United Nations International Widows’ Day

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for initiating this debate and for his strong commitment to the empowerment of widows. It is only because of his commitment that we have International Widows’ Day. As we have heard, over the past 16 years the Loomba Foundation has lobbied the UN and Governments, and has succeeded in being heard. In 2005 the foundation launched 23 June as International Widows’ Day and the UN adopted it in 2010. It gives us an opportunity to raise awareness and focus on action to bring the often invisible issues affecting widows to international attention.

In every society, women have endured exclusion from their communities and families, and have suffered the loss of their homes, livelihoods and identities, all brought on by an event completely out of their control: the death of a husband—their life partner. Fifty years ago, my own mother was left a widow with four dependent children. Like the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, I was 10. We lived in a house tied to my father’s job. In a very short period, she had to cope not only with the grief of losing her husband but the loss of our home, family income and status. Her determination to keep us together meant facing a court hearing to be rehoused following our eviction and quickly finding a job to maintain a household.

Since then, we have seen progress in this country, with legislation for equal pay and against sex discrimination. Those changes in the law enabled my mother to become an economically active individual rather than dependent on the state—an issue so ably highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson. Today, widows in the West still face social isolation and commonly live with severe insecurity and poverty due to lack of employment. Persecution of and abuse against widows and their children is not a crisis limited to the developing world: large groups of widows can be found in those circumstances in Europe, including Russia, and central Asia.

Global research commissioned by the Loomba Foundation in 2009 revealed that 245 million widows and more than 500 million children suffer in silence worldwide. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, highlighted, more than 100 million widows live in poverty, struggling to survive. Many of these women and their children are malnourished, exposed to disease and, in some cases, subject to slavery. Widowed women experience targeted murder, rape, prostitution, forced marriage, property theft, eviction and social isolation.

As we have heard, today there are many more widows than ever before due to armed conflict, the AIDS pandemic and the age difference between partners, with many young women being married off to much older men. As we have heard in previous debates, among the survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide were thousands of women widowed during the conflict. In some parts of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, around 50% of women are widows. As the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, said, there are estimated to be millions in Iraq who have been placed in that situation, and 70,000 in Kabul, in Afghanistan.

In post-conflict situations, high numbers of children depend on widowed mothers—often young women, sometimes children themselves—as their sole support. The response of agencies such as UN Women has been to work in countries such as Rwanda, Pakistan and Afghanistan to advance widow’s rights—we have heard the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, talk about Iraq—through targeted programmes as part of their work to support women’s economic empowerment, political leadership and participation and, more importantly, a role in peace and security.

As the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, highlighted, Ban Ki-moon said last week when marking the 2014 International Widows’ Day that we need,

“stronger action to empower women, promote gender equality and end all forms of violence against women”.

Violence against women is one of the most widespread violations of human rights, affecting women of all backgrounds, ages, cultures and countries. Widows are no exception and may in fact be at particularly high risk of violence. In many countries, but particularly across Africa and Asia, widows find themselves the victims of physical and mental violence, including sexual abuse, related to inheritance, land and property disputes.

Last year, in a speech to the House of Lords, Lakshmi Puri said that the lack of reliable hard data remains one of the major obstacles to developing the policies and programmes to address the poverty, violence and discrimination suffered by widows. There is a need for more research and statistics disaggregated by marital status, sex and age, to help to reveal the incidence of widow abuse and illustrate the situation of widows.

Empowering widows through access to adequate healthcare, education—highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson—decent work, full participation in decision-making and public life and lives free from violence and abuse would give them a chance to build a secure life after treatment. Importantly, creating opportunities for widows can also help to protect their children and avoid the cycle of intergenerational poverty and deprivation.

At this point, I again pay tribute to the Government and, in particular, the Foreign Secretary, for leading the international community through hosting the recent Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. I welcome the Government’s support for initiatives that support widows through broader programmes working on women’s empowerment, asset ownership and inheritance and, through that, the targeting of cash transfer programmes. I should like to hear from the Minister how she believes such programmes are progressing and whether she can highlight those that we know are working more effectively and update us on their extension.

In a recent debate, I raised the conclusion of this year’s session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which I believe can make a significant contribution to this debate. The denial of the rights of women and girls remains the most widespread driver of inequality in today’s world. Gender-based violence, taking many forms, is a major element of that massive and continuing failure of human rights. What specific actions have the Government formulated to carry through the declaration and decisions of the New York meeting and to face up to the challenges identified by the commission both domestically and internationally?

Today’s debate is about our joint efforts to erase the stigma of widowhood, the barriers widows face to resources and economic opportunities to survive and the high risk to widows of sexual abuse and exploitation. I know from personal experience that widows are more than victims: they are mothers, caregivers and heads of households. They are the drivers of change, with their own aspirations and their own voices that need to be heard. Women’s empowerment and the protection of women’s rights are our greatest weapons to prevent discrimination and violence against women and girls—widows in particular.