International Development Policies

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Barker on an excellent maiden speech. He has made a significant contribution to the other House and brings to this debate his considerable experience from his role as Minister for Energy and Climate Change. We all look forward to hearing his further contributions in your Lordships’ House.

I thank the noble Earl for introducing this debate. Our international development commitments stand among the most important areas of government policy because we have a moral duty to help others around the world. We should be particularly proud that the requirement for 0.7% of GNI to be spent on international development is now enshrined in law, which sets an example to other countries. However, we need to ensure that the money is spent properly and that our funding is used to greatest effect. This means developing the right policies, with transparent, accountable review mechanisms, and ensuring that they have the desired impact on the ground. The Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, has made reforms since taking the helm three years ago to strengthen internal auditing, enabling the passage of money to be followed more closely.

Without doubt, our policies have contributed enormously to the halving of extreme poverty achieved internationally under the framework of the millennium development goals, and the UK has played a leading role in developing the new sustainable development goals adopted at the UN in September, with their aspirational 17 goals and 169 targets addressing the commitment to leave no one behind and applying to all countries of the world. I was particularly heartened that the UK was instrumental in pushing for a stand-alone goal on gender equality as women are always the poorest of the poor.

There are two areas I would particularly like to raise in this debate. In the end we want all countries to become self-sustaining and thus we must encourage change within the developing countries themselves, at both national and grass-roots levels. At national levels, functioning institutions need to be in place to deliver services such as healthcare, education and justice, and British aid funds many such projects. At the grass roots the smaller organisations can generally be the most effective, gaining the trust of a community and its leaders. Many of these smaller organisations find it very difficult to obtain funding, as we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, because applying for grants is so complicated. It takes expertise and they do not have the capacities. I have even heard that funds such as the Tawanmandi fund in Afghanistan, set up for just such a purpose, is very difficult and complicated to apply for.

We need to ensure that some of our money goes to these smaller organisations. However, there is a reticence over funding them because they are harder to monitor. Some of our bigger NGOs work through local partners but I met an NGO in Iraq in May this year which acted as a platform, applying for grants and managing and directing them down to a number of grass-roots organisations. Would my noble friend the Minister consider this approach to ensure that some of our aid reaches those communities where it is so badly needed?

In the longer term, as I have said, we must help developing countries to become self-sustaining. I have just returned from a visit to the DRC, a country enormously fertile and rich in natural resources but where the majority of the people live in abject poverty. Endemic corruption means that the country’s assets benefit only a few, with the proceeds being siphoned out of the country instead of benefiting the majority. The DRC is not the only country in Africa where this happens so the challenge is also how to stop it happening. Is there more that HMG could do to stop this, as much of the money coming out is brought to the West? I hope that HMG will continue to assess the most effective ways of benefiting those in developing countries and encouraging other Governments similarly to meet their aid commitments, so that together we can ensure that the SDGs will transform our world by 2030 for the benefit of all.

UN: Global Goals

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I think I disagree with the noble Lord that the millennium development goals fell short. They focused minds in countries around the world and we did see at least half of the world’s children who were not going to primary school now attending. We have seen malaria deaths halved globally and we have seen numbers of those living in extreme poverty more than halved. The SDGs allow us to focus on the fact that this is a universal agreement; 193 countries have come together, and with them civil society organisations and business. This is something for which we all have ambitions to develop and achieve, so I think that this is a game changer for the world. We should celebrate what has been achieved and build on that to make sure that, going forward, we really do eradicate extreme poverty. That is incredibly important.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, given DfID’s focus on women and girls, I am sure that Her Majesty’s Government particularly welcome goal 5. Will Her Majesty’s Government be lobbying to ensure that the right indicators are in the goal when they are ready so that no one is left behind? I mention especially widows and disabled women, along with indigenous women, who suffer so much in developing countries?

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend is right to highlight goal 5. But all the goals are important and that is why we will be pushing for them to be implemented in their entirety. As I said earlier, we in this country are to be congratulated because we have already been working incredibly hard to ensure that we are implementing the goals and helping others to develop their plans for putting women and girls at the heart of all programmes.

Developing World: Women

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for bringing this most important subject before your Lordships’ House. The empowerment of women, particularly in the developing world, has long been an interest of mine. I would also like to welcome the ministerial appointment of my noble friend Lady Verma. I have known her a long time and admire her long-standing work and commitment to empowering women.

