Syria

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for introducing this debate so ably and movingly. Like other debates on similar topics, I cannot help feeling slightly uncomfortable as we, so comfortably ensconced on these red Benches, appear to wring our hands and feel helpless in the face of the injustices being perpetrated on the innocent victims of this terrible war. How can we have any idea of what they are suffering and going through? How can we begin to put ourselves in their shoes? But, in the end, one of the privileges of being a Member of this House is to keep the topic both in our own minds and those of others who care about the tragedy unfolding in Syria, and I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for providing us with the opportunity to do so.

As a trustee of UNICEF UK, I have of course been briefed on a regular basis about its activities on the ground and I, too, pay tribute to it and to the other NGOs and agencies providing humanitarian aid in almost impossible circumstances. Operating any form of assistance in Syria is increasingly challenging, dangerous and highly complex. There is no security for aid workers and rising numbers of armed groups across the country will do little to improve stability or safety. Thousands of aid workers are risking their lives daily to reach those who are most in need. The pace of change in the conflict and the vast array of armed groups all threaten agencies attempting to provide aid. The safety of aid workers must be guaranteed if we are to effectively provide assistance to the people of Syria. The right reverend Prelate pointed out in his speech that we can take pride in the fact that Britain is leading the way in providing aid and assistance. We are the second largest bilateral donor and the £500 million earmarked by DfID for Syria will go a long way to alleviating the suffering of those on the ground, once effective aid routes are implemented and sufficiently protected.

There is so much suffering throughout Syria and in the neighbouring countries, but in the short time available, I wish to focus my remarks on the plight of women and the sexual violence, both in Syria and in the camps, which has tragically become a part of their daily lives. In January, an International Rescue Committee report surveyed Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan and identified rape,

“as the primary reason their families fled the country”.

As Erika Feller, the Assistant High Commissioner at the UNHCR, asserted:

“Syria is increasingly marked by rape and sexual violence employed as a weapon of war”,

to destroy,

“identity, dignity, and the social fabrics of families and communities”.

Alma is one woman who has dared to speak out about the horrors inflicted on women in Syria. She was a battalion commander in the Free Syrian Army from Damascus and was arrested by the Assad regime after attempting to intervene in an incident where a soldier was beating a 16 year-old boy. During her 38-day imprisonment Alma was whipped with a wire, strung up by her wrists and feet, and injected twice a day with a drug that made her feel high. She was gang-raped daily. The things she recalls the men saying as they allegedly raped her multiple times were so filthy that she is loath to repeat them, although she remembers them saying, “Here is the freedom you wanted”, which is a phrase similar to ones other women have reported hearing while being raped in Syria. She has recently received news that her husband, disgusted by the rape, has married a new wife, and her children have remained with him. Speaking out has been a decision she has made after many months of being told to stay quiet. “We have to share this with the entire world to show that women are fighters”, she says.

The reality is that the victims of sexual abuse have much to lose and little to gain from speaking out. It takes a lot of courage and strength for a victim to speak up and they may be on their own with little support as they do it. In addition to the shame and isolation a victim may feel, they now are living in an insecure environment due to the war. They may be in a large refugee camp with no privacy, surrounded by people they do not know or trust. If they tell someone, to whom and where does that information go? It may be hard to put their trust in a stranger when, time and again, there has been little justice for the victims of wartime rape. Added to that must be the physical, psychological and emotional trauma that victims are already suffering from the war and displacement. It is not surprising that they are reluctant to come forward.

However, there are others whose stories are beginning to come out. Now at a safe house in Turkey near the Syrian border, a 25 year-old Sunni woman spoke of how she was detained for more than eight months. Her first days in detention were largely spent without sleep and being relentlessly interrogated for information. She could hear the screams of fellow prisoners being beaten and was continually threatened with sexual violence. She was taken to a cell full of male prisoners in their underwear. Leering, the jailers told her that they would leave her alone with the prisoners, “to take care of her”. To a conservative young Sunni woman, this was unthinkable. She began to scream for them to let her out of the jail. “I thought I was being given to these men for them to rape me”, she said. “I think I screamed for three hours. They wanted to break me, and it worked. Finally I said, ‘Okay, I will tell you the truth’”. When speaking of the degradations she had experienced, she would not use the word “rape”. However, an NGO worker who had been looking after her confirmed that she had been subject to sexual abuse. “But she needs to rebuild her life, and you can imagine what rape means in Syria. She has said that she feels more than violated; she feels ruined”.

