Global Gender Equality

Baroness Helic Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as per the register. I start by congratulating my noble friend the Minister on her appointment and wishing her every success in all the work ahead of her. I know that, armed with her commitment, she will make a difference. I also thank her predecessor, my noble friend Lord Bates, for his dedication to improving the lives of those who do not have the fortune to live in a safe, secure and democratic country.

This is a crucially important debate. I can hardly remember a time when there has been such a sustained disregard for human rights, particularly women’s rights. It is concerning that some of those attacks are arising in not just the usual suspects of authoritarian countries but Europe and the United States. I am sure my noble friend shares my dismay at seeing the United States contribute directly to a weakening of language on sexual and reproductive health rights in a number of UN bodies, including the recent UN Security Council resolution championed by Germany on sexual violence in conflict.

As my noble friend said, we are witnessing a global rollback of women’s rights, and gender equality is facing uncertain times. The United Kingdom’s leadership on women’s rights, women, peace and security, and sexual violence in conflict is more important than ever. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the staff of the Department for International Development for their contribution to development and the rights of women worldwide. It is yet another reminder of how fortunate we are in this country to have the Civil Service that we do.

Equality and rights for women begin at home. Sheer logic dictates that we cannot speak up effectively for women in countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran or Saudi Arabia if our own house is not in order. I therefore hope that my noble friend can give us some assurance that the Istanbul convention will soon be ratified and fully integrated into our law. The convention is the most comprehensive legal framework that exists to address violence against women and girls, including domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, FGM, honour violence and forced marriage. I think noble Lords on all sides would agree that our ratification is well overdue.

I welcome the work that has been done at the Department for International Development, the achievements that have been made in meeting the SDGs and the Government’s strategic vison for gender equality. I also recognise that the Independent Commission for Aid Impact recently concluded that violence against women and girls is,

“competing with a broader range of priorities”,

than before, and that DfID’s work has been “moving slowly”. I will therefore focus my remarks on two areas where I believe that the United Kingdom can show significant leadership that would help to accelerate progress and to set an example to other countries. Both relate to the international review conference on sexual violence in conflict, which the Government are hosting in November as part of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative. The conference is a unique opportunity to reboot the UK’s leadership on the PSVI, and on the women, peace and security agenda as a whole.

Daesh’s use of rape and sexual slavery as a genocidal strategy towards the Yazidi people, and the brutal sexual violence carried out in Syria, Iraq, Burma and most recently Sudan, to take just a few examples, demonstrate that the case for action is even more urgent today than in 2012 when the PSVI began. It also shows that impunity for the use of rape as a weapon of war and terror is still the norm. My first proposal therefore concerns the urgent need to strengthen the international community’s ability to hold perpetrators of war-zone rape to account. Part of the current problem is the willingness of some Security Council members to shield perpetrators of mass rape and other war crimes, as Russia and China have done in the case of Syria and Myanmar, through the use, or threat of use, of their Security Council veto. This creates the risk of significant delay in holding alleged war criminals to account.

The other significant obstacle is a lack of reliable evidence of sexual crimes that can stand up in court, which has contributed to the difficulty of ensuring successful prosecutions for the use of rape as a weapon of war. A further problem has emerged, as in the case of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, which is the proliferation of informal efforts to gather evidence of rape and related crimes. This has led to reported instances of survivors being interviewed multiple times—on some occasions 25 times—and evidence being damaged in a legal sense.

To address these issues, I endorse a proposal from my noble friend Lord Hague and the special envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie, that the UK champions the creation of a permanent international investigatory body on sexual and gender-based violence. This would have the mandate and resources to gather and preserve evidence and prepare case files for international or national prosecutions so that, whenever an ICC referral, ad hoc tribunal or local prosecution can take place, the evidence is ready.

Those who commission, condone and carry out sexual violence as a strategy of war rely on the assumption that they will get away with these crimes—that their victims will be too intimidated and ashamed to speak, that the evidence will be lost, and that they can sit out the international community, which lacks the will to hold perpetrators of this horrendous crime to account. A permanent investigatory body is an essential part of beginning to shatter each of these assumptions and to start to end impunity for conflict-related sexual violence. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can give her support to this objective.

This is a prime example of where prevention and deterrence are infinitely preferable to dealing with the consequences of a crime, not only for the lives of the survivors, but for all our efforts in the sphere of international development, which are significantly undermined by sexual and gender-based violence. I hope the Government will use the opportunity presented by the November conference to announce their commitment to seeking the creation of this body, along with a group of like-minded countries.

Secondly, as my noble friend the Minister will know, gender-based violence is a persistently underfunded aspect of international humanitarian relief and development programmes. Gender-based violence, already widespread in times of peace, is exacerbated during conflict and other humanitarian crises and continues to be one of the most pervasive human rights violations. Evidence suggests that approximately one in five displaced or refugee women is subjected to sexual violence. Girls under the age of 18 in particular, but also boys in this group, often make up the majority of survivors. Yet sexual and gender-based violence is not prioritised by donors, and funding is often inadequate to the scale of the problem.

Allocations for sexual gender-based violence funding were just 0.12% of total humanitarian funding from 2016 to 2018. That is $51.7 million, from a total of $41.5 billion. Research by the International Rescue Committee suggests that, for the same period, two-thirds of funding requests for gender-based violence in emergencies were not met, leaving a gap of over $100 million. The UN’s last report on conflict-related sexual violence identified 19 countries where verifiable incidents of sexual violence took place, and specifically highlighted the funding problem.

The shortfalls in funding have an impact on the ground for survivors. For example, the 2016 UN humanitarian response plan noted that 28,000 reports of sexual violence had been officially recorded in the Central African Republic, and requested $28 million for gender-based violence programs. In response, only $1 million was committed by donors, according to the International Rescue Committee. The same goes for the situation in Lebanon and the DRC. The international community needs to close this funding gap, strengthen protection measures and increase access to life-saving services, including sexual and reproductive health services.

The UK could set a lead by dedicating a fixed or minimum percentage of its aid budget to fighting sexual and gender-based violence. I hope that the International Development Secretary uses the opportunity of the November PSVI summit to announce that the UK will devote at least 1% of its budget to addressing this. The UK has an opportunity to lead the way and set a global standard that other international donors could then follow. It would demonstrate long-term commitment, and help improve transparency on UK spending to support women and girls—which has been publicly stated as a top policy commitment for the Government. It would allow NGOs and civil society organisations to plan and deliver effective long-term support to communities and survivors of sexual violence, and, by ensuring continuity of funding, it would help to bridge the divide between humanitarian, development and peacebuilding efforts.

This could be a signature moment for UK leadership, which has already led the way internationally on PSVI, girls’ education, family planning and FGM. It would be a natural next step for our country to take, to defend and support women and girls who have been the victims of sexual and gender-based violence in the world’s poorest and most fragile countries.

Violence against women is a major barrier to achieving gender equality. It is rooted in discrimination and harmful social norms and stereotypes. Far too often, our response focusses on help for survivors after the event. However, we know that the best way to end violence against women and girls is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Therefore, I hope that the Government will consider these two proposals, alongside the many other actions that they are taking. We have an opportunity to send a signal to the rest of the world that the UK will not only defend progress made on women’s rights in previous decades but also show the leadership and political will needed to help achieve new progress in the years to come.