Conflict has a significant and disproportionate effect on women and, as we have already heard, they are usually excluded from peace processes. Therefore, even after the men have stopped fighting, there is still no peace for women and they are left voiceless, to suffer in silence. This was starkly brought home to me when I visited Liberia a couple of years ago. The sexual violence of the conflict had embedded into the society and it was all too commonplace that girls as young as 12 were routinely subjected to rape. Today, warfare has moved from battlefields and into communities. Women now face the danger of conflict up close, sometimes in their own homes, and all too often without protection. It is thought that 90% of deaths in conflict today are civilian, with 70% of them being women and children, and those who survive are often subject to sexual violence, shattering lives for the long term.

The terror inflicted by ISIS today in Iraq and Syria is a shocking illustration of this. It has abducted and raped thousands of women, selling many into prostitution. Last month I visited Iraq and heard of a Yazidi girl who had been sold 21 times in Syria. At an IDP camp, I met some of the women who had fled from Mosul and Sinjar; their stories were indeed harrowing, and they were homeless with no means of support and were worried as to how they were going to feed their children.

While women are often the poorest in a society, widows are the poorest of the poor. Widowhood is one of the most neglected of all the human rights and gender issues. All the chaos and turmoil of the warfare of the last decade has created millions of widows and wives of the disappeared, who become the most vulnerable in their societies. It was recently estimated that the number of widows in Iraq alone had reached approximately 2 million. Afghanistan is a country with one of the highest proportions of widows in the world, as four decades of conflict have left millions of women without a husband.

In many of these countries, societal norms mean that women cannot function in society without a man. It may not be acceptable to walk down the street unaccompanied by a male or to work outside the home, thus family stability is destroyed and too often women and their families become destitute. In Kabul, you see widows begging beside the road and you see young boys selling food products because it is unacceptable for a woman to do so. In some countries in Africa, widows may be regarded as a chattel of the community and subjected to abuse and exploitation. They may not be allowed to inherit or own property. Thus a widow may be turned out of her home, or forcibly made to marry a member of her husband’s family. Too often, widows are held in shame, ostracised and abandoned by their communities, adding to their sadness, poverty and the stigma of widowhood itself.

Disturbingly, there are no official statistics on the number of widows in the war-torn countries. This lack of reliable data means that the plight of widows is severely neglected, impacting not only on their livelihood, but on that of their children too. Widowhood is not just the root cause of poverty and inequality, but is the reason that millions of children of widows—daughters as well as sons, vital to a society’s prosperity and future—are denied education and well-being, and this has a knock-on effect on the country’s development.

I declare an interest: during the past few years I have got to know, and at times worked with, Margaret Owen of Widows for Peace through Democracy. Following the death of her husband, she became aware of the plight of widows in conflict and developing countries and founded one of the first organisations to focus on this issue. I echo the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, about Margaret Owen. She is indeed in her 80s and, as we speak, is travelling in the Middle East. She is an incredibly remarkable woman and her ground-breaking work and tireless campaigning time and again raises the issues of widowhood. WPD, her organisation, is an umbrella and support for many widows’ organisations in countries across the world.

This year, the 59th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women focused on the Beijing Platform for Action as it is its 20th anniversary. In its declaration, the commission expressed concern that progress had been slow and that gaps and obstacles remained in the platform’s implementation. It also recognised that new challenges have emerged and committed to using all opportunities and engaging all stakeholders to achieve their aims. However, Beijing made no explicit mention of widows and, in reviewing its implementation, surely widowhood issues should be addressed.

The purpose of today’s debate is to make the case for widows, and women as a whole, to be included in conflict resolution and thus to help create long-term sustainability in countries that have been torn apart by war. This year is also the 15th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which focuses on the situation of women in conflict with its four pillars of prevention, protection, participation, and relief and recovery. However, although many countries have adopted national action plans on the implementation of UN Resolution 1325, few have allocated proper funding or resources.

Last year, the OECD reported that only 3% of peace and security funding is used with gender equality and women’s empowerment as a principal objective. A UN survey of peace agreements also illustrated that, between 1992 and 2011, women were fewer than 4% of peace signatories and less than 10% of negotiators. Excluding women from peace processes means that not only are their needs overlooked but their knowledge and experience are not utilised. Building stability in a post-conflict country needs the input of the whole of society—you cannot have true peace in a country where half the population is excluded from decision-making. So instead of seeing women just as victims, it should be recognised that women have the ability to be powerful agents for change in their communities. Surely some internationally agreed funding of women’s rights groups would go a long way towards addressing this implementation deficit. To realise the goals of Resolution 1325, dedicated budgets, with clear lines of responsibility and accountability, that actively involve and include civil society are needed.

