 2001 and set up a school in a bomb-damaged building with no windows and a mud floor. He divided up the space with a torn sheet, to have two classrooms. He had 30 students, many of them children who provided newly returned families with their only source of income as carpet weavers. He ran three daily shifts. With the first tranche of money he did a very wise thing—he repaired a larger building in this war-torn area of Kabul and put in heating. This drew in the entire community, being the only heated space during a bitter winter. During that time, Aziz took the opportunity to provide adult literacy classes, and gradually the fear of educating daughters—remember this was in the immediate aftermath of the Taliban—began to diminish and parents agreed to send them to school. The community was involved at every stage: parents helped to build the new school, a local businessman provided a bus to bring girls from more outlying districts and others paid for the diesel for the generators. The parent-teacher association grew and grew. In the 2004 elections the school was given over to mock elections so that everyone, but especially the women, knew not only how to vote but what the elections were about.

Children I first saw nine years ago toiling as carpet weavers in the early morning have now graduated from the school following a liberal arts programme and gained entrance to the hugely competitive Kabul University. An indicator of the success of the school, which now has nearly 3,000 pupils, is that of the 16 annual scholarships offered by the prestigious Women’s University based in Bangladesh, 11 were awarded to the school, which began in a mud hut. The total cost of the school, including the countless children who are being educated both academically and vocationally, and the teacher training programme, as well as the adult education programmes, is in the region of $400,000 a year. Perhaps half of this comes from the very modest termly fees, and outside contributions make up the shortfall.

There are many private initiatives of this kind resulting from visits abroad—the right people being in the right place at the right time—and there must be several in your Lordships’ House who contribute directly to the education of girls in particular. The overheads are bypassed but, perhaps more importantly, these initiatives are built on something which already exists. Few of us in the middle of chaos and unfamiliarity believe that we can, for example, build a school for girls that will succeed beyond our expectations. No, what tends to happen is that, with luck, we stumble across some tiny initiative—something which the community has got itself sufficiently co-ordinated to achieve—above all recognising that everything starts with a leader from within the community. These are the projects that succeed and make a real difference.

Perhaps the more usual aid programme route is to assess needs from our own western perspective—whether they be clean water, primary health or whatever—and go about putting them into the society. Too many of these projects fail, and they fail because, however wonderful and however needed, they are not owned by the community, and because therefore the continuity of these projects, by which I mean their flourishing and growth, will continue only in so far as there are funds and external support.

In dealing with a society such as Afghanistan, which due to tradition, religion, tribalism, decades of war and poverty is deeply suspicious of external inputs, the problems of promoting the education of women are quadrupled. It has to start from within the community; it has to be sustained by the community; and it has to be governed and owned by the community. Perhaps here I may remind your Lordships of the contribution by my noble friend Lord Sandwich to the foreign policy debate held at the beginning of the month, in which he pointed out that, however generous and well thought through an assistance programme, you have to involve the local community to build trust. Anyone who has any familiarity with Afghanistan will, as he does, know this.

The announcement of up to 40 per cent more aid to Afghanistan at the same time as the US Congress has ordered the suspension of US aid due to corruption gives cause for concern. Will more aid promote the education of and contribution to the politics of the country by women, or could it simply add to the disillusion and corruption rife in that country, as many Afghans themselves believe will be the case?

If we were to use the considerable funds available within the DfID budget to scour the poorest and most conflict-laden parts of the world for leaders who can demonstrate a vision and a strategy to bring their communities along with them, we would achieve more than anyone thought possible with perhaps a quarter of the funds. Education is essential, as is widely recognised. What we need to do now is follow more imaginative and perhaps smaller and less expensive ways of delivering it.

I end by asking the Government to report on a much wider policy area—namely, the national action plan for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Can the Government confirm when they will publish their revised strategy on women, peace and security, and say what indicators and benchmarking might be included? The 10th anniversary of 1325 will be in October this year. Can the Government say what plans they might have to mark this significant milestone? Finally, what arrangements do the Government have to involve additional departments not involved in the previous plan, such as the Northern Ireland Office?