Afghanistan

Sandra Osborne Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

It was a wonderful message that we sent out: that not just the Government but the whole of our Parliament regards the issue of women and girls’ rights and prospects as so important to what we are doing. It is fantastic that my hon. Friend has put his thanks on the record, and in fact most of our thanks go to him for developing the Bill and taking it through.

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in paying tribute to the 297 humanitarian workers in Afghanistan, men and women, who lost their lives in 2002, many of whom were Afghans but also from the expatriate community? In order to continue that valuable work in a deteriorating security situation, measures must be taken to protect human rights defenders. What is the Secretary of State doing about that?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady is right to raise that issue. A lot of the UK Government’s work has been on prevention: improving the underlying conditions for women in Afghanistan. Of course other countries—for example, the United States and Canada—have also focused on helping women who have already suffered physical violence. I assure her that we will continue to work at the national level with the new Government and the new President who will be in place after the elections are finally concluded. We will also work at the provincial level and we will continue, through programmes such as Tawanmandi, to work at the grass-roots level with these organisations, whose people I have met both here and in Afghanistan, to do what we can at an individual community-based level to make sure that those women are supported and can get on with their work. As she points out, some of these people pay the ultimate price. I met someone who was over in London recently who said that she would be happy to lose her life if that is what it took for women’s prospects in Afghanistan to improve in the long term. That was an amazing statement for her to make, and the UK Government will certainly play their role in trying to ensure that people can go about that work safely.