In the context of UN Resolution 1325, I applaud the ground-breaking work done by our military. Today, often the first person a survivor of conflict will meet is a soldier. In Kurdistan last month, I met some of our military who are training the Peshmerga, not only in fighting techniques but in protection of civilians and helping survivors of sexual violence. In the DRC, our military engaged with women in communities. This not only helped with their protection, but helped with intelligence of what was going on on the ground. I hope that we can embed this work into the MoD and that other countries will follow the UK’s lead.

Women’s voices are rarely heard in the developing world, and those of widows even less. Surely this is the time to stop widowhood being a neglected issue. Widows’ needs must be addressed within the context of poverty, human rights, access to justice and the elimination of violence. When considering the millions of widows across the world today, I hope that the Minister will agree that this is a key component to the wider success of the women’s empowerment agenda. Again, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for bringing forward this debate, for it is by discussing these issues and shining a light on the needs of the poorest in society that we will help to bring about the fundamental changes that will contribute to stability in the countries which need it so desperately.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, we have heard many excellent contributions, starting with the wonderfully comprehensive introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, which was followed by many other outstanding contributions. I, too, am delighted to speak today and am proud of our Government’s commitment to deliver 0.7% of our gross national income as official development assistance—the first G8 country to do so. As a DfID spokeswoman said:

“Investing in overseas development is creating a world that is healthier, more stable and increasingly prosperous. This is something Britain can be proud of”.

Tackling poverty overseas means tackling the root causes of numerous global challenges, such as disease, drugs, migration, terrorism and climate change, which are ultimately interconnected with us in Britain and the developed world. Aid assists with long-term economic growth and stability, helping to build new economies and potential trading partners for the future. Through working in fragile and post-conflict states, UK aid is also helping to protect the national security of our country. Many of these points have already been made, but, when visiting countries, I have seen the difference that our aid can make in so many ways.

We have heard the relevant figures for what DfID aid has achieved in giving people access to clean water and better sanitation, supporting children to go to school, ensuring safe births and reaching people with emergency food assistance. Where humanitarian disasters occur, the UK is a world leader, whether responding to Ebola in Sierra Leone, the people of Iraq fleeing from ISIL, the humanitarian crisis in Syria or those affected by the typhoon in the Philippines. These are truly impressive achievements and mean the difference between life and death for so many.

While a few may question the necessity for this Bill, legislating to oblige this country to maintain the current level of investment will ensure that we continue to build on this progress. There is no doubt that some people resent public money being diverted overseas, especially in times of austerity when cuts have had to be made at home. However, as the Prime Minister said:

“We are the kind of people who believe in doing what is right. We accept the moral case for keeping our promises to the world’s poorest—even when we face challenges at home”.

As we have heard, we should not forget that the commitment to spend 0.7% is an international agreement, originally set by the United Nations, and that we are one of five countries that have achieved this.

As has been highlighted, our Government have a responsibility to British taxpayers to make sure that we get the best value for every pound that we spend. During the past five years, tough steps have had to be taken, cutting the number of countries that receive aid, tightening financial controls, cutting administrative costs and focusing on value for money. Transparency is key to building and maintaining public support. DfID was ranked the top bilateral donor in the 2014 Aid Transparency Index, with the department’s online development tracker allowing users to trace the delivery of aid from donor to beneficiary. By driving value for money and improved transparency, it ensures that UK aid goes where it is most needed and where it will deliver the very best results for taxpayers’ money.

Across the developing world, women and girls continue to bear a disproportionate burden of poverty and, as we have heard, are the poorest of the poor. By putting them at the heart of development through working to help girls get through secondary school and tackling violence against women and girls, DfID enables them to have greater choice in their lives. The Girl Summit last July demonstrated the UK’s commitment to eliminating FGM and early and forced marriage for ever. The UK’s ending sexual violence in conflict initiative has led the way to force the world to take notice of this crime, with 155 nations having signed the declaration at the UN.

This is a very significant year for development. The UK has led the global debate on what should replace the millennium development goals when they expire. Although the number of people living in extreme poverty has halved since 1990, globally 1 billion people still struggle to survive on less than $1.25 a day. Therefore, this Bill is crucial. It sends a signal to those in developing countries that we are committed to keeping our promise to them and to other developed countries that they, too, must keep their promises and follow our lead. I am pleased to support the Bill.

Developing World: Maternal and Neonatal Mortality

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, nearly every minute of every day a woman dies from complications in pregnancy and childbirth. Yesterday 800 women across the world died; 800 will die today and every day until the end of the year and into next. On average, 9,000 babies will die at birth or in the first week of life each day of this year too. In this day and age these are truly shocking figures.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on having secured this debate which encompasses two of the most important millennium development goals—to reduce child mortality and to improve maternal health. Of course, these two goals go hand in hand and I am heartened that the title of this debate recognises it.

