Women, Peace and Security Bill [HL]

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, on her Private Member’s Bill, which I heartily support. Over recent years I have had the privilege of working closely with the noble Baroness on issues concerning violence against women and girls both domestically and internationally. I draw attention to my own entry in the register of interests: I am the director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. I am also on the task force on war crimes for Ukraine and co-chair the task force set up to recover the children who have been taken into Russia without consent.

IBAHRI has held a number of parliamentary inquiries, provided the secretariat and written the reports concerning a number of the most horrifying situations affecting women. Noble Lords have already heard about them from the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, and I am not going to rehearse them again, but we need to have as a constant in this House the fact of what is happening in Afghanistan. It was a shameful business that we withdrew from Afghanistan, and many women who had taken up positions that were clearly an affront to the Taliban were placed in dire straits and mortal danger.

Afghanistan now is perhaps the most dangerous place in the world for women. They have been banned from public life and cannot receive an education, work or have recourse to justice. Healthcare is very limited. Recent decrees have banned women from speaking outside the home and singing even inside, if it can be heard outside. There is no singing, and basically no life.

Between 1 January 2022 and 30 January 2024, Afghan Witness, with which IBAHRI works closely, recorded 700 claims, all of gender-based violence suffered by hundreds of women and girls throughout the country. Those are the ones that have been reported. Of course, the shame and stigma associated with sexual violence and abuse are often a restraint on people making any kind of complaint to anybody. These complaints have been reported by social media users, journalists, activists and media outlets in touch with women there. At IBAHRI, we are one of those organisations.

We have held an inquiry here into what should be clearly described as gender apartheid. There is already the crime of gender persecution, and that is certainly going on in Afghanistan, but gender apartheid goes much further. It affects all women; it is institutionalised. That is one of the shameful and shocking things about it.

A similar sort of thing goes on in Iran. We looked closely at the problems facing Iranian women; noble Lords will know about the demonstrations of the many young women who took to the streets after the murder of a young woman. We have been working with the women lawyers who have acted on behalf of people seeking to exercise their rights, and the women lawyers—as well as their clients—end up in jail. We are seeing this happen worldwide.

I want to make a number of basic supportive comments with regard to the Bill. We need to resist and prevent these things happening, because it is now understood that there is invariably sexual violence in war. I can hear the Whip’s coughs, but I want to complete this thought. It is vital that we provide assistance. There is a global piece of work being done by the Global Survivors Fund—for example, in Ukraine—to provide supportive work and therapy for women who have suffered this, because you will never be able to take those cases to courts unless the women are able to have their trauma dealt with. I ask the Government to consider supporting the Global Survivors Fund.

Finally, we have to have women at the peace tables. I strongly urge that we do not have meetings with the Taliban where there is no woman present because the Taliban insist on it. It is unacceptable. It has already happened a number of times when our Government have done that, and it should not be taking place.