Violence Against Women

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Grand Committee

Asked By

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to promote and support the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, designated by the United Nations General Assembly for 25 November each year.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, the United Nations General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and invited Governments, international organisations and NGOs to organise activities designed to raise public awareness of the problem on that day. Women activists have marked 25 November as a day against violence since 1981. The date came from the brutal assassination in 1960 of the three Mirabal sisters, who were political activists in the Dominican Republic.

Violence against women has been described as perhaps the most pervasive violation of human rights across the globe. Governments have obligations to prevent violence against women under international and national human rights and equalities laws. Under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the United Kingdom has obligations to prevent violence against women before it happens.

The UK Government's commitment to tackling violence against women is clear. Our success in tackling this will be a test of this Government's ability to build a fairer society. There is clearly much more to do to ensure that women and girls are not held back. We should strive to be ambitious in our aims and to meet a shared commitment to ending violence. Violence against women and girls in the UK is still, sadly, widespread and has serious social, health, emotional and financial consequences. It is more prevalent among women in England than stroke, diabetes and heart disease. Attitudes that justify and excuse abuse are, sadly, still deeply entrenched.

Gender equality cannot be achieved while violence continues. In modern-day Britain, two women a week are killed by a partner or ex-partner. Sexual harassment in schools, communities and workplaces is still routine, and 60,000 women are raped every year. Trafficking and sexual exploitation affect thousands of women in the United Kingdom, and an estimated 6,500 girls in this country are still at risk of female genital mutilation each year. This is a scandal, and we simply cannot go on like this.

Just last summer, Jane Clough, a 26 year-old nurse working in Blackpool Victoria Hospital was brutally murdered by her ex-partner, the father of her baby, as she arrived to begin her night shift. Her murderer, Jonathan Vass, had appeared in court the previous December charged with three counts of rape. He had been further charged with six counts of rape and three assaults. Despite strong objections by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, he was released on bail by Judge Simon Newell, who had been told that he posed a real threat to the victim as a witness. Just recently, I watched a TV documentary about this awful case, which was so harrowing. For weeks, Jane Clough lived in fear. She kept a diary of how she feared for her life. Despite this fear, Jane did all the right things. She reported the rape and the violence, but her rapist was bailed, and he went on to kill her. This young woman was badly let down by the judicial system, resulting in her brutal death, leaving a small baby. When will victims receive more protection, and when will lessons be learnt? How can victims have confidence in the system when we still have incidents like this which, unfortunately, are still commonplace?

I declare an interest as a commissioner in the Equality and Human Rights Commission. As part of the commission's role as the national human rights institution and in line with our international reporting responsibilities, we at the commission have supported the drafting of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. This convention sets out legally binding standards for all forms of violence against women, bridging some of the existing gaps in human rights protection. However, the United Kingdom has yet to become a signatory of the convention.

In April 2011, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a new convention on preventing and combating violence against women. It has not, as I mentioned, been signed by the UK Government. Since the convention opened for signature in June, 17 countries have ratified, including Austria, France, Germany, Iceland, Macedonia, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine. The commission, and many of us, would be expected to encourage the United Kingdom Government to adopt international human rights standards. Can I ask the Minister whether the United Kingdom Government have reached a decision on becoming a signatory? In a recent response to a similar question, the Equalities Minister stated that the Government would consider the equality implications when making a decision on that signature.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

I speak as a member of the British delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I have some experience of these situations there and I am very much in sympathy with what the noble Baroness said about the need to combat violence of all kinds against women.

Would it not be fair—I am perhaps setting this up for the Minister also to comment—to say that in the United Kingdom we tend to take a very rigorous view of our ability to have the legislation and the other administrative arrangements in place before we sign up to conventions and that there will always be, as indeed there was in relation to the convention on the trafficking of women, where a number of us pressed very hard for a British signature, a certain reticence before we sign up? It is not a lack of commitment—or at least I hope it is not—but rather a determination to get our ducks in a row before we commit ourselves. Some of the other member states may take a slightly lighter view of their responsibilities, although they should, of course, take them equally seriously.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

I thank my noble friend for that helpful intervention and for bringing his experience to bear on what I have to say. I hope that the Minister, when she comes to respond, will also ratify some of the problems in committing to a signature.

We all know that internationally—and this is an international day, after all—there is still so much to do. I have raised the plight of Afghan women in your Lordships’ House before, and I would like to turn briefly to a terrible incident that happened just last Thursday, which I was struck by. It was reported very widely in the news. A group of armed men stoned and shot dead a woman and her daughter in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. Officials blamed the Taliban, who they said had accused the women of moral deviation and adultery. The police said that two men had been arrested in connection with the murder. The attack happened only 300 metres from the governor’s office in Ghazni city, which is on the list of places to be transferred to Afghan security control, and close to the police chief’s office and a Western-backed provincial reconstruction team. I find it quite extraordinary that no one called for help in this terrible incident. Security officials said armed men entered the house where the young widow lived with her daughter and took them out to the yard where they were initially stoned and then shot dead. Officials said a number of religious leaders in the city had been issuing fatwas asking people to report any one who was involved in adultery.

We are 10 years on in this country’s involvement with Afghanistan, and I think most of us will remember —I certainly remember very clearly—that one of the reasons given for that involvement was to make things better for women in Afghanistan. Despite all these promises, the plight of women in Afghanistan seems to be, and the evidence shows this, worse than ever. Can the Minister say what representations and influence Britain has in bringing the plight of women to the top of the political agenda in terms of our relationship and our activities in Afghanistan? What activities are being developed, or are planned, to highlight what is happening there, and what can be brought to bear to change things?

I will conclude with an appropriate and wise comment from Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th century writer and activist, who is regarded as the mother of British feminism. She will have her image beamed onto the Houses of Parliament tomorrow between 4.10 pm and 6.10 pm. The campaign to celebrate her life is being organised by the charity Newington Green Action Group. It hopes to place her statue in London’s Newington Green, in Islington, in the ward I represented as a councillor, very near to where I grew up, where Wollstonecraft lived and set up a girls’ school in the 1700s. She simply wrote of women:

“I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves”.

She lived between 1759 and 1797, and it struck me that 250 years later we are still debating this very basic principle of allowing women to have control and power over their own lives. I hope that one day there will be no need for further debates such as this.

I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. There were other noble Lords who indicated that they would have liked to have taken part, but there is a lot of business going on, and a clash in your Lordships’ House.