There has been improvement. Since 1990, maternal mortality has declined by nearly half. Although progress has been made in all developing regions, as we have already heard, there are vast geographical disparities and it is now estimated that 99% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries. In 2013, the maternal mortality ratio in developing countries was 230 per 100,000 live births, compared to 16 per 100,000 in the developed world. For example, one woman in 30,000 dies as a result of pregnancy and childbirth in Sweden, whereas in Afghanistan it is about one in six. So many of these deaths are preventable. These women will not have had the pain relief and epidurals that we have come to expect here. Many will have had to endure many hours of excruciating and unbearable pain before they die.

Neonatal mortality rates have also declined significantly over the past 20 years, but to have between 3 million and 4 million babies a year currently dying is truly appalling. Cocooned in the Palace of Westminster, we might find these overwhelming impersonal statistics numbing, but we should remember that each and every one of these deaths is a devastating tragedy for those involved. It is a tragedy for the children who lose a mother—and children who have lost their mothers are 10 times more likely to die prematurely—and a tragedy for the mother who loses a baby. In the West these losses are mercifully rare but, having lost a baby at birth myself, I know personally that it is a very hard thing ever to come to terms with.

For every woman who dies, at least 20 more suffer complications which may leave them with lifelong crippling disability and pain. Lack of obstetric care may result in fistula, resulting in them being shunned by their families and the community. Traumatic births can cause postnatal depression—something rarely mentioned in the context of developing countries. Today in the UK, 10% to 20% of women develop a mental illness during pregnancy or within the first year after having a baby. With the right help, women can recover but, without that help, they may never be able to function properly again. For a baby, even slight oxygen deprivation at birth may cause life-changing damage—either physical or mental.

Many of these deaths are avoidable but, to ensure the fundamental well-being and survival of both mothers and babies, every woman needs access to a trained doctor or midwife. In countries such as Afghanistan, only 14% of births are attended by a health worker. Every year, across the world, 46 million babies are delivered without any skilled assistance.

I have seen the challenges from my visits to various countries. For example, I remember visiting the district hospital in Koinadugu in Northern Province, Sierra Leone a few years ago. There was only one doctor in the hospital, who was also the district health administrator. He explained that some of the villages in the district were 100 miles away from the hospital and there were no roads. Although there was a system of outlying clinics, none had doctors and most had no trained nurses either. The radio system to them from the hospital was broken. There are similar tales in many other developing countries. So it is not just about ensuring that there are enough doctors and midwives in these countries; it is also about ensuring that the medical care that is so vitally needed can be reached.

Harmful traditional practices such as FGM and early marriage, all too prevalent in some developing countries, also contribute to maternal and child mortality. Lack of adequate nutrition can also be a cause. Lack of gender equality impacts, too. For example, there are clear connections between women’s lack of access to education and reproductive rights and health. In some countries, girls commonly have to leave school due to pregnancy or for early marriage—that is, if they have attended school at all. I recently visited Mali, which has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world. Half of the girls there will be married before they are 18. In addition to greater vulnerability to domestic violence and the contracting of diseases, these child brides are more likely to bear children before they are physically ready, thus exposing them to extreme risk. Newborn baby deaths are also 50% higher when born to those under 20.

Women need to be empowered in a wider cultural sense by having control over their sexual and reproductive activity. It is estimated that 215 million women in the developing world want to delay or avoid pregnancy, with as many as 50% of pregnancies being unplanned and 25% unwanted. Having to have baby after baby wears a woman out, with each pregnancy multiplying her chance of dying from complications. It is estimated that a third of these deaths could be avoided if women had access to contraception services, which would help avert unintended and closely spaced pregnancies and reduce instances of unsafe abortions. This is because one-quarter of all pregnancies end in abortion and 19 million of those abortions are unsafe, resulting in 68,000 deaths per year and many women suffering complications and infections. So the provision of proper contraception is crucial in improving reproductive health and tackling maternal mortality.

I particularly welcome the debate today, as in spite of the improvement of the last 20 years the situation is still unacceptable. We need to be resolute in tackling the causes in developing countries because we still have a long way to go until every woman and child across the world receives the care that we, in the western world, take for granted.

