DfID Projects: Women and Girls

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I also start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for securing today’s debate and pay tribute to his tireless commitment to these issues.

In the United Kingdom we have seen successive Governments of different political persuasions championing international women’s rights on issues including girls’ education, preventing sexual violence in conflict and family planning. However, as recent events have highlighted, the struggle for gender equality is far from over. In everyday life, countless women and girls experience violence and inequality and are denied the right to make decisions about their life and body—even more so during times of conflict or natural disaster. In recent months, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, mentioned, harrowing accounts have emerged of systematic and widespread sexual violence inflicted on Rohingya refugees fleeing Rakhine State in Myanmar. Countless women and girls have been raped and the perpetrators, acting with impunity, have walked free. As my noble friend Lord McConnell said, gender equality and the advance of women’s and girls’ rights manifestly make a substantial contribution to efforts to meet all the SDGs in tackling poverty reduction, improving health and education and securing peace and security.

Violence against women and girls is a horrific crime in itself, but also has wider ramifications for other aspects of women’s lives. Intimate partner violence, or the threat of it, can be used by men to control their partner’s access to work or money, and a lack of money can make it harder for a woman to leave a violent partner. Violence against women and girls can also prevent women accessing their sexual and reproductive health and rights; men can use violence and coercion to limit a woman’s access to contraception.

Women’s rights are under threat, from the Trump Administration’s “global gag rule” on reproductive rights to efforts to relax the laws on child marriage in Bangladesh. The UK Government have rightly prioritised women and girls in their international development and foreign policy. It was the UK leading the way that helped to secure SDG 5 to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls by 2030. The UK has also shown global leadership on issues such as preventing modern-day slavery and trafficking, of which women and girls make up 70% of reported victims.

As we have heard in this debate, last month the Government announced through the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security that it would be putting girls and women at the heart of its work to end conflict in nine countries including Iraq, Nigeria and South Sudan. As the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, put it:

“We know that when women and girls participate in political processes, conflict resolution and mediation their contribution helps to build a more sustainable peace”.


That is why our international development activities are so vital to all communities, particularly our communities in this country. Pushing for peacekeeping missions to include more women and supporting efforts to end sexual abuse by peacekeepers are also part of the plan. I hope the Minister will ensure that at the 5 March summit, to which we are inviting all NGOs, this issue is also addressed by them so that they can focus on changing culture as well as examining their policies and procedures, because that is the sort of change that will ensure that women are able to live their lives to the full.

In the plan the Minister championed girls’ education, which I know is a crucial part of DfID’s activities in transforming the lives of those caught up in conflict and promoting global stability. I know DfID is targeting the poorest countries to provide 12 years of education for girls. What work is being done to replicate any successful policies from those schemes to improve access specifically to technical and vocational education as a means of moving into employment for girls and women?

I pay tribute again to the excellent work of the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, in raising the plight of widows. I hope the Minister can explain what work his department is doing to look at rural women and older women and at what can be done to remove the specific barriers to training and employment that affect these groups and deny them the opportunity for economic activity.

As has been mentioned in this debate—I know the Minister himself is committed to this—women’s groups and activists, who are often the best at bringing about change, are fighting back against gender inequality. They have been successful in changing laws on child marriage and female genital mutilation, and challenging social norms in their communities. That is why Labour is committed to establishing a new social justice fund to get funding directly to civil society activists in developing countries, including women’s groups, who are fighting these problems on the front line. We must work with like-minded Governments but we also need to ensure that all aspects of civil society, including trade unions, church groups and women’s groups, are able to stand up and argue the case for full women’s emancipation.