Queen’s Speech

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise because I will be unable to be present during the wind-up speeches. However, my noble friend Lord Hennessy will approve of the reason, which is that I will be taking part in the debate on Scotland, which, as he rightly says, is of such huge importance. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, for her emphasis on the forthcoming conference on the issue of sexual violence in this country and not least to the terrible things that are happening in northern Nigeria.

Very quickly I will point out—not least to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who made a major contribution on Somalia—that sexual violence has always been associated with conflict and war, but that the key difference between now and the past is that it is now seen in some areas as a specific strategic object of war to direct sexual violence not just at women but, not least, at children. According to the United Nations Population Fund, there were some 16,000 claims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo last year. It said that those were the “tip of the iceberg”—the actual figures would have been far higher. It is even more troubling that very many of those affected were under the age of five.

A more recent example, also from the United Nations Population Fund, relates to Syria, where some 38,000 cases of sexual violence against women have been reported. Again, however, the key factor is that many of those girls had been killed by their own family because of the dishonour that rape had brought upon that family. In other words, in the case of Syria the victim was once again the victim, rather than the perpetrator. There are two reasons why that is so important, apart from the fact that it is so important in itself.

First, the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war goes beyond almost anything ever accepted in international law as being an appropriate weapon of war. It even goes beyond what St Thomas Aquinas said about war in the 13th century. Secondly—and it is important that this point is made—we live in a world where demographically the proportion of girls who survive birth is dropping steadily. We do not often recognise that. It is estimated that a surplus of some 34 million men exist in China because of the single child policy, and there is a similarly huge majority of young boys in India compared to young girls because of the practice, sometimes, of infanticide towards girl children.

That really means we are looking at a world that is likely to be more violent and more conflicted than ever before. A week ago I heard Kofi Annan say—I thought it was very interesting—that in his experience as United Nations Secretary-General he looked continually to societies where men and women were equal, to societies that were able to be negative to conflict. Where they were not equal—it is important to note on that, sadly, in much of the Arab world there is no move towards equality of the kind so essential to economic and cultural development—one is seeing yet a further enforcement of what one might describe as a rejection of the female element in a good society.

Let me finally turn to the second of the Government’s proposed summitry, an excellent decision; that is looking at the position of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, rightly referred to the significance of the Commonwealth. This is an area where the Commonwealth could be crucial. It could bring together the training of police for the protection of children in school, including the security of school and university buildings. Perhaps even more importantly, it could look at how, particularly in the case of northern Nigeria, one could set up a Commonwealth group to include, also at our invitation, the French, many of whose former colonies surround the members of the Commonwealth not least in west Africa. There would then be an immediate reaction to anything as awful as the kidnapping of the 300, now, young women in Nigeria, contributing to the country in a way that could not be equalled in any other way. The Commonwealth as a whole should address this issue and bring every possible form of expertise to bear in how to protect these young women.

The presence of young women is a crucial part of the development of societies, particularly developing societies. It is very important that Britain, with her past relationship in this whole area with the Commonwealth, should create a centre which should be seen by any as a source of information and of training, and, above all, a moral certitude of the importance of tackling this dreadful problem.