Violence Against Women and Girls

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I am also pleased to follow the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne).

This important debate about violence against women and girls follows the publication of the International Development Committee’s report, the contents of which the Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), has outlined. Violence against women and girls is a wide-reaching issue. Globally, one in three women will experience one type of gender-based violence or another in their lifetime. Although such violence is first and foremost an abuse of basic human rights, and, in some cases, even child abuse, it has other more wide-ranging societal implications, which the Department for International Development should address when apportioning aid.

One of the most shocking forms of violence committed against women worldwide, already mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Committee, is undoubtedly female genital mutilation. Globally, up to 140 million girls have been subjected to the practice. The issue is all the more concerning when we consider that FGM is a culturally institutionalised practice and in some countries is endemic; the percentage of girls having undergone the procedure in Somalia and Kurdistan stands at 98% and 70% respectively. It is practised in about 28 countries worldwide.

I am pleased that DFID has recognised the need to step into the breach, as international donor support has been low, and that it has dedicated £35 million, along with programming, to

“end female genital mutilation in one generation.”

I am also encouraged by how DFID aims to do that. The Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the project we saw in Ethiopia—a powerful project about village empowerment to educate people against such practices. We saw that in action. Only by teaching communities about female genital mutilation and the complications it causes can they be made aware of the true brutality of the practice. I believe that in patriarchal societies such as those we have mentioned, such education should be focused on men and boys, especially village elders and religious leaders, as well as women and girls.

Alarmingly, however, FGM is not confined to far-away countries. Figures in a recent report showed that, as those who have been working for up to 30 years to stop the practice in Britain know, the incidence of FGM here has increased considerably over recent years. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reports that last year 70 women sought treatment for injuries sustained during the procedure and illnesses associated with the practice. Some cases even led to death.

Of course, those figures are not entirely representative of the true extent of the problem, as many women fear the consequences of telling the authorities. That makes it difficult for the police and prosecutors to identify cases of FGM, and to date there has never been a prosecution under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 here in Britain. That situation presents law enforcement authorities with something of a problem, and I would welcome mandatory reporting by doctors, nurses and other health professionals, and teachers who feel that their pupils are in danger of either having the cutting done here or of being taken back to their home community to have it done.

It is important that public bodies are taught that FGM is not a culturally sensitive issue but a crime that needs to be reported to protect the girls whom it affects. It is child abuse, and until there has been a prosecution the practice will continue unabated. It is against British law and punishable in the courts. Why are the safeguarding boards not shouting from the roof tops about the issue? All those entrusted with protecting children, young people and women need to start taking a much more robust approach.

I am sorry to say that France’s record is much better than ours. It has had around 100 prosecutions to date and is setting a good example. We should look at what it has done and how, and then do the same. It is shocking that some French girls are sent here to be mutilated in this country. Why do we not change the law to prosecute the parents of girls who have been cut? The children are supposed to be under their protection, but the parents allow that to happen. They have been complicit, even when they have not done the cutting themselves. When a few parents have been prosecuted, more will think twice about the practice.

I pay tribute to the work of the previous chairman of the all-party group on genital mutilation, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who is now a Health Minister and is following up every avenue she can. I have taken her place, and will be working with communities here in the UK to make progress on this issue.

Forced marriage, which was not mentioned in this report, is another area where fear of offending cultural sensibilities is seriously affecting the rights of young women. For some time now, I have been involved with a charity, Karma Nirvana in Derby, which runs a helpline service for men and women affected by the practice. It is run by Jasvinder Sanghera, who was herself a victim of forced marriage. Every year, Karma Nirvana writes to schools throughout the country to circulate information and literature promoting awareness of the issue, but to date only nine schools have responded to the initiative.

When Karma Nirvana launched its new poster campaign earlier this year, only two schools signed up. Some head teachers have torn them down from notice boards for fear of upsetting cultural sensibilities. Again, this is child abuse, and despite the disappointing figures, it is essential that schools take some responsibility in combating forced marriages because they know their pupils and should highlight possible victims. Some 35% of victims are school-age children.

I am aware that the offence of forcing someone into marriage against their will is set to enter the statute book later this year, but schools, other public agencies and the media are turning a blind eye to the problem. When a teacher and a white female pupil ran away to France last year, the media reported it every day for more than a week until they were found. There may be hundreds of Asian girls going missing every year, but that is not reported in the news. Those girls are British but not white. Is that the difference? If so, could we not blame the media for racial discrimination?

Shafilea Ahmed was murdered by her parents in 2003 after refusing to enter into an arranged marriage. She told five separate organisations that she was at risk, but all failed to act on her warnings. The police even attempted to provide mediation between her and her parents, who later took her life. It is clear that cultural sensitivity overrode the need to protect that young girl. Could that be called honour-based violence? Where is the honour in murdering your own child?

