International Development Outcomes for Women and Girls

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I declare that I am the co-chair of the APPG on Global Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. I, too, thank my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for securing this important and timely debate. It has truly been a sobering debate with so much expertise around this table.

Wars waged by men are often a death sentence for women and girls. Yet despite carrying much of the burden during war, women remain excluded from peace negotiations and political decision-making. The UN reports that women make up only 7% of negotiators and 14% of mediators in formal peace processes. The dial has hardly moved on those statistics in years. As we have heard, more than 4.3 million women and girls in Sudan are now displaced. The suffering is horrifying. We have heard that in Congo, Afghanistan, Gaza and other places, suffering is equally off the scale.

The reduction in FCDO health spending in 2025-26, including cuts to the women’s integrated sexual health programme, has been described as a cruel proposal at a time of acute crisis for women and girls. For the UNFPA programmes, although core funding has been welcome, 2025 funding cuts from multiple donors have severely disrupted sexual and reproductive health. Even with existing funding, 1,100 health facilities and mobile clinics were forced to close. In many places, the maternal health clinic may still stand, but the midwife is gone. There is no emergency obstetric equipment, no post-rape kits and no contraceptives left on the shelves.

Across conflict settings, we are not witnessing temporary service disruptions, we are watching decades of investment in women’s health being rolled back. The impact cannot be measured simply in budgets; it is measured in lives, as we have heard from some harrowing personal stories here today. The truth in this crisis goes deeper than aid cuts. As the noble Baroness said, we need an impact assessment on the full extent of these cuts.

It was reported recently in the British Medical Journal that as conflicts increase, the UK, the United States and other countries are pulling back support that communities rely on. At its core is a global financial system that starves health services of the funding they need. Until that system is reformed and more women are at the table where these decisions are being taken, women, children and vulnerable people will keep paying with their health and their lives.

The UK must use its influential role globally to champion women’s economic alternatives through the G7, the G20 and the UN, including debt relief. Many countries are paying so much in debt repayment rather than investing in services for their communities. To enable Governments to invest in these gender-responsive services, education and long-term resilience, what is needed, as has been mentioned already, is political leadership, which is vital. I hope that in the coming changes in the Government, this will be on the agenda and considered.