International Development - Minutes of EvidenceHC 107

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the International Development Committee

on Thursday 9 May 2013

Members present:

Sir Malcolm Bruce (Chair)

Fiona Bruce

Pauline Latham

Jeremy Lefroy

Mr Michael McCann

Fiona O'Donnell

Chris White

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Baroness Warsi, Minister of State, FCO, Emma Hopkins, Head of Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, FCO and Louise de Sousa, Head of Human Rights and Democracy Department, gave evidence.

Q117 Chair: Good morning, Minister, and welcome to our Committee. For the record, could you introduce your team?

Baroness Warsi: Good morning. Thank you very much for inviting me. I have with me Louise, from HRDD, and Emma, who leads on the prevention of sexual violence initiative.

Q118 Pauline Latham: Sorry, what is HRDD?

Baroness Warsi: The human rights and democracy department.

Q119 Chair: We are a bit hostile to acronyms.

Baroness Warsi: I will try to stay away from them.

Q120 Chair: There are so many, as there are in all specialist fields.

As you know, we are doing an inquiry into violence against women and girls. We thought it was really important to get the Foreign Office’s input, not least because the Foreign Secretary himself has taken a high profile on this. Obviously, you have specific ministerial responsibilities, so could you, first, tell us more about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s work in this area and your role in that. There may then be a couple of supplementaries.

Baroness Warsi: Thank you for inviting me to give evidence. Thank you, too, for giving me my first experience of a Select Committee.

Violence against women and girls, and women’s rights generally, come under the human rights department; it is one of our six key priorities, and it featured quite heavily in the human rights report, which was published last month. We lead on this area in international forums in a number of ways. On the Commission on the Status of Women, we were involved in the lobbying which eventually led to the consensus document earlier this year.

At the United Nations Security Council, we are working through Resolution 1325 on implementing the National Action Plan. Again, the FCO, with other Departments, has the lead on that. We also lobby for the full implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. At the United Nations Security Council later this year, we will be in the chair, and we will be using women’s rights and violence against women as a key theme.

We, of course, work with Lynne Featherstone, who is international champion on this issue. We welcome and support her role. With the Home Office, we also work, through the consular department, with the Forced Marriage Unit, which also has an impact on this area.

I particularly want to highlight an initiative you have touched on-the Foreign Secretary’s preventing sexual violence initiative, which was launched last year. Its latest success is the G8 Foreign Ministers declaration1, which is, again, a key reference point, and it will form the basis of further discussions at the G8 in June this year.

Finally, why do we lead on so many issues in this area? Our network of 260-plus posts around the world gives us the perfect opportunity to lobby politically in this area. We also have one of the largest international development programmes, so there is a vehicle to deliver on the ground on some of these key political priorities. We are also a member of the Commonwealth and the EU, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a member of the G8, so a series of forums give us the opportunity to take forward this priority.

Q121 Chair: You imply that there is pretty active cross-departmental work. Are you satisfied that you are covering all the posts on that?

Baroness Warsi: As a theme, this sits within human rights, and I lead on the human rights theme. We have been quite keen to mainstream the issue of women’s rights. So when each of us, as Ministers, goes into our particular areas and countries of concern, we raise the issue of human rights. There is a clear message in terms of leadership, law and access to justice, and each of us makes sure we deliver it. For example, I have responsibility for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and I do some specific work on women’s rights because I deal with those countries.

Q122 Chair: But Jeremy Browne has been involved in this at the Home Office. Is he the lead Minister in this area?

Baroness Warsi: There are different aspects to it. We lead on the political lobbying internationally-if I had to encompass these issues in one sentence, that is what it would be.

Q123 Chair: You have not specifically worked on female genital mutilation. Is there a particular focus on that?

Baroness Warsi: It is raised in countries where it is a concern-for example, in north Africa, and some of the other African countries. It is also part of what we look at under the headings of violence against women and women’s rights. But, certainly in the countries I have been specifically involved with, it has not been an issue and, therefore, has not been raised. In my previous life, I was involved with FGM for many years, but that was predominantly from a domestic perspective, in terms of its impact on communities here.

Chair: We have also looked into that.

Q124 Fiona Bruce: Good morning, Minister. On 7 May, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office hosted a conference2on preventing sexual violence in Somalia. Could you tell us the outcomes of that conference?

Baroness Warsi: Yes, Zainab Bangura, who is the special representative on this3, was at the Somalia conference. She had been to Somalia before the conference, and discussions had already taken place about what could be achieved. There have been some quite positive statements from the President about a zero-tolerance approach to sexual violence in Somalia. We are hoping that a UN team of experts will be going out to Somalia later this year to work out what exact programmes can be put in place.

As in other countries, it is, first of all, important to get the political leadership. The President and the Foreign Minister are clearly and openly committed to this issue, and they have given Zainab Bangura access-just getting the team there has been a challenge in some countries. Now, we are doing the real assessment on the ground of what can be put in place.

Q125 Fiona O'Donnell: I wonder whether we can talk a bit more about the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative-I hope I can be forgiven if I now call it the PSVI. What has it achieved so far? Where do you see room for improvement?

Baroness Warsi: First, it has been a high-level political campaign. It is about saying that, for too long, this has been an issue we have had guidance on and we have talked about at the margins of meetings, but it is time to make it a priority. The fact that the Foreign Secretary is leading on this, that he has Zainab, from the UN, alongside him, and that people like Angelina Jolie are involved is putting a big, strong marker out there. We then have to raise the issue at every opportunity, whether that is through the G8, which has been one of the greatest successes up to now, or, subsequently, at the United Nations Security Council in June. It will also be a key theme for us at the United Nations General Assembly meeting. This is about constantly keeping this issue on the agenda.

Q126 Fiona O'Donnell: My question was about what it has achieved, rather than what its objectives are. You mentioned the G8. Are there any other achievements so far that you can put down to this initiative? Where do you see room for improvement?

Baroness Warsi: It has already set up a panel of experts; we have over 70 experts now. They have already been into Bosnia and Syria. Specifically, they are working with health professionals in the refugee camps just outside Syria4 so that health professionals can identify quickly, and respond to, cases of sexual violence. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, they have been involved with the OSCE-I will get told off again for using acronyms-to support the training of judges. One concern about Bosnia has been that thousands of women were subjected to rape, but very few prosecutions have taken place. The work involves training judges and looking at how we can increase the number of prosecutions. The experts team has also been on the ground in Libya to assess what support can be given to deal with the cases of sexual violence that have come to light there.

