International Women’s Day

Lord Loomba Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Loomba (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as founder, chairman and trustee of the Loomba Foundation, a UN-accredited NGO leading the global campaign to eradicate injustice against women whose husbands have died.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, I first pay tribute to my dear friend the late Baroness Betty Boothroyd, who for many years was not only a patron of the Loomba Foundation but a steadfast and vocal supporter of our campaign. She helped, in her inimitable way, to make people sit up and take notice. Betty attended all our events in London and, in 2004, came to India to meet destitute widows and see our work on the ground. The world needs fearless women like Betty Boothroyd, and I will always be grateful for her contribution.

Since International Women’s Day was introduced some 100 years ago, it has been true that, in many communities, women at all stages of life are marginalised and undervalued by traditions and ideas that are so deeply rooted that they are almost impossible to dislodge. It applies to girls deprived of education, women exploited in the workplace and widows deprived of their status and inheritance rights.

As a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, I want to highlight the importance of fighting gender discrimination in all its forms if we are to secure a sustainable future for humanity and the planet. Ending poverty and hunger, achieving food security, ensuring healthy lives at all ages, ensuring quality education for all, achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls—none of these sustainable development goals can be achieved unless discrimination against all women, including schoolgirls and widows, is comprehensively ended.

When discussing gender inequality, we must see all forms of gender discrimination as aspects of the same problem and work together to tackle them all. This is what is meant by the guiding principle of the sustainable development goals, which is to leave no one behind.

Notwithstanding that International Women’s Day takes place every year on 8 March, in 2010 the UN adopted 23 June as International Widows Day, recognising the plight of millions of disadvantaged widows in developing countries who are suffering from poverty, illiteracy, diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, conflict and injustice.

The World Widows Report, which was produced by the Loomba Foundation in 2016 and remains the only comprehensive data source about discrimination faced by widows and their dependants, country by country and worldwide, starkly illustrates the practical impacts of discrimination in countries all over the world, with examples of property theft and land-grabbing, unjust inheritance laws, degrading so-called “cleansing” rituals, violence, abuse and intimidation.

If a widow cannot work to support her dependants, if she cannot inherit the family property or business, if she is unable to pay for her children to be schooled, the wealth and stability of the family is at risk. Last year, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution recognising that discrimination and violence against widows are an impediment to the achievement of gender equality, the empowerment of all women and girls and the full realisation of all human rights.

Could the Minister tell us, first, whether an assessment has been made of which education and empowerment programmes for girls and women have been impacted by the reduction in development aid finance? Which countries are affected and what are the impacts? Secondly, in view of the reduced foreign aid, what can the Government do to increase effective partnerships with the private sector, as well as charity work and voluntary organisations, to help to tackle challenges faced by widows and their dependants?