International Women’s Day

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Friday 6th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)]

My Lords, what a magnificent number of wonderful maiden speeches—a bevy of brilliant new Baronesses. It has been absolutely fabulous.

For my contribution, I will raise how gender inequality exacerbates food insecurity around the world. In doing so, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests as co-chair of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger.

Today, more than 1 billion adolescent girls and women globally suffer from undernutrition, and two in three women lack essential vitamins and minerals. A lack of access to nutritious foods particularly impacts pregnant and breastfeeding women. Maternal undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia increase the risk of stillbirths, newborn deaths and post-term and preterm deliveries, as well as impairing foetal development, with lifelong consequences for that child’s health.

In households, despite having higher nutritional needs than men, women often eat last, least and worst. When food is scarce due to conflict or climate, women and girls are often trapped in forced marriages or sexual exploitation to provide food for their families. In Somalia, the number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity will increase to 6.5 million by the end of this month. This year, 1.8 million children under the age of five are expected to suffer acute malnutrition.

When I read that, I remembered the story of Zala, a Somalian. Her parents struggled to feed her and her siblings, and she had to drop out of school. If not for an intervention by a charity allowing her to provide food for her family, she could have been forced to marry an adult man to relieve her and her family’s food burden. This would have trapped her in a cycle of powerlessness, forced into unwanted pregnancies and the dangers of giving birth as a child. Others in the same village were not so lucky—girls trapped in lifelong servitude, subject to physical and sexual abuse, with no hope of escape or freedom. That is the cost of food insecurity on women and girls.

The hunger crisis in Sudan existed long before the current conflict, but hunger has escalated with the renewed hostilities. Hunger has disproportionately impacted women and girls, with 73% of women in Sudan unable to access enough food to stay healthy. In Haiti, escalating gang violence and economic recessions have driven over half of the population to high levels of food insecurity. Women and girls suffer disproportionately, facing greater obstacles to food, restricted access to health services and high levels of violence, obviously including sexual violence.

Afghanistan has rightly been discussed many times in the Chamber today. There was a nearly 30% increase in hospitalisations for malnutrition among pregnant and breastfeeding women last year, but I fear that that is an absolute underrepresentation of the situation.

In Yemen, 1.7 million pregnant and breastfeeding women were malnourished last year. In the DRC, conflict continues to drive tens of thousands of people from their homes, and by June, 1.5 million pregnant and breastfeeding women will be malnourished and in need of nutritional aid. Sadly, I could go on. If we are to start to break this cycle, it is absolutely essential that we never lose sight of women and girls when delivering nutrition interventions and never lose sight of nutrition in interventions when we say that we are delivering for women and girls.

My right honourable friend the Minister for International Development has made it clear that we will work to advance gender equality and empower women and girls in our international action. It is critical, therefore, that this includes a commitment to protecting nutrition funding, within a reduced international aid budget—particularly for maternal health and for the first thousand days of life—through nutrition-specific interventions, such as antenatal multiple micronutrition supplementation, which is proven and cost-effective. Evidence shows that multiple micronutrient supplementation can prevent mothers from passing malnutrition to their babies, reducing infant death by 29%.

A renewed commitment to the Child Nutrition Fund would be an impactful way of focusing funding. The fund can also leverage significant additional funding through match-funding initiatives by global philanthropies, maximising investment and the impact of every penny we spend at a time of fiscal constraint.

A focus on nutrition would keep women and girls safer from appalling economic choices, ensure that maternal and child health is prioritised and give a real future to those blighted by the scourge of hunger and malnutrition, which goes way beyond the presenting malady.