Q127 Fiona O'Donnell: There have been criticisms that all the focus is on prosecution and investigation, rather than looking at the causes and the cultures that lead to violence against women. Do you see any room for the PSVI to address those root causes?

Baroness Warsi: The two are linked; you must start to challenge the cultural norms and practices that create an environment in which sexual violence against women becomes acceptable to the point that people are not prosecuted. We do that anyway, as part of our country work, and a lot of DFID’s work in terms of education and support around maternal health, reproductive health and the education of girls all supports and plays into this particular initiative.

Why is this initiative important? To make quite a personal reference, as a solicitor, I dealt with a number of applications for asylum that came after the Balkans conflict. When I spoke to families or women claiming political asylum, the sexual violence element of what they had suffered did not come to light until months, sometimes years, after their initial meeting with me and their initial application. That led to all sorts of legal challenges, because questions would then be raised about the credibility of the witness and the evidence that she had given. I found that, first, they did not think it was serious; secondly, they did not want to acknowledge it, because there was as much stigma to being a victim as to being a perpetrator; and thirdly, they felt that its impact on rebuilding their lives, especially if they claimed asylum as a partner, would very rarely come to light until-

Q128 Fiona O'Donnell: So what are you doing about those barriers to justice?

Baroness Warsi: One of the biggest issues was this culture of impunity-this culture that it did not really matter-so we first have to challenge, politically, and say that the stigma lies with the perpetrator, not the victim. We have to keep saying that. We must constantly state that political message when we go overseas. The more that the women who report this are supported through the criminal prosecution of the perpetrators, and the more that the perpetrators are brought to justice and are convicted, the more women will start to have the confidence to say, "This isn’t acceptable."

Q129 Fiona O'Donnell: Our inquiry is not just about women; it is about girls as well. What support are you able to offer children who are victims and witnesses? What expertise do you have in your Department to ensure that children are kept safe through the process and afterwards?

Baroness Warsi: We would rely on the experts on the panel to bring that expertise to the table; it would not be immediately-

Q130 Fiona O'Donnell: Are there experts in child protection?

Baroness Warsi: There are. There are about 73 or 74 experts. I could write to you with the full details of who they are and their expertise. I cannot tell you that off the top of my head.

In addition, one of the successes of the G8 statement has been to look at women and child protection issues right at the beginning, in a conflict or humanitarian situation. For example, if an influx of refugees is arriving in a country, there seems to be an instinct to provide shelter and food, without thinking that if we provide right at the beginning appropriate sanitation facilities-separate toilets, separate bathing areas-and cooking appliances that do not require women to travel far out of the camp to gather firewood, the scope for abuse is limited. When you talk about protection, for example, that means thinking about protection issues right at the beginning, because of the PSVI.

Q131 Fiona O'Donnell: You were talking about training for judges. What are you doing about violence against women within justice systems? For example, women are victims of corporal punishment for things like adultery. What are you doing about that?

Baroness Warsi: I was in Indonesia recently, where one of the islands is bringing back corporal punishment for adultery and sexual relations outside marriage, and we use all opportunities we can to have quite robust discussions. These discussions can sometimes be shut down by interlocutors from overseas who say that we are questioning their way of life and are not sensitive, culturally and possibly religiously, to what is part and parcel of the way of life there.

As you know, I am Muslim by faith. In many ways, I use the fact that I do not carry the baggage of any of that so as not to feel that I am back-footed on any of this. I have been quite robust in challenging some of these practices, which are usually quite distorted interpretations, even of the faith that they profess to represent.

One of the things that we have been incredibly strong on and have made a priority is freedom of religion <?oasys [pc10p0] ?>and belief, and of practices that follow from that. Certainly from my own experience I can assure you that it is something we take incredibly seriously. One of the discussions I have had with Zainab Bangura is about how, interestingly, it appears that it is some of the most non-permissive societies, where sexual relations between people are not allowed outside of marriage, that allow the most awful form of sexual abuse. Opening up that conversation with certain parts of the world is certainly something that I am keen to take forward.

Q132 Chris White: Good morning, Minister. What were the key outcomes of the G8 Foreign Ministers’ meeting on 10 and 11 April, regarding violence against women and girls?

Baroness Warsi: First, it identified rape and sexual violence as a grave breach of the Geneva convention, and that leads to specific requirements around arrest, prosecution and criminalisation of an offence. So the G8 countries obliged themselves in a completely different way to the way in which sexual violence is seen at the moment.

They also agreed to take forward an international protocol on investigating and documenting sexual offences. One of the challenges of getting a prosecution is making sure that the quality of the evidence and the way in which it is collected and documented is strong enough to be presented in a court of law, and that cases do not fail when they get to that point. Having an international protocol will, I think, equalise practices.

There is also a specific agreement that, where amnesties are granted after a conflict as part of a peace agreement, there is no amnesty for sexual violence. It is not one of those things that can be traded off for a greater peace, because we fundamentally believe that there cannot be peace without justice, especially justice for victims of sexual crimes.

We are also looking at how we can build capacity into our own armed forces, so that they know what levels of conduct are required in-country, how to identify sexual violence, and how, when working alongside peacekeepers from other countries, to make sure that people are properly trained and do not become part of the perpetration of this crime themselves. As I mentioned to Fiona, there is of course the issue of providing security for women in the first phase of a conflict or a humanitarian response, including protection measures such as separate bathing facilities and toilets.

We are incredibly pleased with the outcome of this. These are the G8 nations effectively turning around and saying, "Yes, we take it seriously. Yes, we are going to do something about it," and putting a path in place as to how we can get there. It is not going to happen over night. People who have been involved in this area now for many years-like many of you here-will know that it is going to take a huge political push. What you can be assured of is that the Foreign Secretary, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and this Government are taking this incredibly seriously and are at the forefront of that political push.

Q133 Chris White: Thank you. You have made very clear your perspective and the UK Government’s perspective on this issue. How do you see other countries responding-G8 countries in particular?

Baroness Warsi: I think the fact that we have G8 agreement on this, and the fact that it is going to be back on the G85 agenda in June, shows that it is something that other important, strong countries are taking forward. It is also interesting that sometimes this issue is seen as a women’s issue and women speak incredibly passionately about it. One of the strong comments that I hear from many Foreign Ministers that I meet on my visits is that the fact that the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has led on this makes it even more powerful. Indeed, many of the Foreign Ministers who will be taking this initiative forward in the G8 countries are men themselves. Strong male leadership within the G8 countries is going to be part of the basis for success.

Q134 Jeremy Lefroy: Good morning, Minister. One of the key challenges with initiatives such as this is to keep things going once this year has gone past. How do you and how do the Government see this happening? Are there any other countries that have said they will take this up in the future and not just move on to other initiatives and leave this one behind?

