Violence Against Women and Girls

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate my Committee’s report on violence against women and girls. I am delighted, with the change of Chair, to be under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke.

I welcome my colleague, the Minister, to her place. I appreciate her role as a champion for women and her campaigning enthusiasm for that. I know she shares with me and the Committee the recognition that the status and role of women is absolutely central to development policy.

Violence is of widespread concern. When we published our report in June, I said:

“Violence against women expresses a deep-seated contempt that, regrettably, persists in some countries towards women and girls. It has been the ‘forgotten Millennium Development Goal’. The way in which any nation treats its women holds the key to its social and economic advancement. When you treat women as chattels - when you mutilate them, abuse them, force them to marry early, lock them out of school or stop them entering the workforce – you fail to function as a society.”

It is that fundamental. I will not rehearse the statistics, but in many quarters they are shocking.

When we published the report, we made a number of recommendations, and I ask for an update on the Government’s progress on them. We know where the Government have agreed with us.

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On resuming—

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

The interruption came at a natural break in my speech, because I was about to summarise some of the things the Committee welcomes that have happened since our report. I will then ask a few questions to clarify the progress being made, with a final couple of remarks about the situation in Afghanistan.

Commendably, the Foreign Secretary has maintained the cross-departmental prevention of sexual violence in conflict initiative, which has been widely welcomed and supported. The declaration of commitment to end sexual violence in conflict has been signed by 113 countries. The UK hosted a high-level event on violence against women and girls in humanitarian crises in November and plans a summit on ending sexual violence in conflict in June this year.

The Department for International Development specifically has made progress with its £35 million fund to end female genital mutilation within a generation, to which the Minister is extremely committed, and she will want to speak about when she replies to the debate. DFID has also launched a new £3 million programme on access to justice for women and girls suffering violence in Afghanistan. We welcome these initiatives by the Government.

May I address some of the issues arising from our recommendations? First, we acknowledge the “Theory of Change” initiative underlying the Government and Department approach. May we have more specifics on how theory becomes practice? What in particular is being done in those countries where violence is especially prevalent, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia—which is not to say that there are not other countries where it is a serious problem? Will violence against women and girls be prioritised specifically in the programmes in those countries?

We had a specific concern with water and sanitation, which I accept that the Government acknowledged immediately, because there was no particular focus on violence against women and girls. Everyone knows that this is a prime example of where women and girls are especially vulnerable, either when they are going to collect water or are using sanitary facilities—they become vulnerable to attack. We welcome the Government agreeing that they should update the guidance. Will the Minister report on the progress made? They gave us 12 months’ notice, so we are halfway through that period.

Last week at the Liaison Committee, I also raised the subject of female genital mutilation with the Prime Minister. The International Development Committee was concerned that it was also an issue within the United Kingdom. It is not as prevalent here as it is in some countries, thank God, but many women living in this country have nevertheless suffered from it, and an estimated 20,000 girls are at risk.

We are aware, first, that female genital mutilation happens in this country, and yet there have been no prosecutions. Sometimes, too, girls are shipped out to have it done abroad and then brought back. Thirdly, the Select Committee was told, women who are British citizens and brought up here may go back to the country of their family’s origin where they are at risk, and yet the extent of our ability to protect them as British citizens is limited.

We are interested in finding out from the Minister how the DFID fund will deal with such issues and, in particular, whether there is any update on the possibility of prosecutions. There have been investigations, but no case has been brought to trial. As the Prime Minister said, getting people to testify and give evidence is the problem, but our view is that prosecutions would underline and demonstrate the strength of feeling.

DFID is a big player in the development sector and in engaging with multilateral agencies. The Committee hopes that when the Government engage with such agencies they will ensure that the issue of violence against women and girls is prioritised in their programmes. We are interested to know what steps the Government have taken to ensure that that is so. We are aware that the Secretary of State champions the issue in the World Bank, but the Government engage with other multilateral agencies where how the issue is being taken forward is not so apparent.

