Burma: Humanitarian Situation
Debate between Catherine West and Stephen Twigg(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on securing this very important and timely Adjournment debate on Burma.
Over the last year, Burma, Bangladesh and the Rohingya crisis has been a priority area of work for the International Development Committee. In fact, the Minister gave evidence to us yesterday on the Rohingya crisis. We also took evidence from Save the Children, one of the fine non-governmental organisations working on the ground in Bangladesh and Burma, and from Tun Khin of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, which is a voice for the Rohingya diaspora who live in this country. One thing that has struck me over the last year is the importance of hearing the Rohingya voice. There is a lot of discussion about the Rohingya by different parts of the United Nations and agreements being reached between Governments. All that is, of course, essential, but it is vital that the Rohingya themselves have a voice in discussions about their own future.
Our Committee has published three reports on this over the past year. My friend the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) is our Committee rapporteur on Burma, Bangladesh and the Rohingya. I pay tribute to the work he does for us. We went to Bangladesh earlier this year, as many colleagues on both sides of the House have done. We went to Cox’s Bazar, and one of the things that is incredibly striking about it is the sheer scale of the place. I went with Oxfam to Zaatari refugee camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan, and the population there is around 80,000. Cox’s Bazar is 10 times the size of Zaatari. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green, I pay tribute to the amazing volunteers, the aid organisations, the UN and others for the work they are doing to try to provide services for people on the ground.
Of course, what we all want is to reach the point where the refugees can safely and confidently return to Burma. I do not think we are very near that at the moment, because of the challenges. The Minister rightly said in his evidence yesterday that the two challenges are safety on return and identity. At the heart of this crisis is the question of the Rohingya identity and the view in Burma—let’s face it, it is not just the view of the military and the civilian Government, but of most people who live in Burma—that denies that basic identity and therefore denies their citizenship. That is the core policy issue that will have to be addressed if the Rohingya are going to return with any confidence.
A very specific issue about which I am keen to hear from the Minister—we addressed this with him yesterday—is the crucial importance of good education for the Rohingya children in the camp. We know that increasing numbers of children around the world are spending their entire childhood in refugee camps or as displaced people in other forms. Ensuring that they get the same kind of access to education that other children can expect is a huge challenge, but one I really think we have a duty to rise to as a country and as the world community.
Catherine West
On education, does my hon. Friend agree that part of the reason why it is so important is that, I think, three quarters of the refugees in the camp are children? It is doubly important, because it is about the future generally.
Stephen Twigg
Absolutely right. A similar statistic that we were given yesterday by Save the Children, and which the Minister and the Foreign Office officials confirmed, is that probably only about one in four of the children are getting any kind of education. In a sense, it is understandable that initially, as the refugees arrive, the priority is shelter, food and so forth. Now, however, a lot of them have been there for a year, and it is time for education and learning to be given a higher priority.
Let me finish by saying something about the crucial question of justice for the Rohingya. As is so often the case, we as a country can be very proud of our support for humanitarian relief for the refugees and of many of the development programmes that we fund in both Bangladesh and Burma, but there is the crucial question of justice. I know that the Foreign Secretary is visiting Burma soon. It would be very positive to hear from the Minister his thinking, so far as he can share it with us today, about that visit, but I certainly urge the Foreign Secretary and the Government to take this opportunity to make the case for justice.
My own view, which I know is shared by many colleagues, is that the military leaders responsible for this campaign should be before the International Criminal Court. I know that there are huge challenges in getting there. My hon. Friend mentioned the interesting option of going via the Bangladesh route, because Bangladesh is a signatory, which might circumvent the danger of a Chinese or a Russian veto at the Security Council. I realise there are complications with that, but, in principle, we should be saying as a country that there should be a referral to the International Criminal Court.
Ultimately, I think we all want a Burma that can be a genuinely democratic, multi-ethnic country, with support for people of all faiths and of none. Sadly, we are a very long way away from that vision, but I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity to address this important issue today.
Sustainable Development Goals
Debate between Catherine West and Stephen Twigg(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on securing the debate and on his excellent speech, with which I concur. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting today’s debate.
The International Development Committee has decided to make this subject the first area in a major inquiry during this Parliament into the sustainable development goals and their implementation. As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, the millennium development goals achieved fantastic results. The level of extreme poverty has halved globally over the last two decades, the number of out-of-school children of primary school age has fallen by almost half since 2000 and the maternal mortality ratio has declined by 45% worldwide.