Baroness Warsi: The first way we do it is carrying on with it and using every opportunity to keep raising it, and I think you can see that we are doing that. The Foreign Secretary has made it clear that he will absolutely make sure that this is a priority right to the end of this Government. We hope that whoever it is thereafter will carry on making it a priority. Hopefully, the matter will have been raised so far up the political agenda by then that it will just become an issue that people take forward.

The Germans have said that when they chair the G8 they will take the matter forward, so again there is some continuity there. Introducing it within the United Nations General Assembly framework and having a high level political meeting in the margins of the General Assembly meeting in September will mean that other countries will be politically supporting it as well.

Q135 Jeremy Lefroy: And specifically with the UK Government, what plans are there in the FCO and-if you are able to speak about this-DFID for making sure that this continues?

Baroness Warsi: I know that you are hearing from Lynne Featherstone later on, and it may well be that she can go into detail about the plans within DFID. The interesting part of the PSVI programme is that a series of Departments across Government were involved in its developmental stage, including the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice, the Attorney-General’s Office and the Cabinet Office. So across Government, a lot of people have invested time and energy in the initiative itself. Lynne Featherstone6 is the international champion in taking it forward. She leads on all aspects of violence against women and girls, and has been hugely involved in the PSVI programme. In fact, she and the Foreign Secretary will do things as alternatives as well. In terms of taking the matter forward, a lot of the programmes that may come out of the conflict pool7 are held by the stabilisation unit, which, again, comprises the MOD, the FCO and DFID. I am confident that there is enough buy-in across Government Departments for this to carry on and be supported.

Q136 Jeremy Lefroy: You raised the question of the involvement of the peacekeepers and the MOD. It seems that the MOD, post-Afghanistan, will spend more of its time and resources on peacekeeping and training of peacekeepers, which I welcome. We already have missions in East Africa, for instance, and in Nairobi. Are you aware of the work that they are doing to increase the training of their own personnel in this?

Baroness Warsi: I am not aware of specific work, but I am aware that one of the themes that has come out of the PSVI programme and, more recently, the G8 statement is proper training of peacekeeping missions, because there have been occasions when the peacekeeping forces themselves have become perpetrators. They need to be trained to identify sexual violence and to know what to do when they identify it and who they pass it back to in terms of documentation. Like you say, it is positive for us to be involved in training the troops who do the peacekeeping.

Q137 Pauline Latham: What are your reflections on the outcomes of the Commission on the Status of Women? Hindsight is a wonderful thing. A lot of good came out of it, but some things were missing. What would you do differently if you had your time again-or what would the UK Government do differently?

Baroness Warsi: The negotiations and the political lobbying that led to the consensus document in March of this year were a huge success. The theme of the document was the elimination of all forms of violence against women. The last time that that theme was discussed was in 2003, and at the end of it, no agreement could be reached. Ten years on, we felt that the same kind of challenges that were being presented in 2003 were being presented again. There was huge sensitivity around the issues of reproductive health and emergency contraception. Certain countries felt that they endorsed sexual behaviour that was not considered to be appropriate, so there were huge political and cultural challenges to try to get an agreement. Where the Foreign Office was at its best was getting the plan up front as to who needed to be lobbied, when they needed to be lobbied, how we would keep that lobbying effort up and which were the right people to press the buttons. Right through to the end, there were frantic conversations going on about picking up phones to people-interlocutors whom I knew well. I know Justine Greening did a tremendous job in the way in which she lobbied personally and consistently to get agreement on this.

We have now got an agreement. It might not be perfect, but it is a very good and a strong focal point. It gives us a reference point to say to countries, "You have agreed this now and we need to start seeing implementation." If we implement what we have an agreement on, it would go a long way towards protecting women and girls.

Q138 Pauline Latham: That leads me on to ask about the next steps that you are going to take to improve and make life better for women and girls.

Baroness Warsi: The agreement provides us with a reference point. What we now do in our conversations, lobbying and programmes that we fund, is go back and say, "Your country has agreed to this, so you now need to start to implement this." That could be in the form of doing specific work around individual countries’ national action plans, for example.

In Afghanistan one of the strong things I have been saying is, "You have agreed to certain things. You have got an action plan in place. You now need to implement it." As you are probably aware, many countries are great at getting the shiny document that says what they are going to do. They don’t particularly do what the shiny document says. Our role in the FCO is to use the opportunities we get with access to these people to hold their feet to the fire and have a level of accountability.

Again in Afghanistan, I consistently referred to the Tokyo agreement and the framework around it. Through our political messaging-again in Afghanistan, for example-we can constantly say that we will not allow the gains that have been made in relation to women’s rights to slip back. We can just send that message and say that the commitments we have made for the future support of Afghanistan are very much linked to them doing their side of the deal as well. That includes their progress on women’s rights.

Q139 Pauline Latham: There are key things, such as no protection for sex workers. We all know that every country has sex workers; it is not as though it is a surprise to anybody. Obviously, there were key countries that did not want to include that. There is also the matter of intimate partner violence. There is no language agreed on sexual orientation and gender identity. Do you feel that those are things that in the next round-or whenever the next meetings are-might be pushed back?

<?oasys [pc10p0] ?>We are told that Iran, Russia and Syria are not keen on that-you might not be surprised-but nor is the Vatican. Do you think the fact that we have a new Pope is relevant? I can’t remember if he was in place then, but even so, he is very new to the job so he would not have had much influence on views at that meeting. Do you think that with the new Pope we might move forward a bit?

Baroness Warsi: I am not sure. As you are probably aware, I have a strong relationship with the Holy See and the Vatican and had the privilege to be at the inauguration ceremony. I hope that the relationship that was probably taken to a new level with the last papal visit will continue, and we will be able to have, as a result of that stronger relationship, some of these tougher conversations.

Politics is the art of the possible. Sometimes we have to accept that we do not get everything we want, provided we can get what is possible. The fact is that we have a consensus agreement on some incredibly difficult and sensitive issues. We know how hard officials worked across all Departments. I saw close up how hard they worked in the FCO to get the agreement. If we can take forward what we have agreed and can achieve off the back of it, that is a focus point for getting further agreement on more sensitive issues.

There is no point getting agreement on something that you know is never going to be implemented, or losing agreement because there is something you want that is even more sensitive. It is not perfect and we will keep trying. The fact that it took a decade to get agreement on some of these issues reflects how challenging these conversations are in the international forums.

