UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for securing this important debate and for her tireless work in this area. I thank her and other speakers for the tributes they paid to the Government on the work that has been done, and note the comments about progress that is yet to come.

The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, is right to say that the powerlessness of women is at the root of this problem, which is why the education of women, ensuring that they are independent, have bank accounts and participate at all levels of society is key. As she said that, I found myself thinking about groups that I met in India over the past few days. I could see that DfID’s support for women and girls was transformational, but also how far we have to go. It is in the light of this that we need to assess what is happening in terms of women, peace and security.

We firmly share the view so powerfully expressed in this debate that women must be at the heart of peace and security. They are central to efforts to prevent violent conflict overseas and to build strong societies yet too often, as speakers have said, women and girls are excluded from peace processes and continue to be especially vulnerable to violence, with dreadful consequences.

The UN estimates that at least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in their lifetime. Although women and children represent 90% of casualties of conflict, only 8% of participants in peace negotiations have been women. Of nearly 600 peace agreements signed between 1990 and 2010, only 16% contained references to women. Looking more widely, women are too often marginalised in society generally. For example, they account for only 21% of parliamentarians globally, and would not be at that level but for quotas.

There is international consensus on what needs to be done. The UN Security Council set this out in 2000, in its Resolution 1325, and in the six resolutions since mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser. The council called for action under four pillars: women’s participation in building peace; preventing conflict and preventing violence against women and girls; protecting them; and making them central to the provision of humanitarian relief and a society’s recovery from conflict.

The UK can be pleased with how far we have come across government to put women and girls at the centre of policy. As my noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is leading an international effort to shatter a culture of impunity for sexual violence in conflict, building global momentum and taking practical action on the ground, including deploying experts to help in countries ranging from the DRC to Syria, and from Bosnia to Mali. The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, to which noble Lords referred, will take place in June, and 140 countries, international organisations and members of civil society will come together to discuss and agree what more we can do to tackle these terrible crimes. I will take back my noble friend Lady Falkner’s suggestion about the All-Party Group on UN Women.

My noble friend Lady Falkner flagged up those countries that do not have national action plans. I assure her that we are working bilaterally with such countries on security and justice reform, preventing violence against women and girls, empowerment, and tackling violence against women and girls in humanitarian settings. We are certainly encouraging those various countries to take that forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, mentioned Syrian women’s participation, and she will have noted that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has been urging that women are included in the discussions on Syria’s future, and we will continue to do so.

The Department for International Development, as many noble Lords will know, works very hard to try to prevent violence against women and girls. Its strategic vision for girls and women promotes women and girls’ health and rights, and their access to economic resources and education—very much building upon the ideas that the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, outlined. It builds women’s political and civil participation and puts women’s and girls’ needs at the centre of our humanitarian response. It makes the policy arguments, including at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and in the debate about what follows the 2015 millennium development goals. Noble Lords will know that the United Kingdom is pushing hard for a stand-alone goal on gender. My honourable friend Lynne Featherstone is the Government’s champion on tackling violence against women and girls, and has led groundbreaking work in this area, including on tackling FGM.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the Ministry of Defence. Its goals cover personnel, training and operations, as noble Lords will know. It regularly reviews the employability of women in the Armed Forces and aims to ensure that gender is understood in all that the MoD does. The noble Baronesses, Lady Kinnock and Lady Thornton, flagged up this area in particular. The MoD constantly reviews training and includes sexual violence scenarios in pre-deployment. Operational planning for new theatres will take into consideration tackling sexual violence. NATO has carried out a lot of work towards integrating UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and gender perspectives into its command structure. This is a template that the Ministry of Defence can apply. We are also looking at the example set by Canada in terms of training overseas, and are seeking to see whether that can be brought into the way in which we do things through the Ministry of Defence. In terms of senior leadership, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, mentioned, we have, according to this note here, two female air vice-marshals in the Ministry of Defence, so we are making some progress but are acutely aware of the challenges that the MoD faces. I am sure that her comments will be taken note of.

Action at home is equally important, whether through the Home Office’s work to end violence against women and girls or the Government’s agenda to see women play a greater role in public life. We want women to represent half of new public appointees by the end of this Parliament, and we have reached a figure of 45%.

The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, raised the subject of quotas and whether negotiation and mediation teams will be at least 30% female. The Government are reluctant to set a specific figure on women’s representation, but we are pushing hard to improve numbers. I am sure that this will be kept under review.

The UN Security Council calls for member states to deliver on all four pillars through national action plans. The UK adopted its first such plan in 2006 and we will soon, as noble Lords mentioned, launch our third plan, for the next three years. My noble friend Lady Hodgson is right that this needs to be strategic and joined up across government for it to have its best effect. I read with enormous interest the independent review of the previous national action plan, which makes this point very clearly.

The challenge for the next plan is to bring together all the work that we do—we recognise that—and to ensure that we deliver both globally and on the ground and test our plans against what those in this field are saying to us. We will bring under one framework our work on the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, the strategic vision for girls and women and the call to action on protecting women in emergencies, as well as our work at the UN Security Council and at the Commission on the Status of Women. I hope that this reassures noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, that that is the approach that we are taking. My noble friend Lady Hodgson asked about the review of the national action plan and whether it will continue to be reviewed annually and reported to Parliament. We will continue to report annually on this, as well as to hold frequent meetings about it.

We are also learning from what appears to be working. DfID has a fund of, I think, £25 million—I do not have the exact figure in front of me—which is a research and innovation fund. My noble friend Lady Falkner asked about what we were learning; that fund is seeking to analyse what works and, therefore, what should be taken forward further. We are seeking to bring all this together; I think that that is vital. We will deliver multilaterally, through the United Nations, NATO and the European Union and now also in partnership with the African Union. We will put in place stringent monitoring and evaluation to assess the impact and outcomes of our actions and to capture the changes that our national action plan will make for girls and women on the ground. We will integrate women, peace and security issues into the work of the new Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock.

I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, that there will be central guidance from the fund on women, peace and security, although our conclusion is that a ring-fenced allocation would in fact encourage programme designers to take a compartmentalised approach to women. We think that it is extremely important, as that review indicates, to look at this strategically and make sure that it runs right through all the various programmes, but I understand people’s concern and the necessity to make sure that is does indeed run though every programme.

We will also be consulting both in the UK and on the ground and we take very seriously the Associate Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security and Gender Action for Peace and Security. They were instrumental in delivering a successful workshop at our embassy in Kabul in December and will remain invaluable as we plan and carry out more workshops before April. We continue to be very engaged as far as the position of women in Afghanistan is concerned.

As we prepare to adopt and implement a new national action plan, we can be proud of what we have achieved but we recognise that we have much more to do and that we need impact that helps to shift general attitudes in society, protects women and girls and secures a better place for them in delivering peace and security. What lies behind all this, as noble Lords have made clear, is gender inequality. They are right that addressing this is fundamental to ensuring that women and girls are at the heart of all that we do, everywhere and in everything.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we began this debate by having 62 minutes for a 60-minute debate, including the intervention in the gap. Thanks to the immense self-discipline of speakers—in particular, that of the opposition final speaker—we have now ended with three minutes to spare. Therefore, I beg to move that the House do adjourn during pleasure until 8.47 pm.