Women and Girls: Employment Skills in the Developing World

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for securing this very important debate. The impact of the economic empowerment of women on a family in the developing world is well documented and I will not dwell on it here too long, other than to mention a fact that caught my eye when I read the UN Women report included in the excellent briefing note prepared for this debate by the House of Lords Library. A 40-year study using data from 219 countries found that, for every additional year of education for women of reproductive age, child mortality decreased by 9.5%. That says it all. When share of household income controlled by women rises, children benefit.

I was therefore delighted to see the Secretary of State for International Development, Priti Patel, commit the UK to continue to play a key role as part of the UN high-level panel which aims to help women around the world get jobs, overcome discriminatory laws and reduce the burden of unpaid domestic work. However, I was less delighted when the Secretary of State capitulated to the Daily Mail’s vitriolic campaign against funding for the Ethiopian Yegna project by the NGO Girl Effect. This project works to break the cycle of intergenerational norms, to change the way that individuals, families and communities think, feel and act towards girls—a point touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger.

All too often, we treat the symptoms of poverty but overlook the cause. We focus on services such as schools and health clinics—which of course are important. But research shows that girls are consistently passed over or are denied access to the services they need. They fail to take up immunisations or they drop out of school.

Using storylines that confront real-life issues such as early forced marriage, violence and barriers to education, the Yegna brand provides role models and inspiration. It gives voice to girls’ desire to stay in school, stay safe and healthy, have economic opportunity and participate fully in society. Yegna today reaches 8.5 million people—50% of the population in Addis and the Amhara region of Ethiopia—and is helping to change the lives of some of the hardest-to-reach and most disadvantaged girls in the world. Seventy-six per cent of girls who listen to Yegna say that this has inspired them to continue their education, and 95% of boy listeners—so important—say that they would speak out against a girl being forced to marry.

DfID has consistently recognised Yegna’s impact. The project has received an A grade in its annual evaluation for the past three consecutive years. The Secretary of State, appearing before the International Development Committee, said:

“UK aid in Ethiopia is combating forced child marriage, violence, teen pregnancies—all those really big, substantial issues. We are doing a range of work there. That is just one project”.


It is a pity that the Secretary of State no longer feels able to support a programme that was transformational on many levels, and capitulated to the Daily Mail’s campaign to withdraw from it. Who is responsible for policy decisions at DfID—the Daily Mail or the Secretary of State? Will the Minister confirm that the Daily Mail’s campaign to undermine the 0.7% ODA spend will not succeed and that the Government remain committed to it?

Funding to change the norms within which women in developing societies are viewed and empowering them to believe in themselves is crucial if we are to meet the sustainable development goals and leave no one behind. Women’s economic empowerment is crucial, as study after study shows that when they have money at their disposal the whole family benefits: the elderly, the young and the disabled.

In the few seconds that remain to me I will touch quickly on the election of Donald Trump as President of America, which has really put fear into the hearts of many NGOs that work in sexual reproduction and women’s health. The global gag rule brought in by previous US Presidents has been not just reinstated by Donald Trump but significantly expanded. The Government in the Netherlands have already announced the creation of a fund to counter the global gag rule. What role will DfID play to counterbalance the global gag rule?

Syria: Refugees

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, and £1.1 billion of the money which I mentioned has gone to areas in the region—most notably, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. That money is being focused on economic development, by helping people to find work, and on schools, by helping children who are currently out of school to get into it so that their learning does not suffer. The noble Lord is absolutely right that we should focus on that.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Liberal Democrat Benches.

[Baroness Sheehan]

My Lords, may I ask the Minister for an assurance that, should the Kazakh peace negotiations take place, the Government will do their utmost to make sure that Syrian refugees and internally displaced persons are fully considered? While I am on my feet, can I ask him whether he could outline what role the Government hope to be able to play in the peace negotiations?

[Lord Bates]

We hope to play an active role through the International Syria Support Group, which has the two strands of humanitarian aid and conflict resolution. That meets weekly in Geneva and we are still playing a part in it. We wish the negotiations all success and will of course support them in every way we can.

