Global Gender Equality

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, when visiting areas affected by conflict over the years, whether in the southern Philippines, northern Nigeria, the DRC, the Central African Republic, Myanmar or many other places, two significant trends struck me as unavoidable. The first is that, increasingly, conflicts around the world are internal and based on identity. They have at their core a dispute between people of different identities, where historically one of which, at least, has faced discrimination, disadvantage and violence over the years. The second is that the people who come off worst in these conflicts, again and again, are the women and girls. You do not have to be there very long, visit very often or even visit more than once to recall the haunted look on the faces of women who have been attacked by combatants despite the fact that they themselves and their girls, and their boy children as well, have never been involved in that conflict.

That is why this debate is so important. I congratulate the Minister not only on securing the debate today but on the way in which she has embraced her new brief since taking over from her predecessor—who was certainly a hard act to follow, I am sure—and more particularly for what she said in opening the debate and the way in which she described our interventions, as a country, at the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver. If we are indeed to put power at the heart of our policy in this area, in any of the three areas she described—the individual power of women, through better education; the structural power, tackling the issues of violence and discrimination; or the power of movements to defend and expand rights—that is exactly the right place for us to be locating our international policy in this area, and I welcome that very much.

I also very much welcome the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and strongly endorse the two proposals she made for the conference in November. It is absolutely right to say that we have to tackle the growing international culture of impunity and we need a structural way in which to do that—not just hoping for cultural change in the Security Council or anywhere else. She is absolutely right to call for increased funding for the survivors of sexual violence in conflict and the rebuilding of their lives.

I have just returned from northern Iraq—in fact I read about the Women Deliver conference when I was there. I was there at exactly the same time and in Duhok, Mosul and Irbil in northern Iraq I visited several internally displaced persons camps and refugee camps and spoke to a number of agencies and local officials. I was struck by two things yet again. The first was the crucial importance of education. Mosul is a historic city destroyed by Islamic State and the conflict that led to the liberation, we hope, of the city 18 months ago. Today there are nearly 2,000 schools open again in Mosul; children are studying in school holiday periods to catch up on the years of education that they lost under Islamic State rule in that city, and there is hope again in their hearts and minds. Yet only two hours away, in Irbil, there are thousands of children, both refugees from Syria and displaced children and families from Mosul and elsewhere, living in IDP camps and sharing one small school between 12,000 people. There are thousands of children working in shifts to try and get some education at some point during the week. In fact, I met a group of teenage girls who had not been in school for three years: they were not allowed to attend the school in the IDP camp because they had missed out and dropped back a couple of grades. We hope that they will be able to rectify that.

The issue of education is crucial. Seeing the hope on one hand of these schools reopening in Mosul and the despair of the children stuck for years in these camps in Irbil reinforced for me the importance not just of education for refugees but education for girls and indeed boys who have been internally displaced, of whom there are almost twice as many worldwide as there are refugees. My most telling visits were to the Yazidi families in the camps in Duhok. There are still 300,000 Yazidis displaced in Duhok. They are terrified to go home to their historic lands in Sinjar and their numbers are being added to regularly now with the survivors of kidnapping and sex slavery coming back to the families in the hope that they can at some point perhaps rebuild their lives.

I believe very strongly that we in the United Kingdom have a duty in Iraq, given our role there over the last 20 years and perhaps in the past as well, to step up to the plate and support these sufferers of not just internal displacement but in particular of sexual and other sorts of violence as they try to return home. Will the Minister say what level of support we are providing for education, psychological support and improved governance in Sinjar, in the hope that the women who were sold into repeated rapes and sexual slavery will at some point have the confidence to rebuild their lives and the ability to return home with their families?

I will draw out two points from the Iraqi experience in relation to women and girls worldwide. Education and the crucial issue of tackling the culture of impunity in relation to sexual violence in conflict are central. As Members of your Lordships’ House know, I believe very strongly that the global goals of the UN 2030 agenda for sustainable development provide a framework in which we can make a real difference over these years in development both globally and here at home.

Two goals stand out for me in particular as most likely to deliver the goal of gender equality—the goal on education and goal 16 on peace and justice. In every country where women face colossal discrimination, not just casual or structural discrimination but deep violence and discrimination through child marriage, sexual abuse and lack of rights, education, opportunity and individual freedom, education has to be one of the keys to changing that situation. Our investment in girls’ education over recent years has been substantial and very welcome, but I hope that, when the UK goes to the United Nations in July with our voluntary national review report on the global goals, we will not just reinforce that commitment to global education but go further and commit to supporting education for these internally displaced children. There are nearly 20 million of them worldwide; they are the responsibility of their national Governments rather than of the international community, but I believe that we have a humanitarian responsibility to them. If we genuinely believe in gender equality, we need to ensure that education gets to these girls, and to their brothers as well.

I also believe that we need to expand further the very welcome Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and the other initiatives that successive Governments in the UK have undertaken to try to improve conflict prevention and reduce the impact of conflict globally. Under goal 16, we should be leading the charge for a major international initiative that pulls these different strands of work together and recognises that conflict today is based on identity and deep in the psychology of those involved, but also that it increasingly affects civilians, particularly women and girls, more than it affects combatants. We need to find a way in the review of the global goals that will take place at the United Nations in September to reinforce the commitment to goal 16 and also to lead an initiative that would put goal 16 at the heart of the work of the United Nations on its 75th anniversary next year.

There has never been a time in the cause of conflict prevention and dealing with those affected by violent conflict—apart from the world wars, which were of course particular occasions—when so many people in so many countries have been affected by this. The United Kingdom could take a lead here. There are so many countries around the world that would want to be involved in such an initiative, and so many places that need it.

I hope that we can lead an international charge as we go through not just the voluntary national review of our commitment to the global goals at the United Nations in July but the review of the goals themselves in September, and into the 75th anniversary of the United Nations next year. Conflict prevention—that is, preventing violence and sexual violence in conflict as well as all the other violence going on around the world today—could be the great challenge for the UN in the decades to come.