Women and girls who experience violence suffer from a range of physical and psychological health problems. It diminishes their ability and confidence to participate in normal human activities and public life and cripples
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their contribution to development and peace. In doing so, violence against women impoverishes not only women, but their families, their communities and, ultimately, entire nation states.
However, at our worst, we have allowed fears of cultural insensitivity to overpower and suppress our moral obligation to stand up for women worldwide. We have allowed abusers to go unpunished for their crimes. We have allowed violence against women not to get the reckoning and retribution that it deserves and let it be removed, at times, from the international agenda. Perhaps most shockingly, we allowed it to be negotiated out of the millennium development goals. At this crucial time, we cannot and must not allow that to happen again.
The Government’s determination to tackle the collusive silence that surrounds debate on this issue is laudable, although I am concerned that on some levels that approach is flawed. The International Development Committee’s second report of this Session highlighted important ways in which we can strengthen our approach to tackling violence against women and girls.
Specifically, the report spoke of the danger of DFID’s narrow focus on reactive support services above proactive, transformative projects that deal with the underlying causes of violence. The report found that of 117 interventions listed by DFID, just 16 were aimed at changing social norms. Instead, the majority focus on building institutional capacity to respond to acts of violence—supporting survivors to access justice or the protective care and support services that they need.
The report recommended a fundamental shift in emphasis. Gender activists have supported that call, saying that they have often found it difficult, particularly at country level, to see how DFID is challenging social norms and that evidence of DFID’s much lauded and commendable “Theory of Change” being mainstreamed into key DFID programmes can sometimes be scant. In their response to the report, the Government agreed. In answer to the concerns raised, they highlighted
“ongoing efforts to deliver our commitment to help ten million women and girls access security and justice services by 2015.”
At the end of last year, DFID published another strategy entitled “Addressing Violence against Women and Girls through security and justice programming”. I acknowledge freely that it is not an either/or, but I am concerned that that invades the principal recommendation that stems from the report. Will the Minister respond to that?
Although investment in security and justice systems is a crucial building block for violence prevention, establishing accountability and redress, evidence shows that better-functioning institutions will have limited impact on the reduction of violence against women and girls unless efforts are also made to tackle the root causes of violence: women’s lack of power and discriminatory social norms.
The strategy states that one of its key objectives is to protect women and girls from all forms of violence and the threat of violence, but only seven of the 44 case studies listed across the two guidance notes make any attempt to prevent violence against women and girls; the other 37 case studies refer solely to the provision of services after violence has been committed. Moreover, it appears that we often fail to follow our own advice. The guidance asserts in bold:
“Any training or awareness raising work”—
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of security and justice actors, including soldiers, occupying forces, peacekeeping forces or demobilised troops—
“must focus on improving knowledge and changing attitudes and changing behaviours.”
That is at odds with the tone used by the Prime Minister when he gave evidence to the Liaison Committee last week:
“We cannot ask our soldiers, sailors and airmen to do too many different things. They need clear instructions and a clear goal, but, yes, that can be part of it.”
The “that” is the role of UK armed forces in training overseas forces about violence against women. The guidance stresses the importance of informal provision and the role of women’s rights organisations and states that
“supporting women’s organisations and other CSOs to lobby for policy reforms and support implementation is a key priority”.
However, Womenkind Worldwide highlighted the concern that despite their enormous added value, many women’s rights organisations have not received the resources that they need to scale up their delivery and influence. They suffer from a shortage of funding that commits beyond an annual cycle. Womenkind Worldwide undertook analysis that showed that UK aid funding amounted to $16.41 million in 2011, compared with, for example, $118.6 million in the Netherlands and more in other countries. Very few southern-based women’s rights organisations are direct recipients of DFID centralised funds, and only one women’s rights organisation, Gender Links, was found to be funded under the programme partnership arrangement fund. No direct grants were found to be offering support under the civil society challenge fund.
I appreciate that we are dealing with a difficult area in which there are many competing needs, but surely there must be a shift towards tackling views among men and boys as well as protecting women and girls from violence. That is an issue not only further afield but in this country, so we should look at our views and those of others. Analysis by Amnesty International highlighted the fact that only three of 27 DFID country programmes have identified violence against women and girls as a strategic priority.
In the Government’s response to the International Development Committee’s report, much is made of the newly announced research and innovation fund, which is mentioned 12 times in the 24 pages. Although more research is welcome, I remain concerned that the research component is unlikely to be activated until later this year, and that only £25 million has been allocated, with no commitment on length, amount or protection of future funding. I am concerned that that fund may delay our response to this crucial issue. It is important that research goes hand in hand with active country programmes that challenge the perceptions of men and boys about violence against women and girls. The fund must not be treated as an omnipotent panacea. I welcome the Government’s response on those issues.