Aid and Trade

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I can certainly say to the noble Lord that that is not the case in terms of tax havens. CDC is very clear that it does not use tax havens for investment, or to hide investments, but is a transparent international finance organisation that does tremendous work around the world. It invests in 1,200 companies, and safeguards and creates about 1 million new jobs. The CDC Bill, which has its Second Reading in the other place tomorrow, is simply to give the facility for that increased investment to take place, from £1.5 billion to £6 billion, because the former figure was put in place 17 years ago and we think it is time to look at it again. However, in order for that money to be drawn down, CDC will have to comply with the same rigorous business case requirements, on transparency of investments, that any other organisations would. I hope that that helps to reassure the noble Lord on that point.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, it beggars belief that, at the same that the Government were in Marrakech signing the COP 21 agreement, they were also announcing a huge oil and gas project in east Africa, using £25 million of the UK aid budget. Will the Minister point out to his colleagues that east Africa is facing famine due to desertification brought on by fossil fuel-induced climate change and that some policy coherence on the part of the Government would be welcome?

[Lord Bates]

It is certainly true to say that we were a leading force in securing that agreement in Paris and building on it at the recent G20 summit in Hangzhou. We are very committed to that. We are addressing all the humanitarian issues that were talked about. The UK is one of the largest economies—in fact, it is the only major economy—to achieve its 0.7% commitment. We do that in humanitarian aid but, under the rules of the OECD and the DAC, we also allow certain amounts to be introduced and used to build capacity and to build business and economic development within those countries, and that is an example of one of those.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I start by adding my warm words of welcome to the Minister in taking up his new post. Before I turn to what I had planned say, I shall address some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in his very wide-ranging speech, almost every word of which I did not agree with—in particular, his condemnation of giving aid to countries still practising FGM. His recommendation would condemn girls in those countries to the continuing practice; whereas engaging with the countries to change their practice would, in time, bring about the change that he says he would like to see. At this point, I pay tribute to the huge amount of work that my noble friend Lady Featherstone, who is no longer in her place, has put into alleviating this dreadful practice for the millions of girls who are subjected to it.

I also want to address the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, about Pakistanis. As a British Pakistani, I draw his attention to the fact that on the planes that flew into the World Trade towers on 9/11, there was not a single terrorist on board of Pakistani descent; rather, the vast majority were Saudi Arabians. Saudi Arabia is a country with which we do a great deal of trade in arms, yet we fail to condemn it for exporting its particularly vicious, mediaeval brand of Islam to countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are trying their utmost to deal with it.

I turn to my prepared remarks. There are people in the Middle East and parts of Africa who are on the move. They are on the move because they want the right to live in peace, freedom and human dignity. Decades of abject poverty has devastated families and communities, leading to the political unrest we have seen in recent years.

Until recently, it really was not our problem. We could tinker with the odd issue as it arose, respond to the various media frenzies and retire back into our comfortable lives until the next disaster struck. Today, it is different. Today, we have to confront these issues more directly, because they have arrived on our doorstep. A mass of people—indeed, the biggest mass movement of people in Europe since the Second World War—are desperate enough to cross a continent on foot and risk their most precious possessions to chance the Mediterranean because what they are fleeing is more terrible than what lies ahead.

This debate, brought to us by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is timely because it presents an opportunity to stress again the importance of developed Western nations working to alleviate poverty, and to assert again that, although it is the moral thing to do, this is not just about charity and justice, it is patently in our own interest—a point made most ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger. The problems posed by the issue of people on the move is overturning political norms at home, and we are seeing a rapidly changing political landscape, with all its inherent dangers. Surely it is cheaper and smarter to do what we can to help people where they live, so that they continue to live in their homeland—which is the option that the vast majority prefer.