Jasvinder Sanghera’s sister poured petrol over herself and set herself alight, burning herself to death after being forced to marry a man she did not want to be with. There are countless similar stories, but time prevents me from going through them.

It is essential that the Committee should lend its support nationally and internationally to stamping out this social evil. A recent report by Demos praised the Department for International Development for its work in providing assistance and aid for victims of forced marriage, but there is so much more to be done. Greater co-ordination between in-country DFID representatives and Foreign and Commonwealth Office consular staff is paramount in promoting the regional presence of the forced marriage unit, allowing girls who are forcibly taken abroad to marry to be brought back safely to the UK. Perhaps there should be similar units in countries that practise FGM so that they can act when they suspect that a child has been taken to a country for the specific reason of cutting.

It is important to raise the issue of future funding for Karma Nirvana. It has taken 30,000 calls since 2008, but it is unsure whether its funding stream from the Ministry of Justice will be in place after September. It is the only charity providing hotline support for those experiencing honour-based abuse and forced marriage. It is obvious that forced marriage is not a small problem, and when the law against it comes into force it follows logically that the demand for support services will increase. I urge the Minister to make representations to the Minister with the relevant responsibility to ensure continued funding.

The Committee’s report makes important recommendations for ending barbaric practices such as FGM. I am pleased that it suggests doing that through education. I understand that DFID is undertaking initiatives to eradicate forced marriage, but it is important for the Committee to have further discussions on the issue to evaluate how we can further encourage efforts at home and abroad.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) on securing this important debate, and I thank the International Development Committee for providing a wide-ranging and thought-provoking report on the critical issues that we have discussed, to which my Department has formally replied. I thank all those who provided evidence to that Committee, and I thank the hon. Members for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson), for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne), for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and for Luton South (Gavin Shuker)—my opposite number—for their contributions. We are discussing an issue about which everyone is concerned, and on which everyone is committed to moving forward.

Tackling violence is a human rights and development necessity, and it is a priority for the UK Government. Many points have been raised in the debate, and I will address as many as possible in the time that I have. Since the International Development Committee presented its report on the Government’s work in this area, there have been several developments. Following the recommendation in the report, in November I updated the House in my role as ministerial champion for tackling violence against women and girls overseas on progress on tackling violence against women and girls.

I will address the issues on female genital mutilation more fully in a moment, but during the past two weeks, for example, I have organised and attended meetings with other cross-Whitehall Ministries. I met religious leaders—an important part of our armoury in tackling FGM—and representatives of the teachers’ unions. They, and indeed everyone, must be partners in this mission.

On 13 November, the Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), convened with Sweden the “Keep her safe” event, which brought together UN and NGO leaders and senior Government officials from across the international humanitarian system. They agreed a fundamental new approach to protecting girls and women in emergency situations, which the hon. Member for Luton South raised, to ensure that their needs are addressed as part of the initial response. At the event, £21.6 million in new UK funding was announced to help implement those commitments and protect girls and women in all emergencies.

In line with the Committee’s recommendations, DFID continues to scale up the implementation of programming about violence against women and girls. In Afghanistan, we recently announced a new £18.5 million funding package to help support women, which will strengthen access to justice for women who are victims of violence and raise public awareness of women’s rights.

The hon. Member for Luton South raised access to justice and the balance that had to be struck. That ties in with the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, which deals with the matter at the sharp end, where rape is used as a weapon of war. If there is impunity, we cannot move forward. Just as with preventing sexual violence in conflict, access to justice must go hand in hand with a change in social norms.

In Somalia, to bring gender issues to the forefront of our work, DFID recently created an internal gender policy group, which is led and chaired by senior management and has representatives from each sector. The scale-up is being supported by robust evidence from sources such as the violence against women and girls help desk, which has provided support to DFID country offices, and further DFID guidance on addressing violence against women and girls through security and justice programming. That note is part of a series of DFID guidance notes on violence against women and girls, and it will further support our scale-up efforts by providing practical advice to staff and other UK Departments.

The £25 million research and innovation fund to address violence against women and girls will support programme implementation and scale-up by generating evidence on what works for the prevention of such violence. Although I share the frustration at the time that some such measures will take, some of them will go into play very soon. When we scale up, we must be sure that we are making an impact on behalf of British taxpayers and doing something that works, not something that we rush into only to discover that it was not what we needed to do.

I have many points to address. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon asked about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Sudan, and whether VAWG would be prioritised. We are currently in the process of a round of resource allocation across all DFID offices, and we are looking in detail at how we can most effectively scale up our VAWG programmes. I have mentioned Somalia, but in Nigeria we have a major programme, “Voices for Change,” to tackle the underlying causes of VAWG and gender inequality. DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are working closely on VAWG programmes in DRC, ensuring preventative action and effective responses to survivors.

