Kurdistan Region in Iraq

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) for his speech introducing the debate.

I want move away from the areas that my hon. Friend covered to look at some of the capacity-building and humanitarian aid issues that occur in the country. If one thinks back, only a few years ago the humanitarian aid made available to Kurdistan was not reaching its target by around 63%. The UN could manage only 37% of its aid fund target. We have to ask why, and maybe the Minister will be kind enough to give a take on that.

It is crucial, in the light of the history of warfare with Daesh and the huge number of people who have been caught up in it, that the humanitarian aid for the crisis is more prevalent there than in other regions. The area’s need for humanitarian assistance is much greater and we should therefore mention that there is and has been a major short-term funding gap in the provision of humanitarian aid for the country. That need for humanitarian aid is not finished—it is still growing because of the result of the conflict; the aid needs to be predictable; and improvements need to be seen and appreciated on the ground.

A number of things are putting enormous pressure on the provision of that humanitarian aid, one of which is the mass movement of people. Where there is a mass movement of people, there will always be a need for more humanitarian aid. As to a country where there is such need for that aid, it is difficult to talk of the need for capacity building, but I will mention five points in no particular order. They are not ordered by priority, but are just my thoughts on a number of issues.

First, I want to stress the need for capacity building in the provision of gender equality. There are two aspects to gender equality: the provision of humanitarian aid and the way women and girls have been treated as a result of the prevalence of Daesh in the area for so long. The number of vulnerable women is quite large, and they are vulnerable whether or not they are the female heads of their households. There is an enormous risk of gender-based violence and there have been absolutely horrific reports of sexual and gender-based violence throughout the region.

We need to concentrate on a number of things to improve women’s ability to survive and function in that society. A larger point on that, as we look to build an area with a great deal of capacity in future, is to ensure that women can use their skills to the best of their ability and that they play a full role, whether in politics, the economy or whatever it may be. We need to make sure that there is a tremendous amount of activity on that.

My second point on capacity building, which may seem a little strange in that these aspects are chalk and cheese, relates to cultural heritage. The UK has an enormous capacity in archaeological and cultural artefacts. In fact, I must admit that I am a product of that, having spent most of my early years as an archaeologist. I am not volunteering to go out to Kurdistan to provide the information and the training that people need, but I think we should make use of the skills that we have in the UK to deal with the tremendous trashing of cultural heritage in that region. One has only to look at the activities of Daesh there to see the effect it has on many people.

The third area is education, which my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke mentioned in the context of further education. We should be building capacity not just in further education, but in education throughout the lives of young people in the area. We should not necessarily concentrate solely on academic education, but we need to provide the skills that people need to ensure that the programmes of placements can be improved enormously—I have seen in other parts of the world how our concentration on education can achieve enormous results.

The fourth area is in the medical field. We have already heard that 10,000 people were injured in Kurdistan, and they need treatment. We need hospitals and qualified doctors to be able to provide that, and I think that a tremendous amount of capacity building could take place there to improve that situation.

The last point that I will raise, which encompasses all those things, is about dealing with corruption. I have a lot of experience of dealing with corruption—I am the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Nigeria, after all. The way corruption is dealt with needs to be tackled and made specific to each country. Corruption is not corruption is not corruption is a much broader picture there. Where there are not effective institutions that can function properly, there will always be a risk of corruption. Corruption is corrosive on everyone. It needs to be tackled head on.

Those are the five areas that I would recommend that the Department for International Trade and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office concentrate on. That does not take away the need for humanitarian aid, but those are the areas we need to concentrate on next as we develop.