Q140 Chair: May I press you a little further on Afghanistan? You know that in our report on Afghanistan we asked for a much higher priority to be given to women’s rights. Indeed, DFID responded to that by pushing it up the agenda.

On the peacekeeping point, we are training the Afghan army and police. Are you satisfied that that kind of training will lead to better conduct and behaviour? As you rightly say, the perpetration of violence by police and armed forces is often a problem. We have not heard of serious problems, but can you give us any guidance on whether you feel that is taking root?

Baroness Warsi: In Afghanistan, the issue of sexual violence does not just relate to women. Tragically, it also relates to boys and men, which is very much a taboo issue. At one of the round tables that I hosted on my last visit a few months ago, we specifically brought up the issue of sexual violence directed towards young boys, who predominantly have access to places where there are security forces. Purely because of the nature of the society, fewer women are in exposed places, but there is a huge amount of violence within the home. Therefore, we have been working with Afghanistan to put in place the necessary legislation and to deal with the issue of domestic violence and violence within the home.

The training, of course, focuses on issues around sexual violence. One of the ways in which we think we can challenge it is by having more female police officers. When I was last in Helmand, I went to see a police station where they had female police officers. I met four or five female police officers, and they said that their work had been incredibly challenging. They are still seen as a target by certain groups within Afghanistan, but they do have the support of their superiors. That support and leadership makes their jobs easier. We are also increasing the number of family response units, which look, for example, at the issue of violence within homes. But it is an incredibly difficult and conservative society, and these things are going to take time.

Where I think the involvement of women will be crucial is their involvement in the peace and reconciliation process. Gains could be lost if, in the reconciliation process, demands around the rights of women are forgone to get the wider peace. I don’t think you will get peace if we give up on those demands. Therefore, having women on the High Peace Council, which is the main body that will negotiate with the Taliban in the peace and reconciliation process, is important. There was a suggestion that one of the demands made at the negotiations with the Taliban and the High Peace Council was not to have women present at those meetings. That is the kind of thing that we can politically push back on. If you take those issues off the table, how do we know they are going to be raised? You cannot silence the voices that are part of this process.

We need a lot more inter-parliamentary work. Having female parliamentarians visiting here has been good, and I think that empowers them and supports them as well. I always host discussions with female parliamentarians when I go to Afghanistan. We fund and support the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which works within Afghanistan. Its Chair, Sima Samar, is a phenomenal woman. This is a very personal anecdote. In the age of Twitter, so many of us and so many of our interlocutors from across the world are on Twitter. Direct messaging is a phenomenally powerful tool for bringing these abuses to light incredibly quickly when they start to happen. I take great comfort from one of the female Members of Parliament whom I met in Afghanistan, who said, "Look, it can never go back to the way it was under the Taliban, because we all have mobile phones, and we can all get on Facebook and Twitter and talk to each other without having to go outside the home." There is a real fight now in the women in Afghanistan. We have just got to make sure that we give them support and say we will fight alongside them.

Chair: We certainly met some of those very feisty parliamentarians.

Q141 Fiona O'Donnell: You rightly highlighted how important it is that we have a joined-up approach across different Government Departments to violence against women and girls. I wonder whether you can give us a bit of detail about how that process is managed. When did you last sit down with Lynne Featherstone and the appropriate Minister from the MOD to talk about that joined-up approach?

Baroness Warsi: There is an inter-ministerial working group on violence against women and girls. It last met in February of this year. Lynne Featherstone attended, and I had a senior official8 attend that meeting. We also have discussions regularly on the National Action Plan, which is held on a cross-Government basis. I think Lynne’s role is really pivotal to this. She is the person who has tentacles in all the different Departments. When you hear from her later, I think you will be convinced about how joined up this is, both in the preparation and the execution of programmes.

The PSVI team includes the FCO, DFID and the Home Office. DFID has seconded somebody into the PSVI team, so at an official level we are connected. In terms of the Commission on the Status of Women, the Government Equalities Office, the FCO and DFID are taking forward the agreed conclusions from that. So there is a whole amount of joined-up working on that agenda. Again, from a foreign policy perspective, show and tell is much more powerful than telling alone-when we meet interlocutors and can show them what we are doing domestically on issues. Every country is always learning about how it can protect women better. We have had domestic debates on how to get more prosecutions for rape and on the support we can give to victims through that process. Having that joined-up working allows us to be much more powerful when we have international discussions.

Q142 Chair: Earlier, you mentioned your involvement in domestic issues relating to FGM, and we have taken evidence from both interest groups and the police. The concern we have, first, is on the number of women and girls who are at risk within the UK. There is evidence that cutting is taking place in the UK, yet no prosecutions have been taken forward. Do you have any thoughts or comments? It is exactly the point you have just made, because if we are going around the world saying that it should not happen when it is happening here in the UK and yet nothing-I am not saying nothing is being done about it, but there is no visible evidence of it-it undermines our credibility, doesn’t it?

Baroness Warsi: Where we have had real success is in the area of forced marriages. Where we have had less success is on FGM. Of course, it concerns me, as it concerns the Home Secretary, that further progress has not been made on FGM. Part of that, going back, is that you can create a law but it is about the implementation of that law and making sure that we have community support, too. A lot of these practices happen in very closed communities, and we need to have support from people within those communities who are prepared to come forward and give evidence that allows prosecutions to happen. The way to get that is by tackling the culture.

With my domestic hat on, I have a brief in the Department for Communities and Local Government on faith and communities. One element of our integration brief is about challenging those practices that are sometimes overlooked in the name of sensitivity by being prepared to say to people that there is a certain set of universal values to which people should join up. We will openly and publicly challenge those practices and get communities to stand alongside us when we challenge them. It is about cultural change and getting the community to work alongside us, and hopefully have people who are brave enough to come forward. I agree with you that more needs to be done. I know it is something that Lynne, the Home Secretary and many others take incredibly seriously, and we hope we can make progress on it.

Chair: Thank you very much. I hope your first appearance in front of a Select Committee has not been too traumatic. From our point of view, it has been revealing and very interesting.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Lynne Featherstone MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, DFID, Jo Moir, Acting Head, Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department, DFID and Jen Marshall, Head of Profession for Social Development, gave evidence.

Q143 Chair: Good morning. It is nice to see you again. For the record, although those of us who are long at the Department have met them already, would you introduce your team?

Lynne Featherstone: Perhaps they could introduce themselves.

Jen Marshall: Good morning. I am Jen Marshall, the Head of Profession for Social Development at DFID, so I lead the technical team that delivers a lot of this work on the ground.

Jo Moir: I am Jo Moir, the Acting Head of the Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department, where the team works on violence against women and girls.