Global Development Goals

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, like others, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on raising this very important issue today. As the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself has said, the millennium development goals have been the most successful global anti-poverty push in history. During the past 14 years, we have witnessed enormous progress in tackling some of the world’s most prevalent ills and providing for the needs of those in the very poorest and most disadvantaged communities. As other noble Lords have said, the setting of these ambitious and measurable targets has resulted in a worldwide halving of the numbers living in extreme poverty. Fatal diseases have been tackled and millions more people today have access to sanitation, clean water and primary education. It is important, therefore, that the progress made is strongly acknowledged and celebrated, but this is not a job finished; this is work in progress.

Although the targets were projected to be met by 2015, still around 700 million people across the world live in abject poverty and without many of the things such as healthcare and secondary education that we in the UK take for granted. As Amina Mohammed, Ban Ki-moon’s special adviser on the post-2015 development planning acknowledges, the world has changed radically in the last 15 years and we must now expand on progress, build on existing momentum and learn the lessons that the MDGs have given us. This is not the moment to give up the fight.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his recently released synthesis report, stressed the need for a renewed global partnership for development between the rich and poor nations in the context of the post-2015 agenda. Thus we need to look ahead, establish new goals and finish the job in hand. This will need a new approach, which needs to include caring for the environment and protecting the world that we live in —as the Secretary-General has made clear, you cannot have true economic development that does not recognise the importance of the earth’s natural systems, because climate change causes crops to fail and people to starve in poor countries.

At Rio+20, member states agreed to launch a process to develop a set of sustainable development goals—the SDGs—to build upon the MDGs and converge with the post-2015 development agenda. Whereas the MDGs concentrated just on developing countries, to really create a sustainable agenda we will need to treat people as active partners in development rather than passive beneficiaries of aid. It will need all countries, both developing and developed, to commit to good governance, rule of law and the fight against corruption, with targets and indicators relevant to every country and region. It will need everyone to be engaged to help deliver this: Governments, civil society, all ages—the young and old—and especially the marginalised groups, because we must ensure that no one is left behind, regardless of age, gender or ability. It is only by working together that we can deliver a truly transformational approach.

Some of the MDGs have delivered more progress than others, but one of the areas in which we still have a significant way to go is that of gender equality and the empowerment of women, which was millennium development goal number three. Globally, women are disproportionately impoverished and, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, told us, make up two-thirds of those still living in extreme poverty, form 60% of the working poor but earn only 10% of the world’s income and own less than 2% of the world’s property. Sixty-one per cent of the 123 million young people who lack basic reading skills are women. A survey of 63 developing countries also found that girls are more likely to be out of school than boys among both primary and lower secondary age groups.

Why is gender equality so important? It is because women have the ability to transform their communities if they are given the right tools and support. As Brigham Young once famously said:

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation”.

I find it incredible that there is still no country in the world where women are equal in political, economic and social terms, not even in the developed West. This is a missed opportunity. Even here at home, it is projected that by equalising men’s and women’s economic participation rates we could add more than 10% to the size of the British economy by 2030. In developed countries, gender wage gaps also persist. Only one in five parliamentarians worldwide is a woman; and VSO tells me that on current rates of progress women will not be equally represented until 2065 and will not make up half the world’s leaders until 2134. Domestic violence everywhere is often all too commonplace, with 35% of women across the world having experienced violence. A woman who has to fight for her existence at home has no prospect of working towards greater rights, higher status within society or helping her community.

In some countries, violence has become a pandemic and, where conflict occurs, rape is all too often used as a weapon of war. Sexual violence destroys lives, shatters families and breaks up communities. I therefore congratulate William Hague on his initiative to end sexual violence in conflict. He has put the spotlight on a war crime that has been ignored for years.

Today in war, 90% of the casualties are civilian—mostly women and children, yet women are nearly always excluded from the peace processes. Some 125 million women and girls have undergone FGM and one in nine girls in developing countries is married before the age of 15. The reality of this usually means that their education is finished and their prospects curtailed; many are condemned to a life of domestic servitude. Still, every day globally, around 800 women die in childbirth.

This was brought home to me when I visited Mali last week. Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world; it has a very high illiteracy rate and many women are married off at an extremely young age. Most girls there have undergone FGM and, as there is little access to contraception, they will end up having a large number of children. It is hard for the women there to do anything but just concentrate on their survival and that of their children.

Too many countries today still have a patriarchal society, with men dominating all the leadership positions, and with the societal norms and values working against women. I therefore welcome the recommendation of the open working group—established to develop the sustainable development goals for future consideration by the UN General Assembly—for a standalone goal on gender equality and the empowerment of women, a goal that so many of us have been calling for.

