Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps she is taking to support trauma counselling services for child Rohingya refugees?
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK is working closely with its partners to provide protection services to Rohingya child refugees in Bangladesh. As part of wider efforts, UK aid is funding trauma counselling services include psychosocial and psychological support for 7,500 children. In addition to identifying unaccompanied and separated children, we are also supporting the Red Cross to provide family linking and family tracing services. Child protection support includes establishment of 30 child friendly spaces and supporting children to learn and adopt safe behaviours in settlements.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what support her Department is providing to UN refugee camps for disabled refugees.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Neither DFID, nor the UN Refugee Agency has exact figures on the number of child refugees with disabilities in UN refugee camps. The UK is also pressing the UN Refugee Agency to ensure that all protection and assistance programmes are accessible to all vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities so that no one is left behind. The UK has two dedicated programmes supporting refugee children in Jordan and provides support to people with disabilities in the region.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what information her Department holds on the number of disabled child refugees in UN refugee camps.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Neither DFID, nor the UN Refugee Agency has exact figures on the number of child refugees with disabilities in UN refugee camps. The UK is also pressing the UN Refugee Agency to ensure that all protection and assistance programmes are accessible to all vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities so that no one is left behind. The UK has two dedicated programmes supporting refugee children in Jordan and provides support to people with disabilities in the region.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure Rohingya refugee children are being educated in newly established refugee camps.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK is the largest contributor to the Education Cannot Wait initiative, investing £30m between 2016 and 2018. Education Cannot Wait has committed US$3 million (£2.2 million) for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Education Cannot Wait’s response will help cover more than 70 percent of the emergency educational needs of Rohingya refugee children until the end of 2017.
DFID is developing an ambitious new education policy to get some of the most marginalised children learning now. We are also reviewing options for further funding as part of its longer term response to the Rohingya refugee crisis. We are helping education experts and organisations to work with the Ministries of Education in Bangladesh and Burma, to agree on a curriculum and certification process for Rohingya children in Cox’s Bazar.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans her Department has in place to include disability in humanitarian education relief.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK is committed to focusing on reaching the most marginalised children; including those with disabilities. We have publicly committed; to ensure all educational construction directly funded by DFID is fully accessible; and to work with partners to improve data on children with disabilities and special educational needs, both in- and out-of-education.
For example in the Middle East and North Africa we are working closely with partners to identify children with disabilities and to understand their needs. In Jordan we have trained more than 11,000 teachers, supervisors and administrators on how to deliver effective reading and maths instruction including skills to identify and assess children with a disability in their classroom. In Lebanon, through the Ministry of Education, we are supporting teacher training, differentiated learning and other measures to create more inclusive school environments, as well as tracking results around referral of children and youth with special needs.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the effect of withdrawing aid to middle-income countries on achieving the sustainable development goal to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
Answered by Lord Wharton of Yarm
The UK relies on reports and data produced by UNAIDS and other partners such as the World Health Organisation to assess progress on ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
The UK is increasingly working with multilateral partners such as the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, that have the capacity to deliver the large-scale, low-cost programmes needed in HIV burdened regions in the most effective way and at the best value to the taxpayer. Middle Income Countries are due to receive nearly 50% of all Global Fund resources from 2017-2019, to which the UK has made a significant investment of £1.1 billion.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to support adolescent girls into secondary education in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); which programmes her Department supports that address access to secondary education in DRC; and how many girls have been assisted to engage in and to complete secondary schooling as a result of such work in the last five years.
Answered by Lord Wharton of Yarm
DFID has supported education in DRC since 2013 through scholarships and accelerated learning programmes which focus on primary education and the transition to secondary schooling. We do this through two programmes, Vas-y Fille (‘Go girl’), and Accelere. Vas-y Fille have provided scholarships to over 63,000 girls and enrolled 9,400 out of school girls in accelerated learning programmes. Accelere has enrolled 20,730 new primary school learners, including 10,386 girls. This contributes to the government’s manifesto commitment to provide a decent education to 11 million children.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that programmes implemented are cost-effective.
Answered by Nick Hurd
Each DFID project is rigorously appraised before approval to establish value for money. During implementation, projects are measured against a robust monitoring framework through mandatory annual reviews to ensure they remain cost effective. The results of these annual reviews are scored by the managing team and are then monitored through regular management information reports to management and Ministers. DFID is also committed to generating high quality evidence through independent evaluations which address relevant questions for policy and programming, including the cost- effectiveness of programmes.
We take decisions to exit underperforming programmes and redirect resources into those that deliver poverty reduction and value for money for taxpayers.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps she is taking to assist the Nigerian government to support access for internally displaced children in that country to (a) education and (b) healthcare.
Answered by Nick Hurd
In education, DFID is supporting the Government of Nigeria’s Safe Schools Initiative, which aims to restore safe access to learning for children affected by conflict. The Initiative has supported over 90,000 displaced children to return to school, providing learning materials and training teachers on psychosocial support. In health, DFID is supporting the International Committee of the Red Cross, who have helped restore basic health care services for 225,000 people affected by conflict, and provided 150,000 immunisations for children.
All of our programmes, including those that assist internally displaced children, work with government authorities and other donors to influence national plans and strategies, and to strengthen education and health systems.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what baseline data collection her Department plans to undertake in Somalia and Zimbabwe to measure progress against the Sustainable Development Goals in those countries.
Answered by Nick Hurd
In Somalia, one of the costs of protracted conflict has been the loss of national capacity to produce credible statistics. We are working with the UN and others to help rectify this, but it will be some time before proper baselines can be set across all of the SDGs. For now, we expect some progress to be made soon on the first five (covering poverty, hunger, health, education, and gender equality).
In Zimbabwe, DFID has supported a number of data collections which will be used to help measure a baseline for SDG delivery. These include the 2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), the 2016 Demographic Health Survey (DHS), and other data collections on Agriculture (including the Agriculture and Livestock Survey). DFID will also support a 2016 survey on Poverty, Income, Consumption and Expenditure (PICES).