Q144 Chair: As you know, this inquiry is ranging quite widely. We just had Baroness Warsi before us to give us her take on both Foreign Office and cross-departmental working. She made a number of references to you, Lynne, as being the key co-ordinator or player across the Departments. I know that you do it on Twitter as well as other places, but you make some pretty strong pledges on Violence Against Women and Girls and how you are going to take that work forward. Practically and specifically, what can you do now within the Department really to advance the claims into substantive policy and delivery?

Lynne Featherstone: Actually, I think it was brilliant, in terms of violence against women, to have the champion situated in DFID as opposed to the Home Office, because prior to that it was the MOD, the FCO and DFID that funded the role over at the Home Office. A very good example of what I can do in DFID would be that the theme of the UN Commission on the Status of Women earlier this year was violence against women, so I was aware that there is a rise in countries across the world that think that women should be put back in their box and that it was going to be difficult to get agreed conclusions. I arrived at DFID saying that we have to do something and that we have to start early. There followed six months of unremitting work, with me and the Secretary of State phoning and lobbying across the world, so that when we came to the fight and the negotiation we could get agreed conclusions, which had not happened 10 years earlier. That is one example of being in situ.

Of course, the previous Secretary of State put women and girls right at the heart of DFID in development terms, but in terms of violence against women four pillars have always made up the strategic vision: delay first pregnancy and support safe childbirth; improve economic opportunities; get girls through primary and secondary school; and prevent violence. That fourth pillar is now scaling up to an unprecedented level. We are working in 20 country programmes and it is being mainstreamed through virtually everything that DFID does in every department. It is embedded in DFID’s structure and in the staff who work there and in the resource that can facilitate it across the world. I would like to think that it had something of a galvanising effect, and the Secretary of State is an equally enthusiastic supporter of this agenda. We are now moving on to things such as the Call To Action, and I am sure that you have a whole range of questions.

Q145 Chair: Many of us have met your team and we had a good meeting and exchange of views. It is a small team, however, and you were talking about outsourcing some services. On a practical organisational basis, do you feel that your team is strong enough? How do you get the balance between in-house and outsourcing to ensure that you get the firepower you need?

Lynne Featherstone: We judge that we now have the necessary capacity really to address violence against women and girls. The team structure itself is being looked at in the terms of those new priorities that I just described. All of the country offices are considering their capacity to deliver as programmes evolve and have this agenda at their heart. We have senior input from a gender champion-Joy is the champion for Africa-from a policy director and from the head of CHASE. Different members of the gender team lead support as necessary. There are social development advisers, who are the key officials who ensure that that is embedded, virtually everywhere. We give guidance and support to country offices.

In terms of the outsourcing, we are setting up a support desk and that will facilitate as needed, where needed. It is a fine judgment, but it is a very good thing to have this expert, flexible body that is there to provide whatever we need wherever we need it, and not just buy everything in at the right time with the right expertise. In a sense, it is also a time saver, but we will keep an eye on it to make sure it actually delivers what we want of it. If we find that an outsourced facility does not suit the purpose for which we employed that body, we will review that.

Q146 Chair: Perhaps specific examples would help. We as a Committee were very much focused on this agenda in Afghanistan. If you remember, we basically said the test of UK engagement in Afghanistan would be the state of the women after the troops have left and in the years beyond. I believe that you have now got a much more targeted approach in Afghanistan. In countries such as Afghanistan, the DRC-we are all concerned about what goes on there-Sudan and Somalia, particularly in relation to FGM as well as the violence in general, how are you focusing down to ensure that these issues really do become central to the programmes within those countries? I think I speak for the Committee when I say that the status of women in those countries will be a real litmus test of whether they are coming out of conflict and into civilised development.

Lynne Featherstone: My officials may jump in if they want with specific examples. Because the absolute focus of DFID is on the poorest countries, inevitably those are the countries where women are the poorest and also suffer the most violence. In all the countries you mentioned we have a scale-up of programmes. Rather than my going through programmes, I will ask if either of my officials want to contribute while I look up which programmes. I visited some myself in Sudan and in Ethiopia. I will let you do the actual programmes, because I have been to so many. You are looking for the construct as to how we approach those.

Q147 Chair: We wanted to see how the programmes are being adapted to take this as you push it up the agenda.

Jen Marshall: Perhaps I can give you an example from Afghanistan. I was recently there; I followed the IDC in. That is a good example of where the Secretary of State made a public commitment. It was a commitment that reflected a discussion that had been going on for a while about this being a real priority, part of that work across the Afghanistan programme to think about how we can further increase our work to support gender equality in Afghanistan, whether that is through girls’ education, women’s empowerment, political leadership and so on. But we knew that we needed to do more on VAWG, so we were really pleased that the Secretary of State made that commitment on 4 March as part of her international women’s day speech.

In the programme, there is a process now going on of looking across the portfolio, and looking at what may be needed in terms of a stand-alone programme and what is needed to integrate VAWG into existing work. So there was a political commitment and recognition that this is the key issue, and then a real team effort between social development advisers and also governance and conflict advisers and others across programmes. There is a need to integrate elements of work on violence . We recognise in Afghanistan that we do need to do more, and the team are actively working on that across different areas.

In the other countries, it is similar. Technical advisers will be doing the analysis, and where there is a very high prevalence of violence they will have this on the agenda when they are programming and thinking about what they should be doing to address it. They will be working out the best way, bearing in mind the context and what other donors are doing in that country. They will recognise what is possible and where we can have leverage and can really make a change. We are seeing really important progress across all those countries you refer to, particularly those with high prevalence, including Somalia and elsewhere.

Lynne Featherstone: I just came back from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I visited a War Child place where girls who have been living on the street, because they have been violated or thrown out by their families, are facing incredible levels of sexual violence. We are looking at how we can integrate that into our programmes. There is a whole range of work going on in terms of how we can scale up-quite dramatically, I think.

Q148 Pauline Latham: It is good that you mentioned the DRC because I am concerned about what is going on there, particularly the violence against women and girls by the forces. The UN seem to be doing nothing at all about it. You said you have met with War Child and it is going to be integrated and all this jargon. What actually is going to happen? How is it going to affect the girl in the DRC who is on the streets now? What are you going to do that will make a big difference to her life? You can integrate and you can do all this jargon, but what does it mean on the ground?