A recent UN Commission of Inquiry report on Syria cites five instances of women who committed suicide after being raped, so intense is the shame associated with the crime. The sheer misery of women who have been forced to flee their homes is difficult to convey, and once they have reached supposed safety across the border, the nightmare does not end. Along with the risk of maltreatment and food shortages, there are accusations that Turkish security forces have abused refugee girls and women. According to some Turkish media and news networks, since August 2012 some 400 Syrian women have been raped, with 250 of those rape cases resulting in pregnancy. Increasing numbers of women living as refugees report that they would rather return to their homes, under horrendous conditions, than remain at the risk of rape and sexual abuse in the camps. It is heartbreaking that these women flee their homes with their families seeking safety, only to exchange one place of violence for another.

I am proud that the UK, and our Foreign Secretary in particular, are leading the way in the global campaign against rape as a weapon of war. We should also be glad that so many countries have responded positively. In April in London, the G8 made a historic commitment to address this issue, and in June the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution bolstering the UN’s capabilities, but we need more than words.

Every one of the stories which I have used, and thousands I have not, is a human tragedy. I welcome the commitment by the Secretary of State for DfID to ensuring that vulnerable girls and women in refugee camps have safe access to facilities such as toilets and washing areas, and her commitment to helping tens of thousands of survivors of sexual violence across the region with clinical care and case management, mental health services and financial support. However, we need other donor countries to join us in stepping up and co-ordinating support for refugees. The terrible experiences of these women underline the need to find a political solution to bring this conflict to an end.

Millennium Development Goals

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the United Nations High-level Panel report into the successor agenda to the Millennium Development Goals.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I feel a bit guilty with my 10 minutes. Anyway, I welcome this opportunity to debate the impact of the United Nations high-level panel report into the successor agenda to the millennium development goals.

I start by welcoming my noble friend Lord Bates on his maiden outing to the Dispatch Box. Noble Lords may be aware that I co-chair Conservative Friends of International Development. There can be no more consistent and committed friend to international development than my noble friend. I doubt that there are many, if any, noble Lords in the Chamber today who are not aware of his recent walk from London to Derry, spending 35 days of his summer holiday walking 518.8 miles to draw attention to the plight of the children of Syria and in so doing raising the enormous sum of £50,000 for Save the Children. There may be others watching this debate or reading it in Hansard, or who may stumble across it later, who are not aware of this astonishing and generous feat. I urge them to find my noble friend’s JustGiving page, which is still open for donations. Tragically, Save the Children are in just as great a need of support in their humanitarian work in Syria today as when he finished the walk on 9 September.

This has been momentous and exciting year for development. As well as the high-level panel report, highlights include the UK’s achievement of the 0.7% GNI target, and hosting the nutrition summit and the G8. We can all be justly proud of the role that our Prime Minister and his team played in steering the panel and ensuring the delivery of such an ambitious agenda. There were times when the vision now laid out in the report seemed to be a long way off and I congratulate all the panel members and its co-chairs on rising to the challenge.

After five meetings, around 5,000 pages of submissions and more than 500,000 people consulted, the report is clear, intellectually coherent and moves on the debate about poverty and development without losing what is good in the existing agenda. It offers a clear storyline and an indicative set of goals to provide an example of how this might all translate into the post-2015 agenda.

The report is also a big leap of ambition from the MDGs. It includes, but goes well beyond, the core MDG business of health, education and poverty, and encompasses infrastructure, property rights, governance, violence and personal safety, an end to discrimination, and gender equality. It suggests aiming for zero targets—such as no people living in poverty—combined with nationally defined rates of progress towards that end.

The report has been well received both domestically and internationally. It has set the benchmark against which the discussions and processes of the next two years will be judged. This judgment will be against not only the report’s content but the way in which the panel conducted its work. Its emphasis on the importance of broad consultation and listening to the voices of the poor and vulnerable must be continued throughout the process.