The sustainable development goals aim to offer an innovative approach to tackling the underlying causes of the challenges we face today. This week the International Development Committee heard from a number of witnesses about the importance of a different approach. Melissa Leach from the Institute of Development Studies spoke of “synergies” and the fact that great strides can be taken on multiple connected issues. In other words, this work cannot be left to the Department for International Development alone. We must take a cross-governmental approach.
The aim of goal 9 is to build
“resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation”.
Clearly, DFID needs to work with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and other Departments to take that forward. Goal 7 talks about ensuring
“access to affordable, reliable, sustainable…energy for all”.
DFID will need to work with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to take that forward. As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, the way in which we finance the goals will be critical, and we will need buy-in from the Treasury as well as from DFID.
I wish to focus on three areas: fragile states, education and data. There is a distinct challenge for people living in countries affected by conflict which is not addressed explicitly in the sustainable development goals. As David Miliband said yesterday, we cannot combat global poverty without a plan to support the people who face unique problems. Fragile states such as Somalia and Afghanistan account for 43% of people living below the poverty line, and every indication is that that will rise to as much as two thirds by 2030, and neither the millennium development goals nor the SDGs address that problem explicitly.
The International Rescue Committee has suggested that we should introduce concrete targets for supporting those in extreme poverty in conflict areas. For example, we could have the goal that all children in conflict settings have the opportunity of a safe education by 2030. We could adopt similar goals for fragile states in healthcare, violence against women and girls, and other areas. I ask the Government to consider taking that idea forward.
As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, a theme of the sustainable development goals is that no one should be left behind. The greater focus on inequality as well as poverty is important, as is addressing inequality both within and between nations. Seven out of 10 people live in countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is greater now than it was 30 years ago. We know from the evidence from our own country, as well as from other parts of the world, that rising inequality has an impact on healthcare and other life chances.
One of the most important ways that we can tackle both inequality and poverty is to focus on education. I praise the Department for International Development for the fantastic work that it does on education. I am talking here about the work on girls’ education, and the development of the No Lost Generation initiative, which has helped to highlight the education needs of child refugees from Syria. I hope that education will remain at the top of the agenda during our response to the current crisis. We know the difference that investment in education makes in our own country, as well as in the poorest countries in the world. We need to look at increasing the proportion of DFID spend that goes towards education projects.
Catherine West
May I say how much progress the hon. Gentleman has already made in his new role?
On the issue of investment in education or in anything else related to development, how much will that be undermined by spending some of DFID’s budget domestically? The Minister might want to refer to this later. Is there any sense of what might be cut from the development budget to make up for domestic issues that might emerge as a result of the refugee crisis?
Stephen Twigg
I was reassured yesterday by an answer the Secretary of State gave me on that precise point. We have not seen a shift in the Government’s definition of official development assistance. It has always been the case that the first-year costs of resettling refugees can come from ODA, and provided that that has not changed, I am reassured, but that will almost certainly be one of the items that the Select Committee considers as part of our immediate inquiry into the refugee crisis.
The SDGs have extended the scope of our commitment to secondary and tertiary education, and that is welcome. Indeed there is evidence that bolstering secondary and tertiary education can benefit primary education by developing a new generation of teachers and educational institutions. With regard to higher education, there is an important opportunity for the UK to take the lead. We can work with our universities to help develop higher education in the poorest countries in the world. We have real excellence in this area and could benefit from sharing our expertise with others. I urge the Minister and his Department to work with colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the university sector to take that matter forward.
In evidence this week, Jamie Drummond, from the organisation ONE, spoke of a data crisis that needed solving. We need to improve the quality of data on those who are being left behind around the world. He told us that around a third of births in the world are not registered and that around two thirds of the causes of death in the world are not registered. Most data points for extreme poverty in developing countries are, on average, around a decade out of date. We must improve our data, so that we make decisions that are as effective as possible. This country has huge expertise in statistics and data analytics in Cambridge and London. I urge the Minister to look at ways in which we can share that expertise to build the knowledge base and institutions in the poorest countries to improve our contribution in this area.
At the turn of the millennium, the world made a commitment to tackle some of the great scourges of our time. It is right to say that we have made important progress in that regard. I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman that we can be proud that our country has achieved the 0.7% target, and we should challenge others, including our European partners, to do the same. The summit in New York later this month is an important milestone. The goals matter, but what matters more is effective implementation. This House can play an important role in ensuring that that happens.