Lynne Featherstone: On the ground, if that programme goes ahead, it will mean that there will be somewhere where a girl will be able to go. There will be someone who will be able to teach her skills. It is occasionally an overnight refuge, the War Child one. So it is looking at what services and what skills you can give so that there is an economic opportunity for that girl to get away. When everyone goes to the DRC they go to the east. I went to the Kasai-Occidental, which is the poorest state in the world, to look at what they are doing. There is a programme there that we are scaling up called the police de proximité. It is basically enabling community policing. In the training we are looking at all of those issues around sexual violence. It is about who will be listening to those girls and how they will access justice. So the access to justice programmes are huge as well. There are so many to talk about. The difference for women and girls in one of the provinces where we have three pilots going on is that they will have a police force that is trained to understand that they are there to protect women, not to rape them, which will be a move forward.

Q149 Pauline Latham: Aren’t the police supposed to be doing that anyway?

Lynne Featherstone: Well, that is what I said. It will be a move forward because in many of these countries-certainly in Ethiopia, if girls on the university campus who were being sexually harassed or subjected to violence from male students or teachers went to the police point, which is on every campus, they were as likely to be raped or hurt by the police themselves. So there is quite a job to do in terms of police training. You move forward in the direction, but you are absolutely right: that is the kind of thing you are up against in these countries where none of the authorities are really doing what we would expect from them in this country. Quite frankly, it is only about 30 years since they weren’t really taking domestic violence seriously in this country.

Q150 Pauline Latham: You are talking about War Child. That is a charity. Are DFID funding that charity to do this work?

Lynne Featherstone: No. That is why I went to see it to look at what DFID could do along those lines, because there are so many girls who find themselves ejected on the streets and have no protection and nowhere to go. They are very vulnerable to violence.

Q151 Pauline Latham: So at the moment are we still looking? We have not made any decisions. We are not actually changing the lives of any of those girls.

Lynne Featherstone: Not of those I saw at War Child. But we are changing many other girls’ lives.

Jo Moir: Might I say a little bit more about the DRC programme? Obviously the rates of violence against women and girls in that country are horrendous. Access to women and girls in those situations is incredibly difficult. It is a conflict situation in many parts of the country. So one of the main routes in to providing help to women and girls is through our humanitarian programming. We work in a number of ways through a number of agencies to try and prevent violence against women and girls in the camps and so on before it happens, but also to respond through the provision of services through our humanitarian programming.

In terms of tackling violence against women and girls at the systemic level, the Minister referenced our security and justice programme in the DRC, where we are investing £4 million to try to train the police so that they can investigate crimes of sexual violence more effectively and are not contributing to the problem in perhaps the way they have done in the past. Those are just a couple of examples where we are working in the DRC.

Q152 Pauline Latham: Until the UN have a mandate that says they can hold somebody who they know has been a perpetrator of violence or sexual violence against women and girls, until they can hold them until the police arrive-presumably the police by now are trained-it still will not affect anybody. In these war situations, by the time the police arrive, the perpetrators have disappeared. You have to start higher up. You have to start by saying that the UN must be able to hold on to these people until such time as the police-fully trained so that they don’t rape and abuse women themselves-come, and then they get into the justice system. You can’t have access to justice unless you have got the perpetrators, and that is not happening at the moment.

Lynne Featherstone: I think there is a recognition that sexual violence, and violence against women and girls-and children, for that matter-in humanitarian situations, is not working at the moment. There are two things, really: I held a round table with a lot of the violence against women NGOs, and one of the things that clearly came up, to me, was that in the camps where many of these women end up there really is no protection.

The Secretary of State has now called for action on sexual violence in humanitarian situations; I think there is a big event-conference-in the autumn. One of the things I am particularly stressed about is that we have come from a position, if you like, where in humanitarian situations there has always been food, shelter, water, sanitation; and there is in my view a requirement for a first order position to cover violence, sexual violence, against women and children in those camps-because it is perpetrated from day one, and it is actually an opportunity, where you have a lot of people together. In fact last night, Zainab Bangura was talking about Somalia, where there are 510 of these camps, and we had a long discussion about how most of the sexual violence against women is actually taking place in what could be a controlled situation; so I think there is an opportunity there. The issue you raise is part of that whole agenda, which I think is now going to be grabbed hold of as, in a sense, a missing part of the puzzle of how you deal, from conflict to justice.

Q153 Fiona Bruce: You mentioned the country offices and the plans. There is a new round of country operational plans for DFID in 2015, so we are interested to know how you will ensure that strategic priorities include violence against women and are embedded and integrated into those plans.

Lynne Featherstone: I think it would be very strange for anyone to be sending me an operational plan that did not include how that would be integrated. I think there has been a very clear strategic steer from both myself and the Secretary of State that we expect to see this totally across our programmes, so I think the message is out there in terms of officials understanding the priority we give it.

Q154 Fiona Bruce: Thank you; that is very helpful. If I may drill down a little bit, and ask you about some countries where there is a high prevalence of violence against women and girls, you have given some good examples, or your colleague has, from the DRC, but can you give examples of plans for Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Pakistan?

Lynne Featherstone: I would have to turn to my officials. South Sudan-I went there, so I discussed the daily challenges and insecurity. For example, with women’s groups in Yusuf Batil refugee camp, one of the programmes-not the operational plan, but one of the programmes within the operational plan-is about the stuff that erupts there. It is a programme of community action in terms of settling disputes. I haven’t got Ethiopia on my list, so I ask my officials to say something if either of them have the specifics on that-in terms of the operational plans: I have got them in global form, but not in specifics.

Jen Marshall: I can give you a few examples from each of those countries. You mentioned Somalia, which has obviously been in the news, and at the forefront of our attention this week. DFID Somalia includes a range of activities on VAWG, I’ll just give a couple of activities amidst wider work for gender equality. A key part of our humanitarian work includes specific work on referral units for women victims and survivors of violence. The DFID programme in Somalia includes a lot of work on governance, security and justice. That includes work to ensure that women get into the legal system-that they are employed as barristers, so that they can tackle the systemic issues in the justice system-and the police, so that they respond more effectively.

In Nigeria, we have a programme that is in development amid a wide range of different investments for girls and women, including tackling conflict and promoting conflict prevention in the north. We put women and girls at the heart of how we think about conflict prevention in the north. The new programme in development at the moment is called "Voices for Change". It specifically contains elements of tackling violence against women, including an important element of work on men and boys-the role that they play and the change that they can bring about in Nigerian society.

Pakistanis a good example of a DFID programme where VAWG has been integrated across a range of programmes, including those for conflict prevention and security, again working with the police, as Jo mentioned in DRC. They have a big programme called the Aawaz programme, which is about addressing the legislation and the community-level change that is required to change some of the norms on what is important, what drives violence and how you respond to it at the local level for women who need an immediate response.

