Afghanistan (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Loomba Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Loomba (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for bringing this report before the Committee, and the Select Committee for its important work. The return of the Taliban and the humanitarian disaster unfolding from Afghanistan’s economic and social collapse make it all the more important that this work to monitor and understand the situation on the ground continues. The previous speakers talked about various problems that have taken place since we withdrew from Afghanistan.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and many others have talked about girls and women. I will focus my remarks on the plight of women and girls; in particular, on the situation in which widows now find themselves in Afghanistan—the poorest of the poor, marginalised, invisible and unheard. The World Widows Report published in 2016 by the Loomba Foundation, which I chair, revealed that Afghanistan already had the highest proportion of widows in the world: more than one in five of all marital-age women from the age of 10. Maternal mortality was also in the highest range, with more than 1,000 mothers dying for every 100,000 births. Not surprisingly, Afghanistan has one of the highest percentages of war widows.

The tragedy for widows is that they are marginalised by society even as they face gender discrimination from the Taliban. They have nowhere to turn as the economic and social situation in Afghanistan deteriorates. Low life expectancy and early marriage result in women mostly being widowed in their 20s and 30s. In some countries ravaged by conflict, widows can move into male work roles to make up for the shortage of labour, but not in Afghanistan. What are they to do? In Afghanistan, conditions for widows can be so bad that there have been reports of them selling smaller children in order to save the others, and in the rare situations where they can work, they are invariably underpaid and exploited, with no one to turn to. I echo the wider sentiments about discrimination against women and girls whose hopes of empowerment and a better future nurtured in the past two decades have been cruelly dashed. We have all seen the shocking reports of the Taliban suppression of women protesters in recent days.

I know that the Government care about this and see it as a priority. For my part, I make a special plea for those who are doubly disadvantaged as widows and ask the Committee and the Minister to make every effort to shine a light and bring succour to those who need it most.