No speech about the successor agenda can be delivered without referencing the historic impact of the MDGs. They motivated global action around a common cause: that absolute poverty was indeed beatable. The 13 years since the millennium declaration have witnessed some of the largest and most successful development impacts in history. The target of reducing extreme poverty rates by half was met five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. The target for access to improved sources of water has already been reached and there have been drastic falls in deaths from malaria, and in maternal and child mortality. Fewer people are dying of AIDS, malaria and TB.

That said, there is much more to do and it is important that we do not forget that there are still two years left to deliver on the current MDGs. The need to finish the job is one from which we should not be distracted. However, as the high-level panel itself said, we must go beyond the current MDGs because, commendable as they are, they did not focus enough on reaching the very poorest and most excluded. Reaching the target to halve poverty is a staggering achievement but one that leaves half the people in poverty behind.

The report states clearly that we can and must eliminate extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2030. The Prime Minister helped to steer the panel to a consensus on the five big shifts required to achieve this visionary aim. Although everyone in this Chamber will be familiar with these shifts, they are worth restating. First, we must leave no one behind. We can end poverty by 2030. We can eliminate preventable infant deaths and we can make dramatic reductions in maternal mortality. Secondly, we must put sustainable development at the core, bringing the environmental and development agendas, which have been separated for decades, back together. Thirdly, we must put a focus on transforming economies for jobs and inclusive growth. As we all know, growth is the only real exit from poverty, meaning a much greater focus on promoting business and entrepreneurship, infrastructure, education and skills, and trade. Fourthly, we must build peace and effective, open and accountable institutions for all, ensuring that we tackle the causes and not just the symptoms of poverty. Fifthly, we must forge a new global partnership that brings national Governments, businesses, community groups, donors, local government and others to work together.

It is also true that ending poverty is not a matter for aid or international co-operation alone. The 2015 process must also be about developed countries reforming their trade, tax and transparency policies. This should build on the work already established under the Prime Minister’s leadership of the G8 in June this year.

Before moving on to the task that lies ahead, I will take a minute to reflect on what we in this House can and should be doing. As we approach the MDG deadline, we must consider the role of democratic governance and parliaments in continuing to promote development objectives. Participation, transparency and accountability are playing an increasingly important part in the post-2015 development agenda. The outcome document from the UN special event on MDGs last month mentioned that the new set of goals should,

“promote peace and security, democratic governance, the rule of law, gender equality and human rights for all”.

Parliamentarians play a critical role in meeting those requirements through their law-making, budgeting and oversight functions and their roles as the representatives of the electorate.

In September, UN states affirmed their commitment,

“to a transparent intergovernmental process which will include inputs from all stakeholders including civil society, scientific and knowledge institutions, parliaments, local authorities, and the private sector”.

However, the onus—and responsibility—is on parliamentarians to engage with those negotiations, which will be launched at the beginning of the UN General Assembly in September next year. We must all remain engaged with the process.

The next couple of years will bring plenty of challenges, but we should not forget that an ambitious successor to the MDGs is in our long-term interests. Every dollar invested in stopping chronic malnutrition returns $30 in higher lifetime productivity. The value of the productive time gained when households have access to safe drinking water in the home is worth three times the cost of providing it.

We will all be encouraged that the UN Secretary-General’s report on the MDGs picked up on the key ideas from the report. I urge the Government to continue to play a prominent role in the discussions, particularly in New York where the negotiations will take place. We wish the UN and the Governments luck and wisdom as they, together with civil society, businesses and other development actors, negotiate the final set of goals over the next couple of years. I think of the report as a Christmas tree, currently loaded with lots of glittering baubles; the task ahead is to prune that tree in order to get the results we need.

I leave your Lordships with this: on page 19 of the report the panel provides examples of the potential impact if its recommendations are successfully implemented. In short, it could mean a real and lasting impact on the poorest in the world. There would be 1.2 billion fewer people hungry and in extreme poverty; 1.2 billion more people connected to electricity; 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year saved from going to waste; 470 million more workers with good jobs and livelihoods; $30 trillion spent by Governments worldwide transparently accounted for; and 220 million fewer people who suffer crippling effects of natural disasters. Can there be a more pressing or important agenda for this House to support?

