International Widows Day

Lord Loomba Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Loomba]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking in response to the United Nations’ International Widows Day and to empower widows to achieve economic independence in the face of continuing discrimination and prejudice affecting their opportunities and life chances as well as those of their dependants.

[Lord Loomba (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair and founder trustee of the Loomba Foundation.

I was only 10 years old when my father died in India in 1954. It was a tragedy for my mother and my siblings, but for me, the shock of what happened next has remained with me all of my life. On that same day, before my father had been cremated, my mother had to remove all her jewellery and bindi—the sign of a married woman in India—and to wear only white clothes to signify her for ever as a widow. I had always known my mother as a happy and fulfilled person. Now she was instantly transformed into a troubled widow, shunned and facing imposed obstacles. My mother was determined to make sure that we were not harmed by the tragedy and she devoted all her resources to ensuring that all of us—boys and girls—received the best education possible.

As I came to realise years later, we were the lucky ones. Tens of millions of widows from poor backgrounds face penury, with customs and traditions making it difficult for them to support themselves or to pay for their children’s education. Many fall into destitution, with very little opportunity for their children to escape a similar fate. So, in 1997, after my mother passed away, my wife and I established a foundation in my mother’s memory to help poor widows and their families.

Our first target was to fund education for children of poor widows throughout India, and we built a programme that has transformed the lives of more than 100,000 people. We soon came to realise, however, that this is a global issue, with widows facing serious abuse and discrimination in countries all around the world. There was little or no prospect of this changing. The problems of widows are invisible—not seen or acknowledged anywhere.

A 2001 United Nations Development Fund for Women report noted that widows are painfully absent from the statistics of many developing countries and rarely mentioned in reports on women’s poverty, development, health or human rights. We have since worked in dozens of countries on four continents to support and empower widows and to counter cultures of discrimination, such as customary “cleansing” rituals in which a widow is required to drink the water used to wash her dead husband’s body, or to be raped by one of his relatives. These practices, common in some countries, violate the dignity of widows and are a public health issue.

Widows are also regularly accused of killing their husbands—including by transmitting HIV/AIDS—in India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and sub-Saharan Africa. Systematic seizure of property and evictions by the late husband’s family remain widespread in 18 African countries as well as in Bangladesh and India.

In many sub-Saharan African rural societies, widows are literally “inherited” through forced remarriage to a brother of the deceased husband to keep the property of the husband and his children inside the husband’s family. Among the Luo ethnic group in Kenya, this is encouraged because women are expected to continue bearing children—a widow’s status and security depend on having many sons.

Customs and prejudices that feed discrimination against widows is so deep-rooted that the support of Governments, international organisations and all people of good will is needed to bring about significant change. This means not just changes in laws or giving aid but altering prevailing attitudes and cultural norms around widowhood. We need a sustained global campaign to address egregious violations of human rights.

That is why on 26 May 2005, at an event here in the House of Lords, the Loomba Foundation launched International Widows Day. After five years of tireless campaigning together with Loomba Foundation president Cherie Blair, 23 June was unanimously adopted as International Widows Day by the UN General Assembly, the day my dear mother became a widow.

Over the last 14 years, UN member states have worked to tackle the issue, but the problem still affects more than 1 billion people, with more than 100 million widows and their dependants living below the poverty line. I have been grateful throughout this time for the support of the UK Government, who have expressly recognised that widows suffer double discrimination, both for their gender and their status as widows.

International Widows Day was born in this building, and the Government have played their part in making it an official effort of the international community. I was grateful for the opportunity to put an Oral Question last week and to raise this Question for Short Debate today. However, it is noteworthy that while a Motion on International Women’s Day is tabled by a Minister each year, properly addressing the plight of widows on International Widows Day is left to the lottery of Questions submitted for ballot by noble but ordinary Members of your Lordships’ House.

We can and must do much more to address the plight of widows. We must stop treating them as a subset of gender discrimination. We must see that we are talking about the poorest of the poor, who often have no one to turn to or speak for them. We must see that widowhood, which hangs over all women, drives discrimination against girls from the day they are born, leading families to prioritise education and opportunities for sons over daughters. We must realise that without specific action on widows, we will never achieve the ambition of the UN sustainable development goals to leave no one behind.

I have three simple questions for the Minister. First, will he support a focused study of changes in legislation and attitudes in UN member countries over the last two decades to inform effective policy development? Secondly, will he support an international campaign of education and awareness based on the evidence? Finally, will he consider scheduling a debate on International Widows Day next year from the Dispatch Box?