Human Rights (Commonwealth)

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing the debate, which is timely coming so soon after last week’s Commonwealth parliamentary conference.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for giving an informed speech in South Africa about human rights and the charter. It was not only an informed speech but an extremely brave one, which directly confronted prejudice in all its forms across the Commonwealth. The spirited debate that followed showed that she had touched a few nerves. I pay tribute also to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who among other things kept us amused during long hours at the conference. I thought in some of his comments he was in danger of making it seem much more interesting and fun than I remember it being—but I obviously spent too long in meetings. It is worth pointing out in passing what a strong UK delegation we sent to the conference. We certainly made our voices heard on the question of promoting human rights in the Commonwealth. We got a lot of interesting work done, and I think we genuinely made progress for some of our colleagues.

We should take a moment to welcome the Commonwealth charter, because it contains some very useful statements and sentiments, which will help us to move towards greater equality in Commonwealth countries. I am short of time so I shall not read out key phrases—we have already heard some of them—but it contains a strong commitment to tackling discrimination in whatever form people experience it. It is up to all of us to press for those commitments to be implemented.

In the few minutes I have for my speech I will concentrate on the need for further progress on gender equality. I shall do that through two aspects of the matter: women’s representation in Parliament and the education of young girls. I am not suggesting that the other issues that have been raised this afternoon are not important, but I do not want us to lose the gender dimension of the work that needs to be done.

The Commonwealth’s current plan for action for gender equality runs from 2005 to 2015; it has found that across the Commonwealth Parliaments continue to be male-dominated, and that the goal of increasing female participation in political bodies and representational politics is far from being achieved. Some of the major challenges identified by the Commonwealth secretariat included the persistence of traditional gender stereotypes, conflict for women between family and work demands, the masculine culture of politics and inadequate funding to support female candidates. Going by the many discussions in the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians sessions last week and the week before, those things continue to be barriers to women’s representation in politics and wider public life for many of our colleagues across the Commonwealth.

However, we in Britain should recognise that we also have some way to go. I paid tribute several times last week to our African sisters who have made more progress than we have. For example, the Rwandan Parliament has made great strides in the advancement of women. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said that they currently hold 56% of the parliamentary seats there. They are also well represented among Ministers and are creating strong role models for women and girls. Aspects of the Rwandan experience are being transferred to other Governments. The Seychelles, South Africa and Mozambique are making significant progress in increasing the number of female representatives in their Parliaments.

We all acknowledged last week that much more needs to be done. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has a great role to play in continuing to support women and getting more of them into politics. We had the first gender conference here last November, supported by the CPA UK branch and the British group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. It identified the need for ongoing training, ongoing support, mentoring schemes and the need to talk to women about how they raise money locally to support candidatures in local and national elections. I hope that we as a Parliament can continue to support that work.

However, we will not get more women into public life unless we address the issue of girls’ access to education, which, again, we discussed in detail last week. We know that we will fail to meet millennium development goals 2 and 3 on getting universal access to primary education and getting more girls into school, but those matters are so important. The World Bank has made it really clear that economies in developing countries will not progress unless more girls are educated. Across the Commonwealth, we have to press for millennium development goals 2 and 3 to be met, and I hope that we can use CHOGM for that. I have heard what my hon. Friends have said today—that the meeting should not happen. However, it is likely to take place in Sri Lanka, and I hope that we can use it to lobby our Commonwealth Heads of Government to make better progress on getting girls into education and to tackle the issues of child marriage and female genital mutilation, which we did not manage to raise as much as we could have done last week. We must have that on CHOGM’s agenda.

Lastly, when I was in Lesotho a couple of weeks ago, I saw that its Government were trying to get more girls into school. They have major challenges ahead of them. A number of UK charities, including the Durham-Lesotho Link in my constituency, are doing all that they can to help improve access to education. Sentebale is doing important work there. We have to reach out beyond Parliament to voluntary sector organisations, so that we are not only pressing Commonwealth Governments to make progress but assisting them practically in doing so.