This new gender goal—goal number 5—unlike that of the MDG, has targets aiming to create policies and laws to ensure an end to discrimination and the elimination of violence and harmful practices, such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation. They also aim to ensure women’s full participation in decision-making at all levels and in ownership of land and economic resources. In particular, I welcome the reference to universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare and reproductive rights, on which there has been pushback from some countries in recent years. This goal also emphasises the need to address stereotypes, mindsets and attitudes that reinforce traditional gender roles. I am delighted that not only has our own Government Equalities Office stated its support for this but it has also been championed by our Secretary of State for International Development and very much welcomed by NGOs and women’s groups.

We all hope that this strong and explicit goal on gender equality will remain in the final post-2015 framework. However, we are not there yet and intergovernmental negotiations will continue into next year when the final post-2015 development agenda is to be adopted at the summit scheduled for September 2015. Therefore, things can still change—and slip backwards—and some fear that global leadership is not strong enough. We look to the UK to provide a strong lead by setting out an inspirational vision for the future so that agreement can be reached for a renewed global partnership for development, which will enable us all, together, to meet the challenges facing us around the world today and help to transform the lives of those who live in poverty.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have nominated any women for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Committee to replace those members whose terms of office are due to expire in December.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, we remain strongly committed to the protection and promotion of women’s rights. We engage closely with the CEDAW committee. The UK has never nominated a candidate to this committee; however we welcome the positive contribution that other members make. We continue to ensure that we put women at the heart of our domestic and international policies, as shown last week when we hosted the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on all they are doing to lead on women’s empowerment and gender equality around the world. However, as my noble friend the Minister has said, the UK has never put a name forward to the CEDAW committee. This is such an important and renowned body around the world. Please could my noble friend give me an assurance that in the next round of nominations in 2016, the UK Government will put a name forward?

[Baroness Northover]

We have no plans to put forward a candidate for the next round of elections in 2016. We look at all UN bodies very carefully and we do not rule out nominating a UK expert in the future, but as the previous Government also concluded, ensuring that such a UK expert is elected is resource intensive. As the noble Baroness knows, we liaise very closely with CEDAW, we put huge efforts into the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women and we put major funding and other support into UN Women, currently standing at £12.5 million a year.

Women: Contribution to Economic Life

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, would like to thank the noble Baroness for giving the House the opportunity to discuss this important topic. International Women’s Day is a suitable and fitting time to acknowledge women’s contribution to the economy of this country and to countries all over the world. We have already heard many excellent speeches, so I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I reiterate points that have already been made.

Everywhere women play a significant role. However, their invaluable contributions are not always recognised and acknowledged, and all too often are still taken for granted, as the noble Baroness has already alluded to. It is a sobering reflection that even today, in the 21st century, there is not one single country where women have the same socioeconomic and political opportunities as men, and too many countries still have a patriarchal culture and discriminatory practices, with too few women in public and political leadership positions, thus limiting their ability to contribute.

This weekend, I am going to New York to take part in the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, where the priority theme will be “Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls”. In considering this theme, we will also be looking ahead to the post-MDG agenda. As my noble friend the Minister has already said, it is very important that we support the recommendations of the UN high-level panel, so ably co-chaired by our Prime Minister, in calling for a stand-alone goal for women because equality for women is progress for all.

To contribute to their full potential, women not only have to be able to access education, healthcare and family planning, they need to be able to lead lives free from the threat of violence. Seven in every 10 women report that they have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime. This is not something that just affects women in developing countries. Even here in the UK, two women die as the result of domestic violence every week, which is a shocking statistic.

In many countries it is hard for women to enter the public workplace because it goes against the societal norms and values. We have recently had discussions in this House about women in Afghanistan, to which my noble friend Lady Jenkin has already alluded. There it is estimated that 87% of women suffer from domestic violence and that the attitudes of the Taliban—that a woman’s place is in the house or the grave—still prevail. I salute all the brave Afghan women who have come forward to stand for parliament, to run organisations, to become lawyers, doctors, engineers and diplomats, and to enter many other professions. I know that many of them are very concerned about what will happen with the drawdown of the ISAF forces and I hope that consideration will be given to the security of women human rights defenders at the NATO conference this autumn so that the progress which has been made in Afghanistan does not roll back.

War can provide opportunities for social change. As has already been highlighted by my noble friend Lady Seccombe, this year marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. In that war, an estimated 2 million women replaced men in employment. My grandmother, the wife of a naval officer, went to work in a factory producing parts that were desperately needed at the front, and came up against the unions, who said that she and the other women were working too fast. However, at the end of the war, the majority of the women returned, not entirely willingly, to domesticity. The lessons learnt in World War I contributed to the mobilisation of women in World War II to an unprecedented degree. However, again, in the post-war era women were pushed backwards. I give the example of my mother, who worked for the Malcolm Clubs, which set up messes for the RAF overseas. She was one of the first women into Germany as the Allies advanced and then ran the whole of the Far East for them, going to Hiroshima weeks after the bomb had dropped. However, her managerial career was forced to end with the war, and the only line of work that she was able to pursue back in the UK was as a secretary.

