Sexual Violence in Conflict

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for the support he has consistently given to this initiative. We will make sure that the organisations he mentioned will be fully involved in the global summit and in all our continuing work next year.

The position of the UK Government on the issue he raises is that safe abortion reduces recourse to unsafe abortion and thus saves lives, although we do not consider that there is any general right to abortion under international humanitarian or human rights law. Women and adolescent girls, however, must have the right to make their own decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and well-being. The July practice paper from the Department for International Development clearly outlines the UK policy position on safe and unsafe abortion in developing countries. There are, of course, some countries holding back on this issue, but we will continue to encourage them to adopt the same approach as us.

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

I spoke to some Afghanistan MPs this week and was quite concerned when they said that, because of the Afghan culture, women there could not achieve equal opportunities. What training is being given to the Afghan army so that, particularly post-2014, it sees it as part of its role to protect women from sexual and other forms of violence?

[Mr Hague]

As the hon. Lady knows, this is part of an immense subject. We regularly raise with the Afghan Government the issue of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan in the future. We certainly try to build this into our mentoring of the Afghan national security forces. Given that we will contribute substantially to those security forces financially after the end of the 2014, we will continue to pursue this issue; it should be in their training.