Afghanistan

Alan Duncan Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) for securing this debate. We in the Department for International Development welcomed the International Development Committee’s report on Afghanistan, to which we have of course already formally replied. Put simply, the Government strongly agree with the majority of the Committee’s recommendations. In particular, we recognise that the next few years hold considerable uncertainty, and we welcome the Committee’s judgment that we retain an obligation both to the Afghan people and to British service personnel to continue our assistance for many years to come. That is why, at the Tokyo conference last July, we worked hard to secure long-term support from our international partners for Afghanistan’s development beyond security transition in 2014. I can tell the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who is the Opposition Front-Bencher, that the UK is specifically committed to maintaining its current aid—approximately £178 million a year at the moment—beyond transition until at least 2017.

We are now working closely with the Afghan Government to ensure that they deliver the essential economic and governance reforms agreed at Tokyo. Although it is still early days, I am pleased to report some good progress. Structures are now in place to monitor performance against the Tokyo commitments. Let me assure hon. Members that we will link our long-term support to progress by the Afghan Government on these critical reforms.

However, we do not support the Committee’s recommendation for a mechanistic link between performance and financial support. Nevertheless, the House should be in no doubt that we will act when we need to, as we did, for instance, in suspending Afghan reconstruction trust fund payments following the Kabul bank crisis. And as co-host of the ministerial review conference in 2014, we will engage with our international partners to speak with a unified voice.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon said, Afghanistan is perhaps the worst place in the world for a woman to live, and that point was profoundly echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham). A key commitment at Tokyo was strong action on women’s rights. As the Committee’s report said and as hon. Friends have highlighted during this debate, Afghan women and girls continue to face enormous disadvantages. The Secretary of State for International Development has made clear the priority that she places on this issue, including on her recent visit to Afghanistan, where she raised her concern directly with President Karzai.

We are already supporting a range of initiatives that we hope will benefit Afghan women. Thanks in part to UK support, there has been considerable progress in girls’ education, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon, mentioned; there are now more than 2 million girls in school, when there were virtually none in school in 2001. Almost one in two pregnant women in Afghanistan receive antenatal care today, compared with only one in six in 2003. We have also contributed to improving women’s access to justice and jobs.

It is also important for us to say that we agree with the Committee that violence against women remains a significant concern, and I commend the work of NGOs such as ActionAid in trying to combat that violence. The UK will continue to press the Afghan Government to implement the current law on the elimination of violence against women, or EVAW. Through the Tawanmandi programme, we are also supporting 35 women’s organisations to take forward a range of activities, including raising awareness of the EVAW law and providing legal support and shelters to victims of violence.

We continue to look for ways to improve opportunities for Afghan women and girls in all our programmes. In the next few months, our focus will be on supporting women to participate in the political process and in elections in 2014. However, we do not agree with the Committee’s recommendation for a joint Government-donor plan for women and girls through transition. The Afghan Government’s commitments to women and girls are already laid out in the Tokyo framework, and it is important that we focus our efforts on ensuring that those commitments are delivered. In our view, drafting another plan risks becoming a distraction.

The UK already supports Afghan women in public life. Our work with the Afghan Interior Ministry is helping the Afghan police to protect and uphold women’s rights. The British embassy in Kabul also funds organisations such as the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, to ensure that they can continue to operate effectively and with the necessary security.

In the same vein, and as my right hon. Friend said, we disagreed with the Committee’s proposal for the establishment of a new oversight body to investigate allegations of violence by the Afghan national security forces. There are a number of existing mechanisms, both within the Afghan Government and externally, to carry out that function. As part of the UK’s work with the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defence in Afghanistan, we already train, advise and mentor staff on a range of issues, including human rights. Given the number of challenges ahead, it is important that we focus our efforts on what needs to be done and avoid any duplication of process. For example, as highlighted on page 45 of the Committee’s report, it is absolutely essential that access to education, health care and other basic services is improved for the long-term stability of Afghanistan.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) raised a number of issues, including concern about the development of the private sector. I suggest that DFID’s approach to wealth creation is much broader than the Committee’s report has suggested. Our programmes range from encouraging international investment and building regional trade links right down to providing support for local farmers’ co-operatives and skills training.

