Rape in Armed Conflict

Baroness Flather Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Flather]

My Lords, this important topic needs to be discussed more often and at a time when many more Members are in their place. For me this is a very distressing subject because, as I get older, I find that less value is placed on women, not more. Recently we saw the most appalling incident of rape in Delhi. During the war between Bangladesh and Pakistan, some 2,000 women were kept in cages. They were not given any clothes because they would use them to hang themselves. They were used by the soldiers. Appalling things are done to women during conflict and in war situations. But a woman who becomes pregnant because she has been raped, perhaps many times, is supposed to have the baby. What is that baby going to do for her? Is that baby going to be a child of love? It will be a child of hate and a reminder for the rest of a woman’s life of what happened to her. How can we inflict that kind of situation on any woman anywhere?

We are very protected in this country; we are sitting in a cocoon, but other countries are not so cocooned. The Americans are more cocooned than anybody else in the world and I do not think they understand what the real world is like. I do not think they understand what happens to women during conflicts in poor countries. It is appalling that they cannot see the need.

Many years ago, during the Bosnia conflict, Marie Stopes International held a function in this place. Other NGOs were saying that they could not perform abortions because there was not enough time for counselling and there were no proper operating theatres. My goodness, those women had been raped from morning till night. They did not want counselling or proper operating theatres, they just did not want to bear the children. That is the bottom line. Why should a woman be forced to bear a child that she never wanted and could not want?

The only way forward is for DfID to separate itself completely from all the US-funded agencies and concentrate on abortion and women’s health. Why bother with anything else? Women comprise half the population and they do not get much attention in this world. It is time that we in this country decided that all our money should go to save and to serve women. This is what I would like to see. It is time to stop pussyfooting around and to do something about it.