In Ethiopia, they are looking at what they can do more across the programme. They have, for a long time, had a strong focus on women and girls. An example there is "Girl Hub", which does some really good work to empower girls. A number of you visited the Amhara programme, which is tackling early marriage, the way it interrelates with violence and the way we can help girls to protect themselves and communities better to protect the girls in their communities.

Lynne Featherstone: You asked an interesting question. When you look across all the operational plans, there is quite a lot going on. You would argue that some water and sanitation programmes prevent violence against women, because of the walk to and from. When you look through the 27 operational plans, all of them have programmes that educate women and provide them with skills in water and sanitation.

In some of the programmes on access to justice, VAWG has not had the priority that it now has. That is being worked up. That bit is being scaled up to address what I think is one of the most prevalent problems and challenges in development. I do not think you can have development when half your population are unable to function because they are likely to be violated in one way or another.

Q155 Fiona Bruce: So we can assume that this will have a much higher profile in the next round of plans?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes.

Q156 Fiona O’Donnell: DFID identified four holistic interventions across different areas of work that needed implementation to advance the work on violence against women and girls. Your own review of that and the evidence so far concentrate too much on political and institutional capacity. What work are you doing on the other three interventions to empower women and girls, change social norms and provide comprehensive services?

Lynne Featherstone: I will start with social norms, because I think within changing social norms lies a lot of the answers to everything, in both the developed and developing worlds.

Q157 Fiona O’Donnell: I understand the rationale. What are the interventions?

Lynne Featherstone: Let us take female genital mutilation, which is probably one of the worst human rights abuses. The prevalence is high in many countries. Recently we announced up to £35 million to be spent in four ways. The first is a research programme to find out what works best. Part of it is working directly with communities. The ambition is to achieve a reduction of 30% in 10 countries over five years. It is also to galvanise a world movement. I purposefully announced it at CSW when all the key players in the FGM field were there. There is a communication strategy to push it forward. The ambition is to end FGM within a generation. That is a massive ambition and one in which we have to engage the whole world, including the UK where we have a diaspora. It would be one example of something that has changed dramatically.

Q158 Mr McCann: I have a few questions on DFID programmes. You mentioned the theory of change. Programming guidance on violence against women and girls stresses the importance of work and prevention, and creating that social change. We saw the programme in Ethiopia. It was making a real difference and starting to tackle some of the issues of child marriage and FGC. For example, in South Sudan I did not see great evidence that we were making inroads into the culture of female children being bartered for cattle, for example. Polygamy is rife. We met the governor of Cueibet, who had 14 wives and 62 children. Given that I never saw a lot of evidence on the ground that we were tackling those root causes, do you accept that we need to do more?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes.

Q159 Mr McCann: In those areas?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, but you could pick on any country and on any issue where we are not doing enough. At this point in time, we are doing some things in some countries some of the time. That is why we are having a cohesive look across the piece.

We have not got on to the other three points that were asked about, but the one that has been less attended to has been the violence against women pillar. In South Sudan, apart from Access to Justice programming in camps and bits and pieces, there is not yet a cohesive programme. We can point to acid attacks in one country, and we can point to something in another country that we won’t be doing. But I give you my assurance that we are working as fast as we can to scale up in a holistic way-and an impact way-in countries where we can do so.

But I will take slight issue with you. It is important to have political engagement with male leaders in those countries. In a country like Afghanistan, for example, we can do all that we can do but ultimately, we are looking for male leadership because that is a country where, if there were no male leadership, at some point it won’t have as much hold. We fund women’s organisations. We engage with civil society so that it can hold its own Governments to account. I think that engaging at political level on that basis is tremendously important, and part of the work I have done as International Champion for tackling violence against women is the crafting of key messages for all of our travelling Ministers to take to any country whenever they have the opportunity. It is all very well having a champion, but I am one person. So to tackle violence against women across the world on my own is clearly-as good as I am-a ridiculous proposition.

The first key message is on leadership-William Hague level, really, but for any travelling Minister to raise the issue of sexual violence and violence against women. The second order is where there are no laws, and to promote the institution of laws and where there are laws, their implementation. The third message is about the justice systems and the enforcement systems because, without police and justice, those things cannot be instituted. They are all quite nascent. We are looking at how to get such things into Ministers’ programmes who are going on a whole range of things and when time is short. Such engagement is very important.

Q160 Mr McCann: What plans are there to upscale? You mentioned it a few times, but can you give us a practical upscale and say how the work will prevail over the coming months and years?

Lynne Featherstone: As I said, the point is that the operational plans for the countries are now being looked at and assessed. I expect them to come back to me for me to recommend to the Secretary of State, and I expect to see what their proposals are on the upscaling across all our operational plans.

Q161 Chair: Have they been given a time scale for that? Have they got a particular target to bring these plans to you by a given time?

Lynne Featherstone: There isn’t one, but there is a refresh going on right now. I have just looked at the operational plans in terms of recommendations, and at the moment I am waiting for them to be clearer in terms of results.

Q162 Mr McCann: But it is just the time scale and the implementation on the ground that we are trying to get to.

Lynne Featherstone: I don’t know. I don’t have a time scale for when each one is coming to me-I don’t know if you do, Jo.

Jo Moir: With the operational plans, as you probably know we refresh them on an annual basis but there will be a major overall of them as we come up to 2015. I think it is fair to say that in a range of different country programmes there are new Violence Against Women and Girls programmes under development. Some of them stand alone and some of them are integrated into the health or education programmes, or the water and sanitation programmes. At the moment, the upscaling is already happening, as new programmes are being designed, published and implemented.

There will be a major refresh of the operational plans in a couple of years’ time. There are mini-refreshes going on at the moment. Ministers are looking at them, and I think they are being published sometime in June.

Q163 Mr McCann: Do you think that’s being complacent, when you say "a couple of years’ time"? It worries me, if this is such a massive issue.

Lynne Featherstone: It’s not just that. Don’t forget that a lot of our expenditure is planned expenditure and you have to develop things. You can’t just take programmes away and take the money because as we get to 0.7% to the full extent there isn’t new money coming forward. So we are looking at the whole-

Q164 Pauline Latham: You are going up to 0.7%, so there is a lot of new money.

Lynne Featherstone: No, but I am saying that it is all planned expenditure. At the moment, the discussions that are going on are around the business model, how much will be spent on an annual basis on what and where it is coming from. If it is going to go to violence against women, or something else, we have to look at where it is coming from.

Q165 Pauline Latham: But isn’t that one of the key priorities? We are doing a big jump. The Secretary of State has said that it is going to be right at the forefront and the previous Secretary of State was focusing on women and girls, so it is not new, but we have a huge increase in the amount of money from 0.5 whatever it was to 0.7%. That is an incredible increase, and you are saying, "It’s all committed." I am sorry, but it is not.