I was asked what we are doing about water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH. DFID has produced a new briefing note on violence against women and girls in emergencies, and over the next year will also produce guidance on how water and sanitation sector programmes can address such violence. Importantly, through the sanitation and hygiene applied research for equity programme—SHARE—DFID has funded development of a violence, gender and WASH practitioner toolkit, which will be available this year.

I was asked how we are ensuring that VAWG is prioritised in multilateral agencies. We are keen to ensure that VAWG is a high priority in multilaterals. UN Women is a key partner in such matters, and DFID helps to fund it. The call to action in November last year that I described secured commitments from a wide range of UN agencies to put women and girls at the heart of their humanitarian response. That includes protecting them from violence. It was a pledge not so much on finance, but on what UN agencies would do under the circumstances.

A lot of right hon. and hon. Members raised the issue of female genital mutilation, an issue about which I am passionate. I think that that comes from frustration, having spent two and a half years at the Home Office. Our diaspora is intrinsically linked with the developing world but there has been a lack of prosecutions. We were challenged on the latter continually, but I must also say that there were no prosecutions under the 13 years of the previous Government.

FGM is a major issue. I am sure that we all recognise how challenging it is for a child to give evidence against their parent. As many Members said, FGM is child abuse and it is illegal, so the inevitable consequences are that the child will be removed from the parents virtually as soon as it is known that something has happened. That has been the great inhibitor. It is important that we have prosecutions, as much as anything because of the message that they send out. The answer is clearly not to send 20,000 sets of parents to jail, but the message that FGM is illegal and unacceptable is very important.

The Minister for Crime Prevention, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), is champing at the bit on this issue. He is working closely with the Director of Public Prosecutions, who believes that we are very near to the first few prosecutions. Part of the issue has been getting preparatory evidence on computers. That way, the process might not necessarily involve a child victim giving evidence in court—there will be evidence of plans to take a child to a mother country to have them cut. We are optimistic about prosecutions. I could not agree more with those Members who said that we must not tiptoe on cultural eggshells. For a long time, that has been the problem and a challenge. I am clear that that can have no standing. FGM is against our laws.

The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire asked about what happens in France. They examine every girl every year until the age of six, as part of other examinations. When I met with my opposite number in France, she said, “You know, we just have a little look.” Given that there is no question about 99% of our population—they do not practise FGM—that would not necessarily be the best use of resources for us. There must be continual pressure from the Metropolitan police and the other forces around the country that were mentioned. They are now proactively looking for those who are perpetrating FGM and seeking to prosecute them.

Many Members also raised the point that our work should be much more to do with awareness and getting into and working with communities. The women of our Somali communities are very hidden. When I visited a school in Bristol, the first primary school in the country that has an FGM safeguarding policy and brings in the Somali mothers, that was the first time that they had all met to be able to discuss such things. The issues are not discussed in the way that we might in this country—the women are very isolated. That is why I have been trying to involve religious and community leaders, alongside those agencies that are working in this field and are best able to get into the communities and to deal with awareness.

I have also involved the TUC and the teaching unions, because they have an opportunity to look at teacher training and other such issues. Indeed, I am working with other Ministers on safeguarding, because the issues are hugely important. The Home Office produced guidelines—I am going to run out of time—for front-line workers, but we were shocked to find that eight out of 10 teachers do not even know about the guidelines, so we are working with the Department for Education on raising awareness about such issues.

I could not agree more with the view that we must be flexible with funding. However, the £35 million that was raised is, in a sense, to get things started. We need to find out what is right—part of the money goes on gathering evidence; part of it goes on social change. The funding helps to support the African movement, as well as the UN resolution banning FGM.

Early and forced marriage is very much in the same vein as FGM, inasmuch as both are social norms. That is a terrible indictment, because such norms are the most deep-seated and hardest things to change. That is why I am particularly interested in behavioural change. We continue to work with Girls Not Brides to develop a global theory of change on early and forced marriage, to underpin the new programmes.

[Pauline Latham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I have only half a second, so I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not.

We are pushing for an ambitious and stand-alone goal on gender for 2015, including strong target language on preventing and eliminating VAWG, as set out in the high-level panel report. It is feasible to have an ultimate target of eliminating VAWG and to measure progress towards that as we do for other ambitious goals, such as that for ending hunger.

I want quickly to address stoning in Afghanistan. Women and girls there continue to face huge issues. The proposal to reinstate stoning is symptomatic of the situation in which women and girls find themselves. In fact, I met the Afghan Minister for Education only yesterday. I raised the issue of violence against women and girls in schools in Afghanistan. He gave me many assurances, but one challenge in Afghanistan is that things are decentralising. Individual communities are going to be far from central control.

I must finish there. I am very sorry, but I will try to write to Members to answer the points that I could not address in such a short time.