In the fourth century BC, Aristotle said,

“poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”,

and it is incontrovertible that an important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money. I am proud that it was a Liberal Democrat in the coalition Government, Michael Moore, whose Private Member’s Bill saw one of the finest moments in British history when we enshrined in law our pledge to fulfil the 1970 UN resolution to spend 0.7% of our GNI on international development. I should not forget the part played in its success by my noble friend Lord Purvis. Not only did they enable Britain to fulfil the UN resolution, but a Liberal Party manifesto pledge dating back as far as 1970 was also fulfilled.

What gives the legislation teeth is annual accountability. DfID is exemplary in the way it reports its activities openly and transparently—a lesson that other departments would do well to learn. The department’s work is widely respected across the world, so much so that international development is one of the few areas where the UK is still a global leader and reaps the huge soft power benefits that come from that.

DfID recently published its 2015-16 annual report, referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. He took different things away from it than I did. It gives me an opportunity to cite examples of what the department has achieved on Britain’s behalf, particularly with respect to giving us value for money. Here are some examples.

On wealth creation, it supported 69.5 million people, including 36.4 million women, to gain access to financial services to help them work their way out of poverty, exceeding the target of 50 million by some margin. On poverty, vulnerability, nutrition and hunger, it reached 30 million children under five and pregnant women, of whom 12.1 million were women or girls—again, exceeding their own target of 20 million by a considerable margin. On health, DfID supported 5.6 million births with skilled birth attendants, exceeding their commitment of 2 million. On education, water sanitation and hygiene, governance and security, humanitarian assistance and supporting people to deal with the effects of climate change, DfID can be proud of its work, and I congratulate the department. It has given us real value for money.

DfID also delivers results through the multilateral organisations that it supports, such as GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which immunised 56 million children in 2014. Then there is the Global Partnership for Education, which trained 98,000 teachers in one year, and UNICEF, which helped 10.4 million children in humanitarian situations to access basic education in 2014. I for one welcome the fact that DfID’s achievements are presented to us on an annual basis, so not only can we see for ourselves the good work that the department is doing but we can use it to persuade others to follow our lead.

There is one other point worth making—that it is important to maintain quality as well as quantity of aid. We must bear in mind that other departments will now spend an increasing proportion of the official development assistance budget, increasing by more than 25% by 2020. There are obvious risks that this presents, such as diluting the quality and potential impact of aid. However, it also represents an opportunity to get cross-Whitehall buy-in for supporting progress towards sustainable development goals and policy coherence for sustainable development. It is clear to me that, to have peace on our planet, we must eradicate poverty—and peace must be translated into food, shelter, health and education. Money well spent and annually accounted for allows us to do just that.

Africa: European Union Economic Partnership Agreements

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Chidgey for securing this important debate. On the face of it, economic partnership agreements between the EU and economic regions of Africa should be a welcome development for Africa, purporting, as they do, to promote trade and investment between African, Caribbean and Pacific partners and the EU, with the laudable aim of contributing to sustainable development and poverty reduction. Furthermore, we are told that EPAs are tailor-made to suit specific regional circumstances; that they will open up EU markets fully and immediately, but allow African, Caribbean and Pacific countries long transition periods of up to 25 years to liberalise up to 80% of their markets to EU imports, while still providing protection for sensitive sectors.

EPAs are also touted as drivers of change that will help kick-start reform and contribute to good economic governance, helping ACP partners attract investment and boost their economic growth. One would think that, with such benefits, ACP countries would be champing at the bit to sign on the dotted line. However, the October 2014 deadline left many countries in a dilemma, causing tensions in various states. Some of their concerns have already been addressed very ably by my noble friend Lord Chidgey. Some felt that if they did not sign, they would lose their preferential market access for the few products that they did export to the EU. However, others felt that their longer-term prospects would be jeopardised if they signed the EPA. For them, the threats included significant tariff revenue losses, loss of policy space, threats to local industries, increased unemployment, serious disruption of existing or planned customs unions, and the displacement of existing regional trade and production capacities.

