DfID Projects: Women and Girls

Lord Loomba Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Loomba]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what priority they give to women and girls, including widows, when developing and implementing Department for International Development initiatives and projects.

[Lord Loomba (CB)]

My Lords, I am not surprised by how difficult it is for the Department for International Development to decide what priorities it should consider when developing and implementing initiatives and projects which relate to women, girls and widows, especially when we hear about the abuse by aid workers that took place in Haiti. I am sure that Oxfam sent their aid workers to Haiti in good faith. However, instead they abused the vulnerable people and let Oxfam down badly. I do not have to explain the consequences of the Haiti incident. However, noble Lords will all be aware that it is not bad news only for Oxfam; it has also destroyed the confidence of the public and many donors who support NGOs such as Oxfam. Everybody knows that around 7,000 donors have already withdrawn support for Oxfam.

This has been a very difficult week for gender equality and women’s rights, especially as the media has brought out evidence of historical abuses that have been swept under the carpet for many years. It has saddened me to have to hear the chief executive of Oxfam, Mark Goldring, apologise for Oxfam’s negligence in the Haiti scandal. The Department for International Development supports and closely works with Oxfam and other charities. I am pleased to hear that Penny Mordaunt has stated that no charity is too big, or its work too complex, for DfID to withdraw its support. Showing that we mean business may be the only way to ensure that people in power do not abuse the powerless. This needs to be sorted out and proper checks and balances put in place to stop such occurrences in the future.

The vulnerability of women and girls comes in many shapes and forms but none are more vulnerable than widows, who suffer in silence as abuse after abuse is meted out to them. Here I declare an interest as the founder and chairman trustee of the Loomba Foundation, which helps widows and their children around the world. In 2015 the Loomba Foundation commissioned and published a piece of intensive, country-by-country research, the World Widows Report, which highlights the depths of despair to which many widows are driven, especially in developing countries.

The report revealed the shocking figures that there are 259 million widows and 585 million of their children across the world who suffer in silence. More than 100 million live in poverty, of whom 38 million live in extreme poverty and struggle to survive every single day. Many of these widows experience targeted murder, rape, prosecution, forced marriage, property theft, eviction, social isolation and physical, psychological and sexual abuse. The children of widows experience forced child marriage, illiteracy and loss of schooling, forced labour, human trafficking, homelessness and rape.

The ground-breaking report, the first of its kind, illustrated that discrimination against widows is a deep-rooted feature of gender discrimination all over the world, although its form and impacts differ from place to place and from culture to culture. Importantly, the report also demonstrates that four of the first five United Nations sustainable development goals are very unlikely to be achieved unless more is done to help widows and their children, making focusing on their issues even more of a priority. Let us not forget that the plight of widows is a humanitarian issue.

In 2016, the then UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, in his message on International Widows Day—which, incidentally, was established by the Loomba Foundation in 2005 and adopted by the United Nations in 2010 as a UN-designated day of action to promote the fundamental freedoms and human rights of widows and their children around the world—highlighted the significance of the SDGs for widows, saying:

“The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with its pledge to leave no one behind has a particular resonance for widows, who are among the most marginalized and isolated”.


DfID’s recent report to Parliament highlights,

“the cross-Government action that the UK has taken to improve gender equality, tackle sexual violence in conflict, and protect vulnerable people in conflict zones from sexual exploitation and abuse”,

in six countries especially, and yet, as the World Widows Report and the recent revelations about alleged cover-ups in Haiti show, much needs to be done to strengthen the work DfID is doing and to ensure that, first and foremost, its work and money are getting to those who need them the most, and that we are on target to achieve the SDGs by 2030. DfID’s report also recognises the huge challenges faced in countries such as Somalia, where, it says:

“The President stated at the start of his term that he was committed to tackling sexual violence and reiterated his zero tolerance approach to sexual violence … These commitments have not yet translated into actions”.


Nevertheless, I commend DfID for the difficult work that it does, sometimes in the hardest of circumstances.

Finally, I ask the Minister that DfID should consider supporting grass-roots women’s rights organisations and NGOs working on the ground, such as the Rotary India Literacy Mission, which, alongside the Loomba Foundation, is helping a pan-Indian initiative to provide vocational skills training to 30,000 widows in India—1,000 in each state in the country. As a UN-accredited NGO, the Loomba Foundation has also provided education to more than 10,000 children of poor widows and supported 60,000 of their family members. More recently, just last week, the Loomba Foundation also completed an empowerment project for more than 5,000 widows in the holy city of Varanasi that was launched by PM Modi two years ago.

This type of work is key to ensuring that women, girls and widows are not left behind and, alongside strong legislative reforms which are enacted—and indeed, acted upon—will ensure a better future for them.