Finally, during our deliberations and discussions let us never lose sight of the fact that behind these enormous numbers lie people: human beings, individuals and families; real people with the same hopes, fears and aspirations as us, but people born and trapped in poverty, unlike those of us lucky enough to have been born winners of the golden lottery ticket of life.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

My Lords, at this stage of such a very fine debate, with outstanding contributions and powerful arguments on both sides, finding something new to say is quite a challenge.

We have heard from a number of noble Lords with strong and long-standing marriages, including my noble kinsman, whose diamond wedding the rest of the Jenkin family were happy to celebrate last year. As a Conservative, with a mere silver wedding approaching, I strongly believe in marriage as a force for good and I lament its decline in our society. We know that married couples are twice as likely to stay together as those who cohabit. Now we have people who want to get married, to make a lifetime commitment, yet some of us are not sure whether we should allow that to happen. Let us be clear: marriage and the lifelong commitment it involves are far from easy, and a successful marriage takes work. We do not do enough to help floundering marriages and struggling relationships, such as strengthening them and rewarding people for doing the right thing. We should. But stopping gay people marrying is not part of that.

At the heart of this Bill is a straightforward proposition. If a couple love each other, why should the state stop them getting married unless there is a good reason? In this day and age, being gay is not a good reason—if indeed it ever was. Of course, for some religions and faiths, this goes beyond their beliefs. As a result, the Bill specifically protects the rights of those who do not agree and does not compel anyone to do anything. All religious organisations are free to choose whether to opt in or out. The Bill simply allows people to get married—a clear and simple objective, delivered in a way that promotes and protects religious freedom.

We have heard quotes from the correspondence we have all received. I would like to read a few remarks from an e-mail from a Church of England vicar, well known to me, which seem to get to the heart of the matter. He said: “I have come to the firm conclusion that there is nothing to fear in gay marriage and indeed that it will be a positive good, not just for same-gender unions but for the institution of marriage generally. The effect will be to place centrally in marriage the idea of a stable, loving relationship, rather than anything else. Rather than this being a dramatic change, it is actually a radical reform (in the proper sense of ‘radical’) recalling the institution to the heart of its real meaning”. Those are wise words and ones that I hope in due course his church and mine will come to accept.

The other main argument against the legislation is that it would undermine marriage. However, I have not heard a convincing explanation of how it would undermine marriage. Yes, it is controversial, but decriminalising homosexuality was controversial, as was equalising the age of consent. It was also controversial when the Labour Government rightly legislated for civil partnerships. Once those things were done and the world did not end, public opinion changed, and that is what will happen when this legislation is passed.

I am part of that changing public opinion. I am by nature a small “c” conservative. I do not like change. There is a part of me which longs for the simpler, safer world of my childhood. I admire those like my noble friends Lord Fowler and Lady Noakes and my noble kinsman Lord Jenkin who have been totally consistent in their approach, but to be honest I am not sure whether I would have supported this Bill 15 or 20 years ago. I was sitting on the steps of the Throne during yesterday’s debate next to the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, when his 2004 speech was quoted. He turned to me and said, “I was wrong. I have changed my mind”. He is right. Times have changed, and I have changed, and one of the reasons why I now support the Bill is because I have children in their twenties who, like many other young people in their teens, twenties and thirties—whose voice incidentally has been lacking from the national debate over the past few months—just do not understand what on earth the fuss is about. As others have said, the polls all show younger people to be overwhelmingly in favour of the Bill. My own sons have said that they are proud of me, their father, and indeed their grand- father, for supporting the Bill, and would have been ashamed had we voted against it. We need to recognise that for conservatism to work, we have to accept that the world changes. If we do not, we become an anachronism.

Taxation: Families

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

My Lords, rising to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who is so well known for her knowledge, expertise and experience in this area, I feel a bit like a young and very inexperienced First World War pilot up against the Red Baron, or perhaps the Red Baroness in this case. However, like other noble Lords, I am of course grateful to her for the opportunity to participate in this debate.