For instance, in Nangarhar province we are supporting rural entrepreneurs to produce high-value vegetables, and in Kama district we are successfully supporting poultry businesses that are providing jobs for women in 20 villages. As for extractives, which I totally agree is perhaps the largest and most important sector in Afghanistan and one in which there is of course enormous scope for corruption, DFID has supported the Ministry of Mines since 2010 to develop a regulatory framework, to encourage international investment and to ensure that effective management of the country’s mineral wealth can be built up. Furthermore, we are currently developing a package of continuing support in this sector. On the more detailed area of infrastructure, I undertake to write to my hon. Friend with more detail about such issues as roads.

Let me reassure the Committee and the House that our programme is already carefully balanced between developing the capacity of the Afghan Government at national and provincial levels to manage services, and ensuring effective delivery in the districts.

I now turn to the serious issue raised by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). We agree with the Committee that Afghanistan faces significant humanitarian challenges, and I can confirm to the House that we are committed to continuing to build up our humanitarian programme. Last year, my Department delivered life-saving assistance to more than 5,600 families who had been affected by the 2011 drought and provided food and other essential household items to around 150,000 internally displaced people in Afghanistan. As recommended on page 80 of the Committee’s report, we are also engaging with rural communities to help them to strengthen their resilience to these changes. And DFID is currently developing a multi-year, multi-sector package of support for some of the neediest sectors in Afghanistan, to deal with issues such as nutrition and food security.

We are working hard to ensure that ordinary Afghans have opportunities to make a decent living for themselves and their families, while helping to stimulate long-term, sustainable economic growth in the country. We disagree with the Committee’s finding that DFID’s approach to wealth creation is too centralised and disconnected from the needs of ordinary Afghans, as I hope that I have illustrated by giving those two examples just now. As I was saying earlier, our programmes range from encouraging international investment support at the regional level right down to the village level. Indeed, UK aid has equipped more than 11,200 young people in Helmand, including 1,900 women, with vocational skills.

Let me turn to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon, at the start of his comments, referred to as DFID’s unique mandate to create a viable Afghan state. I sense from his comments that he regards that idea as somewhat fanciful. We agree with the Committee that DFID cannot deliver a viable Afghan state on its own, but we do not believe that the objective is a redundant concept. On the contrary, the goal, shared by the Afghan Government and our international partners, is essential to securing Afghanistan’s long-term stability and future. In some respects, these are early days in the history of the country.

The goal is also consistent with DFID’s approach to working in fragile and conflict-affected states worldwide. The Prime Minister has said, and this encapsulates our thinking, that

“you only get real long-term development through aid if there is also a golden thread of stable government, lack of corruption, human rights”

and

“the rule of law”.

By contributing to the objective of the development of a viable Afghan state, we are helping to ensure that the Afghan people have a stake in their own future, through a Government who are more accountable and transparent, and capable of responding to their basic needs.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon mentioned community development councils, and DFID is working with the World Bank, other donor partners and the Afghan Government on the future role of the councils, including how best to integrate them into the government structure below the level of central Government. The point that he made is a valid one, and we are already taking steps to implement the sorts of things I sense he would like to see. We agree, of course, with the Committee that NGOs also play a vital role on the ground in Afghanistan, delivering key services and assistance to the Afghan people, and we will continue to support such essential work.

Finally, we welcome the Committee’s acknowledgment of the immense challenges that exist in delivering results in fragile and conflict-affected states such as Afghanistan, and also its appreciation of the efforts of DFID staff. Despite the challenges, we continue rigorously to ensure that DFID programmes are robust enough to deliver real results for the Afghan people and that there is value for money for the UK taxpayer. I have been encouraged by many of the comments and questions that we have heard this afternoon and, on behalf of DFID, I reassure the House that our commitment to this desperately poor country will continue for many years to come.