Impact of Conflict on Women and Girls

Mike Martin Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on securing this debate and hon. Members on both sides of the House on their fine speeches. I will touch on some of the same themes, not only because of the gravity of the topic, but because of the clarity of the problems and some of the solutions.

In 2023, over 600 million women and girls lived within 30 miles of a conflict. That figure is 40% higher than it was in 2015. The world is burning. Israel, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and the Congo— that is just a short list I sketched out from the small number of speeches we have heard, but I could fill a 10-minute speech with a list of the areas around the world where violence is being inflicted against women and girls in conflict.

As many hon. Members throughout the House have said, it is women, girls and children who suffer disproportionately in conflict. Gender roles tend to become more extreme in conflict. Men go to fight—of course, that is a stereotype, but that is what we are talking about; these stereotypes become more entrenched —and women are often left at home looking after the children and defenceless because the men are fighting elsewhere. They therefore become a target and a way to inflict pain on not just those individual women and girls but the group at large. Sexual violence in conflict is a military strategy used by actors around the world to defeat or attempt to defeat their enemies. I will draw on a couple of examples and highlight one solution that costs nothing and that the British Government should push much harder on.

One of the gravest inflictions of violence on women and girls is happening currently in Ukraine. Earlier this week, I spoke in the main Chamber about the abduction and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Rape and sexual violence are also used as systematic tools by Russian forces in Ukraine. Cases have been documented where Russian soldiers have been issued with Viagra to facilitate rape and sexual violence. The reports that we hear echo the advance of Russian forces across the country in 2022; they are so similar that we know that it is a tactic of war, rather than a few bad apples, as is so often claimed by the defenders of these heinous crimes.

In Ukraine, women ranging from 16 to 83 years old have reported being raped. This often happens during home incursions—a home will be searched by Russian troops and they will rape the occupants while doing so. One particularly sickening case was verified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Russian soldiers entered a family home outside Kyiv in the initial stages of the invasion. They shot the family dog, before murdering the father. They then raped the mother for several hours, while her four-year-old hid under a blanket and watched. While they were raping the mother, they were drinking, then they passed out when they were finished, allowing the mother to escape with her four-year-old son.

While these crimes have been going on in a systematic fashion, the Russian state has also been destroying healthcare facilities in Ukraine, which obviously has a wide-ranging effect. When coupled with rape, it takes away the very treatment services that Ukrainian women rely on to offer some solace and care after the brutality and depravity of rape at the hands of a Russian soldier. These crimes of the Russian state are systematic. They are an attempt to break the Ukrainian spirit and resolve to resist.

I served several times in Afghanistan as a British officer and the tragedy that has befallen Afghanistan since 2021, when the Taliban took over, is immense. That tragedy particularly falls upon Afghan women. Women’s rights have been decimated in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over—indeed, they no longer really exist in any meaningful sense. That has been extensively documented. Many Members have commented on what has happened in Afghanistan to Afghan women’s rights, so I will not go into it in great detail. I will mention one or two particularly extreme examples.

Before the Taliban took over, Afghanistan had a system of support for survivors of gender-based violence, of which there was certainly some. There were shelters, legal aid, medical services and psychological support, which offered a lifeline to thousands of women. Since the Taliban took over, the incidences of rape have increased and the shelters have also been targeted, looted and destroyed to the point at which they are non-existent. It is the same pattern that we see in Ukraine. It is not only the crimes; the services that are meant to offer comfort, solace and care after the event are destroyed. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Human Rights Commission, of course, are no longer extant in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

One particular egregious example in Afghanistan was reported by The Guardian newspaper. In July, a video was disseminated on social media of the Taliban raping a female human rights activist at gunpoint in a Taliban prison. We should ask ourselves why that video was filmed and disseminated. It was because women must be not just violated in Afghanistan but shamed and humiliated to make a point. It is particularly poignant, given the cultural history of Afghanistan, that if someone stands up for women’s rights they will not only be violated but their family’s name will be shamed through their violation on social media. These crimes are beyond depraved.

I have spoken of conflict and of post-conflict, if that is indeed what we can call what is happening in Afghanistan. I will now talk of peace, because it is only through peaceful, stable societies that women and girls—and boys and men—can be safe. Peace must be our policy; peace must be our goal. As many Members have already mentioned, it is a fact that if there is a peace agreement that women are involved in negotiating, that peace lasts longer. By definition, if that peace lasts longer it means that more women and girls—and boys and men—will be safe.

It must be the policy of the British Government not to urge but insist that where peace negotiations are happening under the auspices of the United Nations, the African Union, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe or any other body with which we are involved or affiliated, women must be fully represented in those negotiations. That is not just a moral but a deeply practical point, and it is the one thing we can do in an age of constricted Government budgets that is free and will have a definite, practical outcome. It is crucial that the UK insists that women are involved in negotiating peace agreements.

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[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I thank everyone who has spoken today. I have been very moved by Members telling quite harrowing accounts of the way that women are affected by conflict around the world, some of which has brought back difficult memories of my previous life before being in this place, when I worked in conflict zones, predominantly with children and women. To echo my hon. Friend the Member for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan), I have found that I have reflected almost every day since coming here on whether I am having more impact being here than I did before. I note that five parties are represented here today, and I feel that there is a huge consensus. I certainly hope that beyond this room today there can be actions.

I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this really important debate, and I thank the Minister for being here. Until she appeared before the International Development Committee last week, I was a sceptic on the dual role of being both the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Minister for Development. I wondered whether it did not dilute the two roles, but the answer that she gave us has persuaded me that it is a very powerful thing to have her on the global stage. We all know how integral women and girls are to international development.