Let us take a moment to look at why the Government are having to take these steps. When the coalition came into office in 2010, the country’s tax and benefit system urgently needed reform precisely because it was failing families, especially families headed by couples, and let us remember that such families are still in the majority.

I will start by putting my remarks in context with that great reformer of the mid-20th century, the architect of the welfare state itself, William Beveridge. His blueprint for social reform anticipated the enormity of the post-war social challenges and showed a reforming Government how they could rise to them even in the hardest economic times—then, as now. It is worth remembering that his appeal to conservatives and other sceptics was to argue that welfare institutions would increase the competitiveness of British industry in the post-war period, not only by shifting labour costs like healthcare and pensions out of corporate ledgers and onto the public accounts, but also by producing healthier, wealthier and thus more motivated and productive workers who would also serve as a great source of demand for British goods.

Yet by the end of the first decade of the 21st century we had become a nation that was dependent on benefits to a degree that would have astonished and possibly horrified Beveridge, so concerned was he in his later life that the state might have replaced the welfare society where people anticipated, gave, and received mutual help. We had created a veritable tax credit culture that had been fostered by the party renowned for tax and spend. By 2011, nine out of 10 families were receiving some form of subsidy from government over and above child benefit. Families earning over £50,000 a year were able to apply for a top-up in the form of child tax credits, yet even the most numerate stock broker or accountant found themselves unable to work out exactly how they were calculated. For those families, that might have meant a degree of uncertainty about whether it was worth while for a second earner to pursue a part-time job which in turn might have meant the tax credits were all tapered away. But that is nothing in comparison to the abject fear in much lower-earning families that changes to earnings might lead to demands for massive repayments.

Our benefits system was at breaking point under the weight of the confusing complexity of 51 different benefits, withdrawn at different levels. At the end of many years of economic growth, prior to the recession, 5.4 million people were claiming out of work benefits. Many had done the sums and did not consider it worth their while to work as they would struggle to earn as much as they were entitled to on benefits. DWP figures from 2010 show that despite 2.4 million households receiving working tax credit, 35% of families stayed in poverty when a parent entered work.

A significant couple penalty was also a feature, making it much harder for single-earner couples, who might have several young children, to work their way above a somewhat arbitrary poverty line than a single parent. The level of fraud was such that lone-parent claimants exceeded actual numbers in the country by an estimated 200,000. Fathers facing a general slump in blue collar wages, a situation exacerbated by many employers understanding that the Government would top up the little they were willing to pay, often perceived that the mothers of their children would be better off living separately from them.

Researchers at the University of Essex found a spike in the divorce rate of a staggering 160% among families where working families tax credit made it distinctly financially advantageous for a woman to part company with a low-earning or non-earning husband. That is why universal credit has been designed to ensure that people will be better off in work, to make work pay, to simplify an eye-wateringly complex system and reward responsibility, with couples raising children together and sharing the daily load, fathers and mothers willing to work extra hours to improve their families’ lives, not expecting the taxpayer to do that for them. Let us face it, in most cases, they were and are the taxpayer.

Turning to the tax system, I strongly support my party’s pro-marriage credentials and the introduction of the transferable tax allowance for married couples. This would be a popular first step towards rebalancing our tax system so that it is fairer to single-earner families. The organisation Care found that the tax burden on one earner couples with two children is a staggering 42% higher than the OECD average. We are among a small minority of countries in Europe which do not recognise interdependence within families but instead tax on an individual basis.

The tax burden on couple families is why the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies found that increasing the personal tax allowance helps richer families most, where both parents are more likely to have jobs that enable them to take full advantage of tax-free earnings, while transferable tax particularly benefits families at the poorest 20% level. Enabling a low-earning or non-earning spouse to transfer some or all of their personal allowance to their other half sends the vital signal that this Government understand that it is not always desirous or in the best interests of families for both parents to be working. It is not only Conservatives who believe this. Towards the end of her time as Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt admitted in an interview to the Daily Telegraph that new Labour had done a disservice to families by assuming that having both parents in continuous work should be the goal. She said they had belatedly recognised that inadequate recognition had been given to what matters to people most—their families and relationships. She said:

“If I look back over the last six years I do think that we have given the impression that we think all mothers should be out to work, preferably full time as soon as their children are a few months old … We have got to move to a position where as a society and as a Government we recognise and we value the unpaid work that people do within their families. That’s mothers but also fathers and people looking after elderly relatives or people with disabilities”.