We see similar trends today. In Egypt, for example, women were shoulder to shoulder with men in Tahrir Square to create the revolution, only to be pushed out once it had taken place. In the election that followed, only 2% of representatives elected were women.

Here in the UK, the rise in female participation in the labour market has been the defining trend for women of the past 50 years. Today, the increased participation of women in the labour market is vital to the formal economy and to families, with female earnings key to maintaining living standards by counterbalancing flat, and recently declining, wages from male employment. Today, 72% of working-age women are economically active compared with 84% of working-age men. However, women are considerably more likely to be working part-time than their male counterparts and are less likely to be self-employed. We still have a long way to go. As has already been highlighted, there is a gender pay gap: in 2013, hourly earnings for full-time women employees were still 15.7% less than men’s, and 19.1% when part-time employees are considered too. There also still seems to be this issue of the glass ceiling. Although we have some wonderful examples of successful businesswomen in the House, women still account for only 17.3% of FTSE 100 board directors. Why is that?

As we have already heard, girls today are a third more likely to apply for higher education. It would appear that it is when they have a baby that women’s careers can level out, as some women decide not to return to the workplace or to go part-time, thus stepping off the career progression ladder. Although many companies go out of their way to be supportive to mothers by offering flexible working and part-time packages, others do not. Anecdotally, I have heard of firms refusing to take employees back on a part-time basis. There are companies, especially in the City, who require very long working hours from their employees, which discriminate against women by making it difficult for them to get home to see their children. What is the Government’s attitude to this? Should companies be allowed to regularly demand very long hours from their employees, and how does this sit with the European working time directive?

I began my remarks by talking about how women’s contribution to the economy has not always been appreciated. Women also play an invaluable role in supporting the economy through their unpaid work, saving the UK Government an enormous amount of money. Childcare experts recognise that the care and attention a child receives when young will affect their health, behaviour and ability to learn throughout their lives. A stable family gives a child the best possible start. In most families, it is the mother who is the linchpin of the family and has a significantly greater responsibility for unpaid childcare and domestic work, which, when valued at the minimum wage, equates to about 20% of GDP. Some 58% of unpaid carers are female. Of course it is hard to set an exact cost, but its economic value was estimated at £119 billion in 2011, a huge contribution to the UK economy.

Women also make an enormous contribution in the charitable sector by working as volunteers, as my noble friend Lord Holmes mentioned. Time is short, so I will pick just one example: the hospice movement. According to Help the Hospices, most of the funding for hospice care comes from local fundraising, with only a third of the cost being met by government. More than 100,000 people volunteer in local hospices across the UK, without which they could not be run. A study in 2006 estimated the economic value of their volunteers to be over £112 million.

We should celebrate the contribution women make to their economies, especially as regards unpaid work. If women achieved greater equality, it would help their economies. I end with the words of Hillary Clinton:

“I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century”.

International Development (Gender Equality) Bill

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Friday 7th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord McColl for having introduced the Bill. I pay tribute to him for all his work. Of course, we owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Cash, the honourable Member for Stone, who piloted this important Bill so ably through the House of Commons.

I welcome the Bill enormously because, as the right honourable Alan Duncan, the Minister of State for International Development, said, the Bill can have a lasting impact on generations of girls and women around the world. Still today, in the 21st century, there is not one country where women have the same socio- economic and political opportunities as men. Still today, too many countries have a patriarchal culture and this, together with discriminatory practices, leads to the disempowerment of women and gender inequality.

The Bill addresses gender equality in the context of providing both development assistance and humanitarian assistance, resulting from both natural disasters and the terrible effects of conflict. Development assistance addresses reducing poverty. According to GADN’s recent report, it is estimated that women account for two-thirds of the 1.4 billion people currently living in extreme poverty. They also make up 60% of the 572 million working poor in the world. In reality, the situation for women is probably even worse, as there is likely to be a significant number living in poverty within households that are officially categorised as non-poor.

Women’s poverty is, in part, caused by gender inequality. According to the UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, this discrimination impairs progress in all other areas of development. Unequal distribution of income, lack of control over resources, lack of decision-making power, unequal distribution of household tasks, the care-giving role assigned to women and gender-based violence all contribute to compounding women’s poverty.