Many Members have raised Afghanistan, and I reflected on a time a few years ago when I was a further education teacher and had an Afghan student. She was a remarkable young woman on an access course and her ambition was to go on to be a doctor, but during that period the Home Office was trying to deport her family back to Afghanistan because it was deemed a safe country. I remember spending time with her, and she tearfully explained to me that although she probably could live there, she would not be able to continue her studies—and she had this dream of going on to be a doctor. We were ultimately unsuccessful at keeping her in the country, and I do not know what has happened to her since, but this is an important point that we note for future policymaking in that area.

I will focus my remarks today on the role of women in upstream prevention, with examples of some really heroic women that I have been privileged to know. A couple of years ago, I was privileged to work with the previous Government’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief in organising the global ministerial conference—I was part of an effort to bring women and youth from countries where there is interfaith conflict to the UK.

One of those people was Sri Lankan peacebuilder Dishani Jayaweera. She founded the Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation. She told us a story from during the war when she met a man named Ulama, who had come to one of her workshops. She would run workshops that brought together people from different sides of the conflict to help build empathy and understanding. On the third day of the workshop, he took her hand and broke down crying; he confessed that he had been sent by an extremist group to spy on her organisation. However, as he spent time in the workshop he realised the value of its mission. He ended up becoming one of its most committed members, and went on to found a school for girls and start his own organisation.

Another such person is Badung Charity Audu, a Nigerian human rights activist. Charity witnessed severe violence in her community, including Muslim houses being burned to ashes around her. Some of her friends were murdered and, beginning at the age of five, she was repeatedly raped by relatives and close friends. Due to the high standing of her abusers within her community and faith group, she remained silent in her suffering. She faced constant verbal abuse and was often called “born by mistake” because she was born out of wedlock. She did not learn to read or write until she was nine years old, and was often bullied at school for being illiterate. Eventually, she found somebody she was able to confide in and open up to, and she talked to her foster parents about her experiences. Today, Charity works mentoring young girls overcoming the trauma of abuse and sexual violence in her country. She came here to Parliament and spoke eloquently about her work.

Another person is Khalidah, who is from Iraq, and her friend, Shno Qane Qader. Khalidah is a young Yazidi woman and Shno is a young Muslim woman; they work together to promote peace in their communities and there is powerful testimony of their work. Other examples include Ghadir Hana, an Israeli-Palestinian, and Surale Rosen, a Jewish Israeli: two women working together for peace. We took them to Birmingham central mosque for a discussion on peace and the role of women in peace there. Ghadir was given a pretty hard time by some of the audience, who could not understand why she was appearing on a platform with her Jewish friend promoting peace in their community.

Another example of three outstanding women, who I, unfortunately, could not bring to the UK because we were not successful in getting visas for them to come to the conference, are three women in the Central African Republic. A few years ago, I was with them in Bangui. By chance it happened to be International Women’s Day. Their names are Marie-Therese, Aicha Baba and Clarisse Manehou—a Catholic, a Protestant and a Muslim. They are three women who represent an interfaith platform and work together. There are three male faith leaders of that platform, who have also done remarkable work, and been nominated for all the Nobel prizes, as well as all the things one would expect, and have travelled the world, but we were not able to get visas for the women due to their poverty.

As I sat with those women and asked them about their experience and what I could do, two things stood out for me. One of them was that one woman said she was grateful for the work of the men in building peace, before adding: “But I was the one who faced down the barrel of a gun and stood between the militia and my community, and persuaded them to put down their weapons.”

[Mike Martin]

I would like to add another example to the hon. Gentleman’s great list. As he knows, Somalia, Somaliland and the other Somali countries are organised by clan, and in Somali culture it is actually the women who broker peace between clans. When there are conflicts over grazing rights, it is the women who cross clan lines to broker peace.

[Sam Rushworth]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that example. Another example comes not from my own life but from Liberia, where women became so fed up of conflict that women on all sides decided to unite behind a woman—Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—for the presidency, while many men in the country voted along factional lines.

The experience I had with the women I mentioned will never leave me. I confess that I did not understand the currency I was using. I asked them whether they needed some lunch; I felt that we had been talking for a long time. I gave them what actually amounted to about $100, thinking that I was giving them about $10. They looked a bit overwhelmed. Afterwards, when they went off, my translator told me that they did not buy lunch; they came back hungry, because they said they could use that money better to benefit their community.

When I asked those women what would make the biggest difference for them, I was expecting them to make quite big financial demands. Instead, they said, “Could we have some sewing machines?” That was because, for many of them, their husbands had been killed, they had been raped, their homes had been burned and looted, and they no longer had sewing machines to make a living. For the sake of a few thousand dollars to provide sewing machines for those women, we could give them a livelihood, and that sum, frankly, is probably what we would spend on having a 4x4 on the road for a day in one of those countries. To echo the point that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) made about cash transfers, nothing is more important than getting cash to the women on the ground who know how to spend it to make a real difference in people’s lives.

In conclusion, several Members have made outstanding recommendations, so I will not repeat them all, but I will emphasise the point about upstream prevention. The previous Government rightly established that there needs to be an atrocity prevention strategy within aid spending, but now we need to take that idea forward. Part of that process must involve looking at civil society and upstream funding, and the long-term support for the women’s and young people’s organisations that are doing such vital work in peacebuilding. We need to look at the quality of aid, not just the quantity.

I will close my remarks, because I am really conscious of time. Again, I simply make an appeal that we do not just hear words here today, but that words lead to action.