The International Development Committee’s report raises crucial questions and highlights some important ways in which we can strengthen our response. Although I stand four-square behind the Government’s approach of making the matter a strategic priority, I hope that the
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Minister will reflect on some of the areas of the report in which the Committee wanted DFID to do more or do things differently.
4.25 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) on securing this important debate, and I thank the International Development Committee for providing a wide-ranging and thought-provoking report on the critical issues that we have discussed, to which my Department has formally replied. I thank all those who provided evidence to that Committee, and I thank the hon. Members for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson), for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne), for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and for Luton South (Gavin Shuker)—my opposite number—for their contributions. We are discussing an issue about which everyone is concerned, and on which everyone is committed to moving forward.
Tackling violence is a human rights and development necessity, and it is a priority for the UK Government. Many points have been raised in the debate, and I will address as many as possible in the time that I have. Since the International Development Committee presented its report on the Government’s work in this area, there have been several developments. Following the recommendation in the report, in November I updated the House in my role as ministerial champion for tackling violence against women and girls overseas on progress on tackling violence against women and girls.
I will address the issues on female genital mutilation more fully in a moment, but during the past two weeks, for example, I have organised and attended meetings with other cross-Whitehall Ministries. I met religious leaders—an important part of our armoury in tackling FGM—and representatives of the teachers’ unions. They, and indeed everyone, must be partners in this mission.
On 13 November, the Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), convened with Sweden the “Keep her safe” event, which brought together UN and NGO leaders and senior Government officials from across the international humanitarian system. They agreed a fundamental new approach to protecting girls and women in emergency situations, which the hon. Member for Luton South raised, to ensure that their needs are addressed as part of the initial response. At the event, £21.6 million in new UK funding was announced to help implement those commitments and protect girls and women in all emergencies.
In line with the Committee’s recommendations, DFID continues to scale up the implementation of programming about violence against women and girls. In Afghanistan, we recently announced a new £18.5 million funding package to help support women, which will strengthen access to justice for women who are victims of violence and raise public awareness of women’s rights.
The hon. Member for Luton South raised access to justice and the balance that had to be struck. That ties in with the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, which
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deals with the matter at the sharp end, where rape is used as a weapon of war. If there is impunity, we cannot move forward. Just as with preventing sexual violence in conflict, access to justice must go hand in hand with a change in social norms.
In Somalia, to bring gender issues to the forefront of our work, DFID recently created an internal gender policy group, which is led and chaired by senior management and has representatives from each sector. The scale-up is being supported by robust evidence from sources such as the violence against women and girls help desk, which has provided support to DFID country offices, and further DFID guidance on addressing violence against women and girls through security and justice programming. That note is part of a series of DFID guidance notes on violence against women and girls, and it will further support our scale-up efforts by providing practical advice to staff and other UK Departments.
The £25 million research and innovation fund to address violence against women and girls will support programme implementation and scale-up by generating evidence on what works for the prevention of such violence. Although I share the frustration at the time that some such measures will take, some of them will go into play very soon. When we scale up, we must be sure that we are making an impact on behalf of British taxpayers and doing something that works, not something that we rush into only to discover that it was not what we needed to do.
I have many points to address. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon asked about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Sudan, and whether VAWG would be prioritised. We are currently in the process of a round of resource allocation across all DFID offices, and we are looking in detail at how we can most effectively scale up our VAWG programmes. I have mentioned Somalia, but in Nigeria we have a major programme, “Voices for Change,” to tackle the underlying causes of VAWG and gender inequality. DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are working closely on VAWG programmes in DRC, ensuring preventative action and effective responses to survivors.
I was asked what we are doing about water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH. DFID has produced a new briefing note on violence against women and girls in emergencies, and over the next year will also produce guidance on how water and sanitation sector programmes can address such violence. Importantly, through the sanitation and hygiene applied research for equity programme—SHARE—DFID has funded development of a violence, gender and WASH practitioner toolkit, which will be available this year.
I was asked how we are ensuring that VAWG is prioritised in multilateral agencies. We are keen to ensure that VAWG is a high priority in multilaterals. UN Women is a key partner in such matters, and DFID helps to fund it. The call to action in November last year that I described secured commitments from a wide range of UN agencies to put women and girls at the heart of their humanitarian response. That includes protecting them from violence. It was a pledge not so much on finance, but on what UN agencies would do under the circumstances.
