Post-2015 Development Agenda

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

This afternoon’s debate is timely and I congratulate the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing it. It is right that we are considering development now and looking forward at the post-2015 agenda, ahead of the upcoming high-level summit and the G8 later this year.

As I am sure some Members present will be aware, yesterday the President of Malawi, Joyce Banda, was here in Westminster addressing Members of both Houses, as part of a visit to mark the bicentenary of David Livingstone’s birth. I spent some time in Malawi, in a previous professional incarnation, and I represent a constituency with strong historical links to Ekwendeni, in the north of Malawi, through the Church of Scotland, so I was particularly interested in what President Banda had to say about development progress in her country and her reflections on future priorities post 2015.

Malawi is one of the less developed countries in southern Africa, and although the millennium development goals have helped to focus attention on access to basic services, President Banda made it clear that too little progress has been made on tackling maternal mortality. A few years ago, I visited health care facilities in Malawi. They were understaffed and under-resourced. With nurses’ and midwives’ representatives, I discussed the immense challenges they face in managing complications in pregnancy and childbirth that in this country would be routinely dealt with—infections, high blood pressure and conditions that should not still be killing women and can be treated cheaply and effectively, but which nevertheless cause unnecessary maternal deaths.

I also remember visiting schools in rural areas that had grass roofs, mud floors and one textbook for a class of 100 children. During the rainy season, lessons just have to stop, and the lack of toilet facilities means that many girls are taken out of school as soon as they hit puberty. President Banda touched on those issues yesterday too, when she talked about the importance of ensuring that girls as well as boys go to secondary school, and about her Government’s efforts to ensure that girls are recruited in equal numbers to boys and are able to return to school even if they have had children. There is a lot of evidence that education helps to reduce the incidence of early marriage and childbirth, and significantly boosts a family’s long-term prospects, but we must look beyond counting the children in the classrooms and emphasise the quality of the education, the length of time during which kids receive it, and the equality of both access and outcomes for girls.

All of that highlights a key issue for us as we look beyond 2015, which is that whatever the merits of the millennium development goals in providing a focus for global political action, they have had serious limitations as measures of poverty reduction and have, perhaps, not reflected national and regional priorities in different parts of the planet. They have also masked inequality in ways that can distort our assessment of their impact, and that is particularly true in relation to the women and girls who are often left behind when we measure progress.

That point was brought home forcefully at a meeting I recently chaired, of the all-party group on international development and the environment and the all-party group on water and sanitation in the third world, where a high-level panel of experts raised similar concerns about the patterns that emerge when we look at the millions of people around the world who still do not have access to water, sanitation and hygiene. Those left out of the tremendous progress that has been made are predominantly women and girls in low-income households, and disabled people, and it was pointed out that they are often the same individuals who have missed out on the progress made towards other millennium development goals. They are the same women, girls and disabled people who are missing out on access to education, and the same people who are missing out on access to basic health care. Given that 70% of the world’s poorest people now live in middle-income countries, it is more important than ever that development assistance addresses structural inequalities and recognises human rights at the heart of the agenda.

In the past couple of weeks, I have pressed the Secretary of State for International Development on the importance of addressing persistent gender inequalities, because that is absolutely key to eradicating poverty. I have been heartened by her recognition that gender-disaggregated impact assessment is crucial to ensuring that the benefits of development are shared by women and men, and that is something practical that her Department can do to strengthen its work. Today, however, I want to go a bit further and emphasise the importance of universal access to basic health care, water and sanitation as a precondition for the kind of economic development that the Government want to promote—as other Members have mentioned—and that people in developing countries want to see. If poor women and the poorest people in rural—or urban—areas do not get access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene, do not get access to basic health care and do not get a decent education, they will not get the jobs we are talking about and their poverty will become more entrenched, even as their countries enjoy unprecedented economic growth. That is not a recipe for political stability or effective governance.

The other set of challenges many countries face is in establishing a stable political environment in which the state can function, investors can have confidence and people can build sustainable livelihoods. My last plea, therefore, is for accountability, and for support for elected Governments in developing countries to build the institutions and the infrastructure they need to function effectively. It is also necessary to strengthen the ability of citizens to hold their Governments and the international corporations that operate in their countries to account for the impact they have on their lives.

In leading the debate, the hon. Member for York Central talked about the last G8 meeting in the UK and the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005. I have no doubt whatever that the political will that was created at the time of that meeting was very much driven by civil society action around the world, and here also. It was that action that created the pressure on Governments, and the space for them to do the right thing and pursue a development agenda. I was one of the 250,000 people walking down the streets of Edinburgh that day, and it was a great lesson in how peaceful civil society action can transform the world. If that is good enough for us, it is good enough for developing countries, and perhaps it is even more necessary in developing countries where governance has historically been less embedded or robust, or is more nascent, than in others. I therefore urge Ministers to put their weight behind that issue in the talks that are coming up in the next few weeks and months.