The high-level panel co-chaired by the Prime Minister made a welcome specific reference to target goals on gender equality, with one section on targeting violence against women and girls and another on child marriage, about which the Select Committee was particularly concerned. The recommendation is now going through a working party. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to ensure that the recommendation comes out at the other end and is not lost or diluted in any way?

Some people have said, for example, that we cannot have a target of zero violence, but once we start to quantify things the feeling is that we are in effect diluting the commitment to achieve measurable transformational change in the sector. I guess that the challenge to our Government is whether they will continue to insist on a target of eliminating violence against women internationally as a key priority, to ensure that the post-2015 development agenda specifically and explicitly highlights that as essential to delivering progress.

When we visited Ethiopia to support the programme we visited a project on child marriage supported by the Department, which the Minister has also visited. I do not often do commercials, but I think there is still something about it on our website. An interesting thing was that although the funding came from DFID and the leader of the project was UK-based everyone else on the programme was Ethiopian. They worked with the community, but they did not arrive with a pre-determined objective. They sat down with members of the community to discuss how child marriage affects communities, and led them to realise how damaging it is. The participants went from thinking that it was in the girls’ best interest to understanding that it is not. We heard some powerful testimony from a young girl who had been divorced at 13; another who said she had been married—and she meant married—at seven; a mother who had married off her elder daughter and then realised she was wrong, and became determined not to do that to her younger daughter; and a young priest who championed the case against child marriage. He pointed out that it increased the poverty of the village. That was powerful evidence of what can be done.

A slight concern arose with respect to the campaign on female genital mutilation. I know that the Minister has visited the project in Senegal, and has praised it. It was believed to be effective, but we were concerned that it might become the blueprint for what would happen in every country. I hope the Minister will agree—I am fairly certain that she will—that the work must be done according to each country’s social norms, so that people can come to their own conclusion that female genital mutilation is not the thing to do. It is after all not in just low-income countries that it happens. The biggest country where it is practised is Egypt, where about 90% of the women have been subjected to it. Indeed, they accept it. There is a huge amount of work to do. Another sad statistic was from Ethiopia, where 70% of women thought that it was perfectly all right to be beaten by their husbands—that they had a right to do it. There are huge cultural challenges involved in turning things around. I had a strong engagement with President Karzai on the issue during a previous visit, and he came out second best.

As to Afghanistan, we recommended in a separate report that DFID should sharpen up its commitment to its programmes specifically on women. We said that women’s status after the military departure—we will stay there for development purposes—will be the test of whether our intervention made a transformation. The statistics are extremely worrying. A UN report shows that although there has been a 28% increase in violence against women in Afghanistan there has been only a 2% increase in prosecutions. Laws have been changed to disadvantage women. For example, family members are not allowed to give evidence, which makes prosecution extremely difficult. President Karzai proposed to support the reintroduction of the stoning of women for adultery. That is a shocking indictment of a country that we tried to support, and for which our men and women died. The values we are concerned about are not cultural; they are absolute. We are entitled to speak out without compromise and say, “I don’t care what your religion or social norms are; if violence by one sex against another goes unchallenged, that will demean and diminish your society. It is just wrong and should not be tolerated.”

We are glad that the Minister champions the issue, and that the Secretary of State is leading a global campaign. There is a huge amount to be done, but I hope that the Minister can give us some up-to-date sense of how the Government are taking things forward.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I thank the Minister and all Members who took part. We can see how strongly people feel about the issues we have been discussing, and how determined they are that we should maintain pressure to improve the situation and make progress.

Last week, I asked the Prime Minister whether the conflict, stability and security fund would have specific targets for violence against women and girls. He did not then know the answer and has not yet replied. I urge the Minister to get not only an answer but the right answer.

We have had a very good debate. I thank everyone who has taken part—both the members of my Committee and others. It was very much appreciated.

Question put and agreed to.