I do not suppose that my noble friend the Minister could have put it better himself.

In summing up, I must reiterate that while those who need it should of course continue to receive support, welfare reform is vital for this country so that we stay competitive and support and encourage people’s aspirations to work, setting the right example to their children by paying their own way and avoiding dependency. This Government have grasped the nettle, not despite economic hardship but because our financial circumstances highlighted how urgent was the need for reform.

Child benefit changes have not been carried out in a seamless and sensible way—there is no getting away from that charge—but again we have to face up to the realities. We are in an economic quagmire. Giving more than £1,000 to every family, however wealthy—and that is just for a first child—is unsupportable. However, it is also untenable that single-earner families on incomes a little over the threshold set by the Government quickly lose everything when they are already being hammered through the tax system.

If we really want to support families in need, we must prioritise the most vulnerable, particularly the disabled, as the Secretary of State and my noble friend the Minister have pledged to do. We should do absolutely everything possible to make work pay, recognising that, if wages are not rising, it cannot be right to keep pumping in government subsidy in a way that will let employers off the hook and make it even more difficult to imagine life without benefits.

Violence Against Women

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to prevent violence against women.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to open this timely debate on violence against women. As noble Lords will appreciate, it is timed to coincide with the annual International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, designated by the UN General Assembly to raise awareness of the fact that women around the world are subject to rape, domestic violence and other forms of violence, the scale and true nature of which is often hidden. Each year, this creates an opportunity for individuals, groups and NGOs such as Women for Women International, UN Women, UNICEF, ActionAid and of course DfID—to name but a few—to promote 16 days of activism, joining together to speak out against and raise awareness of the need to end violence against women. Over the past few days, I have found the tweets of these various organisations extremely illuminating. I am delighted that this debate falls within the 16-day campaign period which ends on 10 December. I hope that it, too, will serve to highlight and draw attention to some of the issues both domestically and internationally which so many others around the world are also currently discussing.

I am far from an expert in this area and look forward to hearing from noble Lords across the Chamber who speak with great experience and authority. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, who, along with my honourable friend Jane Ellison in the other place, has been a leading campaigner on the issue of female genital mutilation. I look forward to her contribution to the debate. I look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, whose review into the treatment of rape complaints by public authorities has had such a significant impact.

I am also delighted that we will hear from three noble Lords. As in so many areas of policy, we need the support of men for things to change and for progress to be made. Here, I take the opportunity to pay tribute to two men of vision who have by their actions proved this point. Andrew Mitchell, when Secretary of State at DfID, ensured that women and girls are at the heart of every DfID programme—that includes 16 programmes in this area alone. As he said on International Women’s Day earlier this year,

“Discrimination and violence destroys the potential of girls and women in developing countries and prevents them from pulling themselves out of poverty”.

Also, the announcement of our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, earlier this month on preventing sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations was groundbreaking. I will return to that later in my remarks.

Before preparing for this debate, I was of course aware of the basic facts and statistics with regard to domestic violence, many of which have been raised in this Chamber during Questions or in debates, and will I am sure be raised again today. But looking through the briefings which we will all have been sent, I confess to being utterly shocked by the extent of what is going on under our own eyes. A friend of mine was recently hospitalised with broken ribs. It turned out that her husband had been beating her for years and neither her friends nor her family had any idea. She is one of the fewer than one in four victims who, suffering abuse at the hands of their partner, report it to the police. That means we have to do more to help victims feel confident about reporting these crimes and overcome the feelings of guilt they have about the consequences of doing so. As a society, we are failing to remedy the tragedy of gendered violence. In the UK alone, two women every week are killed by a partner or ex-partner, and every year 60,000 women are raped. Sexual harassment in schools, communities and workplaces is routine.

