UNESCO: Equatorial Guinea

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, our ambassador to UNESCO has urged each group of which the Government are a member to adopt strong positions condemning this prize and seeking a solution. The Minister of State for International Development raised the subject of the prize with the UNESCO director-general in his meeting on 4 June and wrote to the director-general and the chairman of the executive board before the meeting on 15 June urging the executive board to withdraw the prize. Our delegation continues to push for strong statements against the prize and for firm and transparent rules for prizes that would prevent this problem from recurring in the future.

[Baroness Morris of Bolton]

My Lords, in assisting Equatorial Guinea and wider Africa to reach the minimum standards of human rights that the world rightly expects, what is DfID doing to help to build the essentials of a civil society there, especially access to clean drinking water and programmes to end violence towards women?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, my noble friend raises some important issues. A large proportion of DfID’s funding goes on programmes and initiatives to fight violence against women and on challenging it through civil society and women’s organisations. As my noble friend will realise, we support the MDGs; indeed, we are one of the countries that will meet the commitment on 0.7 per cent of GNI by 2013. Clean water is one of our major priorities in this respect.