I thank the House of Lords Library staff for producing an excellent briefing for this debate. I found their inclusion of the Round Table article by Sir Ronald Sanders, The EU, Economic Partnership Agreements and Africa, very useful in giving me a perspective of EPAs from a recipient’s viewpoint. I will read part of the abstract because it is succinct and to the point. It says:

“Africa has been divided into four groups of states by the European Union in the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that will define the relationship between Africa and Europe in the future. The EPAs are unfair. They demand reciprocity between the EU countries collectively and each African country individually”.

That last sentence makes a nonsense of the concept of reciprocity. Reciprocity can exist fairly only when practised between partners of equal stature. I borrow again from Sir Ronald’s article when he tells us that Aristotle, in his monumental work Nicomachean Ethics,

“propounded the doctrine that: as between unequals, equity requires not reciprocity but proportionality”.

It is patently clear that unless trade agreements between rich and poor countries recognise the fundamental principle of proportionality, they can never be deemed fair. The right reverend Prelate also made this point.

I returned from a visit to Sierra Leone this Monday, so naturally I was interested in the trade figures between the EU and the Economic Community of West African States. I was rather surprised at what I found, given that the EPA was signed in 2014. It showed a drop in EU imports from the west African states of 28% from €38.3 billion in 2013 to €27.4 billion in 2015. Over the same period, exports from the EU to the west African states dropped by just 4%. This represents a trade balance in favour of the west African states of €8 billion in 2013 being transformed to €1.6 billion in favour of the EU in 2015. Some of the reasons behind this trend may well have been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. In my view, the EPAs are a cause for deep concern. Perhaps the Minister will take up my concerns with the Directorate-General for Trade.

In concluding, I will move away from EPAs and focus for a moment on the implications of Brexit for trade relations between Europe and Africa. Of course, we do not yet know what Brexit will mean in detail but it is important that the UK should prepare for the potential disruption of trade between the UK and Africa and at the same time actively seek to ensure that our trade policy towards Africa also promotes Africa’s development. This will be in our national interest but also in Africa’s interest. I note the challenges that the Brexit timetable is going to pose in reaching those trade agreements.

I commend the recent report of the expert panel, which included two members of this House, under the umbrella of the APPG on Trade Out of Poverty. The report looked at potential future UK support for the Africa Free Trade initiative and its recommendations will, I believe, not only promote economic growth in Africa but help to pull significant numbers of poor people, women in particular, out of poverty as they are able to trade and move freely across borders. This will make a real contribution to progress towards the sustainable development goals and the aspiration to leave no one behind. At the same time, of course, we will be helping to create a larger and more open market from which British companies can benefit.

We have traditionally played an important role within Europe in arguing for open and fair trading relationships with developing country partners. The implications of Brexit for trade relations between Europe and Africa are potentially serious. I hope that it is part of the Government’s plan for Brexit to actively seek opportunities to be even more open and support Africa’s own efforts to move towards a more sustainable future.

Humanitarian Emergencies: Women’s Rights Organisations

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, we advocate very strongly strengthening the voice, choice and control of women’s and girls’ rights in all settings. The noble Baroness is right that we need to work tougher and harder to make sure that we act as strong advocates for women’s voices in countries where they are not being heard.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I spent Friday and Saturday at the refugee camp in Calais. Can the Minister say what dialogue she has had with her French counterparts about the conditions of women and children in the camp there, given that some of them have family reunification rights to the UK?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness will be aware, we are in ongoing dialogues with all our partners. Whether in Calais or elsewhere, we need to ensure that we very much support the protection and rights of women and girls in those settings, as they will be the most prone to abuse and violence. It is therefore incumbent upon us to ensure that we, along with our partners, work hard to ensure that. However, the noble Baroness will also be aware that these issues were raised at the last conference we held in London and that all partners gave a commitment to ensure that we are able to put into place as many safeguards as we possibly can. But we do need the grand bargain, which is about bringing together the development and humanitarian pieces in a better-aligned way so that we can deal with both issues at the same time.