Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps his Department is taking to improve women's participation in leadership positions.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
Getting more women into power gives voice to a marginalised section of society, creates female role models and leads to legislative change and policies that tackle gender inequalities and discrimination. Peace settlements are 35% more likely to endure for more than 15 years if women have been involved in negotiations.
Increasing women’s political participation and leadership is a foundational pillar of DFID’s Strategic Vision for Gender Equality, launched in March 2018, and is a top priority in the current cross-Government National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.
Just 24% of national parliamentarians around the world are women. DFID programmes are supporting women to participate in politics.
In Nigeria, DFID’s ‘Women in Politics’ programme supports women elected to the National Assembly, including establishing the first women’s caucus as a forum for advocacy, policy development and training. In Afghanistan, DFID support has helped women provincial councillors who often face intimidation and violence in their work.
Women’s voice and leadership can make a real difference on issues that matter to them.
DFID has supported Amplify Change to fund women-led organisations that help women to claim their sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR). Grantees have driven change to policies and laws, such as the Registration of Marriage regulation in Afghanistan; improved access to SRHR services, information and products, such as providing 7000 girls in Tanzania with menstrual products; and transformed social norms including significant contribution to the eradication of child marriage in Cote d’Ivoire.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans he has to increase the proportion of UK aid which has gender equality as a primary or secondary objective as measured by the OECD's gender marker.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
The UK is recognised as an international leader for our work to promote gender equality. DFID’s Strategic Vision commits us to build on our strong foundations of working to end violence against women and girls, support universal sexual and reproductive health and rights, improve girls’ education, and enable women’s economic and political empowerment. We are also stepping up our support of girls and women in conflict and crises, increasing our focus on adolescent girls, and harnessing the potential of technological innovation for gender equality. Our impact on gender equality is measured by our influence as well as our level of spending.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle pneumonia in developing countries.
Answered by Alistair Burt
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I provided on 23 February to Question number 128984.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to help developing countries provide universal health coverage for the prevention and tackling diseases.
Answered by Alistair Burt
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I provided on 17 May to Question number 143196.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps the Government is taking to use the opportunity provided by the World Health Assembly to encourage developing countries to strengthen their healthcare systems.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Supporting developing countries to strengthen their health systems is a priority for the UK. At the World Health Assembly, the UK publicly voiced our support for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) leadership on global health. DFID is funding the WHO to lead on strengthening health systems by stepping up its work on supporting Member States to improve access to quality medicines and diagnostics and to strengthen health information systems.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the stigma of, and discrimination towards people with, HIV Aids globally.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK government’s HIV response prioritises those still left behind by the huge progress made in recent years, including adolescents, women and girls and under-served groups such as men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, sex workers and prisoners living with and affected by HIV.
Through the Robert Carr Civil Society Networks Fund we are supporting civil society networks of people affected by HIV to demand their rights, address stigma and discrimination and hold governments to account. The UK has committed £9 million to this Fund, since its start, to help champion their rights to access prevention and treatment services.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps she is taking to help ensure regional and global civil society networks have sufficient funds to respond to the HIV epidemic.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The UK government understands the vital role that regional and global civil society networks play in the AIDS response, in particular in supporting the rights and addressing the needs of inadequately served groups affected by HIV. That is why the UK government played a leadership role with other founding donors in setting up the Robert Carr Civil Society Networks Fund. So far the UK has committed £9 million to this Fund. We will make our decision on future investments to the Fund later this year.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 14 December 2016 to Question 58565, on overseas aid, what discussions her Department has had with multilateral agencies on the co-ordination of the withdrawal of aid from middle-income countries.
Answered by Lord Wharton of Yarm
DFID has argued that countries must graduate out of access to the most concessional funds as they become more able to finance their own development. This will enable aid to be more focused on the poorest countries. However, we are conscious of the need to avoid suddenly and simultaneously changing the access that countries have to key sources of funding. DFID has used our engagement in the replenishments in 2017 of the African and Asian Development Funds and the International Development Association (IDA, of the World Bank) to ensure closer coordination on this issue.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to improve school attendance in countries receiving assistance from cash transfer schemes from the UK.
Answered by Rory Stewart
The UK is committed to ensuring all children are able to complete a full cycle of quality education. The UK’s approach combines strengthening education systems to ensure better delivery of education; improving accountability for results, within systems and between citizens and service providers; and improving what happens in classrooms.
Over the last five years, UK Aid has supported over 11 million girls and boys into primary and lower secondary schools. DFID has pledged to help another 11 million children gain a decent education between 2015 and 2020.
DFID directly supported cash transfer programmes in 19 countries between 2011 and 2015. Of these 11 countries had cash transfer programmes with education targets, which aim to enable poor and vulnerable children to go to school. The education benefits from cash transfers are either direct if the transfer is made conditional on attendance, or indirect if recipient families choose to spend the transfer on the costs of education. For example in Ethiopia the cash transfer programme did not have an education target but transfers have helped improve school attendance and learning.