However, the hour is late and the time is tight. I shall focus my comments on the global situation. I hope that my noble friend in her closing remarks will expand on recent changes domestically which are addressing many of the challenges that we will discuss today. They include the new anti-stalking legislation, the Home Office’s call to end violence against women and girls and the fact that forcing a girl to marry against her will is to become a criminal offence in England and Wales.

I am sure that all of us in this Chamber welcome the Government’s new cross-governmental definition of domestic violence, which will be implemented next March. That definition will reduce the age at which domestic violence can be recognised from 18 to 16—something that is necessary given that the British Crime Survey in 2010 found that 16 to 19 year-olds are the most likely to suffer abuse from a partner. It affects more than one in 10 girls in that age group.

Violence against women and girls is the most widespread form of abuse world wide, affecting one-third of all women in their lifetime. Addressing violence against women and girls is a central development goal in its own right and key to achieving other development outcomes for individual women and their families, communities and nations. Globally, 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not yet considered a crime.

To mention a few specific issues, more than 60 million girls are child brides. I recommend the report of the APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, A Childhood Lost, published earlier this week, which is packed with detailed information spelling out the consequences of child marriage, as well as some utterly tragic case histories.

Yesterday’s horrifying news of the beheading of a 15 year-old in northern Afghanistan because her father thought she was too young to marry, is the latest in an alarming trend of similar violence in the area. About 100 million to 140 million girls and women have experienced FGM. More than 600,000 women and girls are trafficked across borders each year, the vast majority for sexual exploitation. In a survey in India, 50% of men and women agree that wife beating is justified if the woman disrespects her in-laws or neglects the house. When violence against women is justified and attributed to the victim, change is very unlikely to occur.

In the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reportedly the worst place in the world to be a woman or a child, there is an epidemic of rape—according to UNFPA, an average of 40 women every day. Given how difficult it is to get news out from some of those remote places, we can only assume that these dreadful stories are merely the tip of the iceberg.

As mentioned earlier, in his speech on 14 November about the use of violence and rape in war, William Hague said that we must shatter the culture of impunity for those who use rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war and shift the balance of shame away from survivors to the perpetrators of that crime. The Foreign Secretary is right to address what is a common view in some parts of the world that it is the victims who should feel ashamed. We need a cultural change through education and media so that women are empowered and gender relations can be built that sustain respect, harmony and non-violence. Those are all issues which need to be addressed both for the victims’ sake and for development reasons

Violence against women has its roots deeply embedded in the inequality between men and women. Violence is used as a tool to maintain subordination of and control over women. Gender inequalities and discrimination are exacerbated during crisis and social breakdown, meaning that already vulnerable girls and women are increasingly less likely to be able to defend themselves, or to break the cycle.

As I mentioned, violence against females impacts negatively on economic growth—indeed, the cost to society is billions of dollars in lost opportunities from education and employment as well as more direct costs for policing, healthcare and the justice system. Violence against girls has a direct correlation to poor performance in school, lower enrolment and high dropout rates. Females are often forced into pregnancy, and abuse can have serious repercussions for their physical and psychological ability to gain employment and participate in what we would consider to be normal lives.

I end by looking back briefly to the origins of this particular day. The international recognition that women have a right to a life free from violence is recent. Historically, their struggle with violence, and with the impunity that often protects the perpetrators, has been linked with their fight to overcome discrimination. Since its founding, the United Nations has concerned itself with the advancement of women's rights, but it was not until 1993 that it specifically targeted the high rates of violence against women. One of the aims of the resolution which adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was to overturn the prevailing governmental stance that violence against women was a private, domestic matter, not requiring state intervention.

Next March, Governments, NGOs and civil society leaders will again meet at the UN in New York for the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The priority theme is the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. As they meet, and as we continue our deliberations today, I hope that they and we bear in mind the remarks made at that meeting nearly 20 years ago by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, when he issued a statement in preparation of the declaration. He said:

“The struggle for women’s rights, and the task of creating a new United Nations, able to promote peace and the values which nurture and sustain it, are one and the same. Today—more than ever—the cause of women is the cause of all humanity”.