A lot of right hon. and hon. Members raised the issue of female genital mutilation, an issue about which I am passionate. I think that that comes from frustration,
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having spent two and a half years at the Home Office. Our diaspora is intrinsically linked with the developing world but there has been a lack of prosecutions. We were challenged on the latter continually, but I must also say that there were no prosecutions under the 13 years of the previous Government.
FGM is a major issue. I am sure that we all recognise how challenging it is for a child to give evidence against their parent. As many Members said, FGM is child abuse and it is illegal, so the inevitable consequences are that the child will be removed from the parents virtually as soon as it is known that something has happened. That has been the great inhibitor. It is important that we have prosecutions, as much as anything because of the message that they send out. The answer is clearly not to send 20,000 sets of parents to jail, but the message that FGM is illegal and unacceptable is very important.
The Minister for Crime Prevention, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), is champing at the bit on this issue. He is working closely with the Director of Public Prosecutions, who believes that we are very near to the first few prosecutions. Part of the issue has been getting preparatory evidence on computers. That way, the process might not necessarily involve a child victim giving evidence in court—there will be evidence of plans to take a child to a mother country to have them cut. We are optimistic about prosecutions. I could not agree more with those Members who said that we must not tiptoe on cultural eggshells. For a long time, that has been the problem and a challenge. I am clear that that can have no standing. FGM is against our laws.
The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire asked about what happens in France. They examine every girl every year until the age of six, as part of other examinations. When I met with my opposite number in France, she said, “You know, we just have a little look.” Given that there is no question about 99% of our population—they do not practise FGM—that would not necessarily be the best use of resources for us. There must be continual pressure from the Metropolitan police and the other forces around the country that were mentioned. They are now proactively looking for those who are perpetrating FGM and seeking to prosecute them.
Many Members also raised the point that our work should be much more to do with awareness and getting into and working with communities. The women of our Somali communities are very hidden. When I visited a school in Bristol, the first primary school in the country that has an FGM safeguarding policy and brings in the Somali mothers, that was the first time that they had all met to be able to discuss such things. The issues are not discussed in the way that we might in this country—the women are very isolated. That is why I have been trying to involve religious and community leaders, alongside those agencies that are working in this field and are best able to get into the communities and to deal with awareness.
I have also involved the TUC and the teaching unions, because they have an opportunity to look at teacher training and other such issues. Indeed, I am working with other Ministers on safeguarding, because the issues are hugely important. The Home Office produced guidelines—I am going to run out of time—for front-line workers, but we were shocked to find that eight out of
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10 teachers do not even know about the guidelines, so we are working with the Department for Education on raising awareness about such issues.
I could not agree more with the view that we must be flexible with funding. However, the £35 million that was raised is, in a sense, to get things started. We need to find out what is right—part of the money goes on gathering evidence; part of it goes on social change. The funding helps to support the African movement, as well as the UN resolution banning FGM.
Early and forced marriage is very much in the same vein as FGM, inasmuch as both are social norms. That is a terrible indictment, because such norms are the most deep-seated and hardest things to change. That is why I am particularly interested in behavioural change. We continue to work with Girls Not Brides to develop a global theory of change on early and forced marriage, to underpin the new programmes.
Pauline Latham Will the Minister give way?
Lynne Featherstone: I have only half a second, so I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not.
We are pushing for an ambitious and stand-alone goal on gender for 2015, including strong target language on preventing and eliminating VAWG, as set out in the high-level panel report. It is feasible to have an ultimate target of eliminating VAWG and to measure progress towards that as we do for other ambitious goals, such as that for ending hunger.
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I want quickly to address stoning in Afghanistan. Women and girls there continue to face huge issues. The proposal to reinstate stoning is symptomatic of the situation in which women and girls find themselves. In fact, I met the Afghan Minister for Education only yesterday. I raised the issue of violence against women and girls in schools in Afghanistan. He gave me many assurances, but one challenge in Afghanistan is that things are decentralising. Individual communities are going to be far from central control.
I must finish there. I am very sorry, but I will try to write to Members to answer the points that I could not address in such a short time.
4.38 pm
Sir Malcolm Bruce: I thank the Minister and all Members who took part. We can see how strongly people feel about the issues we have been discussing, and how determined they are that we should maintain pressure to improve the situation and make progress.
Last week, I asked the Prime Minister whether the conflict, stability and security fund would have specific targets for violence against women and girls. He did not then know the answer and has not yet replied. I urge the Minister to get not only an answer but the right answer.
We have had a very good debate. I thank everyone who has taken part—both the members of my Committee and others. It was very much appreciated.