Select Committee on International Development

Debate between Sarah Champion and Preet Kaur Gill

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. The inquiry found that there is so much discrimination, and the power imbalances that exist are not being challenged by the aid organisations. We found that there was very little effort to engage local populations in developing programmes or safeguarding routes. Methods to enable beneficiaries to report abuse tended to be in written form, or someone would telephone in. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one organisation had 22 different reporting mechanisms, and not one of them got used. Unless we build things in partnership with local people, and ask them what is the best way forward, whatever clever systems we put in place will not engage the local population and they will fail. We need aid organisations to be much more proactive about engaging with everybody who they are meant to be serving.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

The covid-19 pandemic and measures taken to contain it have exacerbated gender inequality around the world, creating yet greater power imbalances and raising the risk of abuse and exploitation. DFID’s strategic vision for gender equality 2030 provided a strong framework to ensure that the rights of women and girls, and gender equality, continue to be prioritised in development and humanitarian responses. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office must formally adopt that framework? What assessment has her Committee made of the impact of the upcoming cuts to the aid budget on the ability of safeguarding to be at the heart of our official development assistance programmes?

[Sarah Champion]

I thank my hon. Friend for her powerful question, which gets to the nub of this issue. I have no idea why the FCDO has not formally adopted the gender strategy that DFID put in place in 2018. I am grateful that it has put a safeguarding strategy in place, but my fear is that unless it also puts money in, and expects aid organisations to embed safeguarding in their projects, that will fall. It has been estimated that, because of the pandemic, 30 million girls are being forced into child marriages, and my concern is that—this issue was touched on in the previous statement—women and children who are locked in homes because of covid are bearing the brunt of this. That will be happening around the world.

Our second report comes out at the end of the month and tries to deal with the secondary impacts of covid. Women and girls bear the brunt of that, and the Government must proactively put the money where the intent is, sign the document, and ensure that gender equality is embedded across all FCDO and Government projects.