As we have already heard from my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece, violence affects women in every part of the world. Seven in 10 women report that they have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime. Although 125 countries have laws that penalise domestic violence, for 603 million women today domestic violence is still not a crime in their country.

A number of reviews of the MDGs over the past five years have noted that women are less likely to benefit from progress than men in some regions. For example, they may lack the resources, time and freedom of movement to travel to access health, legal or social services due to their enforced roles within the household, or they are restricted by partners, family or society. In times of humanitarian crisis, when natural disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti occur, state institutions collapse, law and order breaks down, food and medical care are scarce and violence prevails, thus making women particularly vulnerable.

Wars today have shifted from battlefields to communities, impacting on civilians, especially women and children, who make up 75% of all those killed in modern warfare. It is not just by the enemy that women will be attacked. We all know that where a conflict starts, levels of domestic violence escalate hugely, spiralling out of control. In war, women frequently become targets of sexual violence. Raping a woman in front of her family is one of the most effective ways of disarming the men, and sometimes this is used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Although women in conflict bear a disproportionate burden of suffering, and despite UN Resolution 1325 having been passed more than 10 years ago, they are usually absent from negotiations at the peace table and from decision-making in the aftermath of war. Over the past 25 years, only one in 40 peace treaty signatories has been a woman, and only 12 out of the 585 peace accords referred to women’s needs. Thus, women may continue to suffer violence and abuse because no one is listening to them or taking account of how really to protect them. I pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary, who spoke up to insist that women in Syria were at Geneva II.

In terror, women often flee to take their families to a safer place. Of the 42 million refugees and internally displaced people today, 80% are women and children. No accurate data exist on the millions of widows and “wives of the disappeared”, who often have no means of support and may be targeted within their families and the wider community. According to Widows for Peace through Democracy, there are more than 2 million widows in Iraq; more than 50% of all women in eastern Congo are widows; and there are 2.5 million widows in Afghanistan, with 80,000 in Kabul alone, who often have to resort to begging on the streets. I echo everything that my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece said about the situation for women in Afghanistan and how we need to support them.

The Commonwealth is the world’s greatest pressure group for gender equality, and I welcome enormously the fact that Her Majesty’s Government recognise the injustices to women today, and are trying to address them and improve lives for women around the world in a number of ways, as we have heard from my noble friend Lady Jenkin.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

Perhaps I may briefly reinforce the remarks that my noble friend has just made about the Commonwealth. It is indeed one of the world’s great pressure groups for gender equality. That fact is embedded in the new Commonwealth charter—the so-called maxima carta—which this House has approved and which commits 54 nations to driving a long way forward to beat gender inequality, although of course there is a long, long way to go.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger]

The Prime Minister has said that Britain will “absolutely lead the charge” to promote equality for women around the world during 2014 because, as Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the new director of UN Women, said this week at the eighth open working session on sustainable development:

“A safe and sustainable world demands women’s rights, women’s empowerment and gender equality”.

The Bill contributes greatly to this agenda and thus is important legislation. I very much hope that noble Lords will resist tabling amendments to it, because if they do I understand that, due to time constraints, it may mean that the Bill will fall. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill and very much hope that the House will give it its Second Reading.

Girls’ Education Challenge

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what responses they have received to the Girls’ Education Challenge, to expand education opportunities to marginalised girls, from non-governmental organisations, charities and the private sector.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, in 2011, DfID established the Girls’ Education Challenge, the world’s largest global fund dedicated to girls’ education. This will reach up to 1 million of the world’s poorest girls to ensure that they receive a good quality education in order to transform their future. The initiative has been enthusiastically received by NGOs, charities and the private sector alike.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate Her Majesty’s Government on all that they are achieving with the Girls’ Education Challenge. I know that the Government recognise how critical it is to keep girls at school. Will the Minister tell us what progress has been made to retain girls in secondary schools so that they can go on to complete their education? How does the Girls’ Education Challenge particularly address the obstacles of keeping girls safe on their way to and from school, as sexual violence and forced child marriage both cause girls to fall out of education?

[Baroness Northover]

I congratulate my noble friend on her first Question in the House. She is absolutely right: educating girls is one of the best investments to reduce poverty. As many noble Lords know, educating beyond primary level, which is what she is flagging here, improves a girl’s life chances and delays early motherhood so that she is more likely to have healthy, better nourished children. In fact, ensuring that girls have between seven and 10 years’ education has a decisive influence over whether they can choose whom they marry. The Girls’ Education Challenge is concentrating particularly on supporting girls to progress through secondary school. My noble friend is absolutely right: ensuring that girls are safe on their way to school and at school is extremely important, but this is being addressed.