Lynne Featherstone: Much of it is already committed on the violence against women agenda in terms of the programmes-

Q166 Pauline Latham: But you can’t give us any specifics. You’re not giving us any practical examples.

Lynne Featherstone: Okay. DFID South Africa has a new programme strengthening South Africa’s response to gender-based violence through prevention. That has a budget of £4 million over four years, so there are many-

Q167 Chair: Can you perhaps give us in writing a summary of the key programmes-particularly in the countries most affected-to know where it’s at?

Lynne Featherstone: We can send you a list of the programmes but there are lots of different programmes that have elements of violence against women, sexual violence, access to justice and prevention work with men and boys.

Q168 Chair: I mean in presentational terms. I will give you the example of what we did on Afghanistan. We said that we thought the issue of the status of women-not just violence but right across the piece-was central to development in Afghanistan. We know what our report said, yet when we looked at the programme there was very little evidence that women’s issues and gender issues were prioritised and the recommendation was that that should happen. The implication we are getting is that that effectively is happening. It would be helpful if we could get a similar kind of view, on particularly the most affected countries, of what the programmes were-

Lynne Featherstone: So Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan.

Q169 Chair: I think it would help us to understand the dynamic.

Lynne Featherstone: I am happy to do that. I can give you the list that we are doing in Afghanistan if that is helpful. We have them in every country, and I am happy to supply those programmes. What I am talking about in terms of the refresh in 2015 is that there will be quite a shift, I imagine, in terms of looking at the whole of what DFID does and how that is programmed.

Q170 Fiona O'Donnell: May I just say, Minister, that perhaps a good starting point would be to say to country programmes that there is a time scale within which they must respond with their plans, rather than allowing this to drift without an end date.

Lynne Featherstone: It is not exactly drift. They are coming up with new programmes all the time, and the shift is towards violence against women and also women’s empowerment and all of those issues. It is not a stop-start thing; the programming evolves the whole time as opportunities arise. It is about either working with Governments or despite Governments-it depends on the circumstances of the country. Those submissions and those business cases are coming up all the time.

Q171 Mr McCann: We took evidence from one of the elders on this topic. It was really worrying and disturbing to hear that, even now at the UN, countries are arguing that culture should still trump human rights. In terms of your research and innovation fund and the evidence that that generates about what works in trying to effect social change, can you give us a little bit of detail about how that will work? If something works in one country, it is crucial that we can roll that out and learn from the experience.

Lynne Featherstone: We have written new guidance on community-level programming, and that is being disseminated. The social development advisers are the keys to that in terms of taking what works in one country. Some £5 million of the Research and Innovation Fund is going to explore what those things are and take them further. Even at the moment, we have guidance. Up to £25 million for the VAWG Research and Innovation Fund has been approved. As I have said, there is a £35 million fund for FGM and the new VAWG help desk, which is the outsource function that you referred to earlier. All of those things are to do with what you said about taking what works. We should not assume that what works in one country will necessarily work in another. We must understand best practice.

I went to Senegal-I was at the Home Office before DFID and had domestic violence in my portfolio. I would stand at the Dispatch Box at every session of oral questions, and everyone would ask, "Why have we got no prosecutions on FGM here?" There is a whole raft of answers to that. I had heard about the work going on in west Africa, and a few weeks ago I went to see it. That, I would say, is a model for social change. It happens to be the one I have seen, and you cannot assume that what you have seen is the only thing that works. What I saw in Senegal might not work in Ethiopia, Sudan or Somalia where we have FGM programmes.

But what I saw was a community with a nearly three-year programme on human rights. That three-year programme was focused not on FGM specifically, but on what the whole village wanted. It was called the human rights programme. They worked with the whole village: the elders, the religious leaders, the men, the women-and the children, because quite often children are not allowed to speak in front of their elders. Over that time, they did a whole range of things, which we would recognise as how a community works. They decided on their focus. They had drawn pictures. What the community wanted to do that year was buy a cow; there were targets, if you like.

The community had also decided on the abandonment of FGM; they do that as a community and it is they who decide that they are going to do it. Then they stand and make a public declaration. Some 6,000 communities have done that. In terms of social norms and change, you cannot get anything more deeply embedded than FGC as a practice over 2,000 years. It cuts across everything-the cultural eggshells and all those people who say that they cannot do it-because it is decided by the community themselves. Part of the issue is to do with information. No connection had been made between the cutting and the serious health consequences that were being experienced by girls and women later on in life. Once they recognised the harm, they decided that they did not want to go on effecting a harmful practice. The religious leaders came to confirm that it was not a religious requirement. They worked as a community.

What I saw there-forgetting FGM for a moment-was that something had happened in terms of the relationship between men and women. The committees that had formed had men and women on them, and women had an equal say with men. Women spoke up all the time, as did children, so there was a shift from what had been. I was still sitting with the men-let us not get too excited-and the women were in the side panels of this discussion group, with a couple of hundred people there. Nevertheless, there was quite a shift in the way they did stuff.

That was a living example, in front of my eyes, that demonstrated how social norms, with all the challenges that you raise around cultural imperialism, can shift, but it has to be long-term and internalised and to come from the people themselves-in this case, African-led-with our being there just to support a timely change in the world and particularly in Africa.

Somewhere in all that lies the answer to many of the problems of violence against women. Whether you look at PSVI, with rape as a weapon of war, or violence to girls on the street, in all those situations-in camps or just in villages, as much as in urban settings-women get it wherever. That is an attitudinal issue, so I am very keen on looking at the psychology behind that, in terms of trying to effect long-term change, so it is a personal hobby-horse, obviously.

Q172 Mr McCann: You have neatly touched on my next question. Some of these cultures, as you rightly point out, have been in communities for thousands of years, so it is a slow-burn issue to try to effect that change. Of course, DFID is under the microscope, having one of the few budgets that is actually increasing, given these difficult economic times. Is there a recognition within DFID, which is a results-based industry, that investment has to continue; that, although we will not necessarily see immediate results, long-term investment has to go in to effect the change; and that it is not going to turn around and say, "Oh, we haven’t seen any change, we’re going to stop funding it"?

Lynne Featherstone: I think that having a results-based focus-value for money for the British taxpayer-is absolutely super-important, but you cannot measure everything. I am more than happy to go out and defend an investment for the long term. Right across all countries, one of the problems for all politicians is having to show short-term results. Particularly in the environment of having a protected budget-so our responsibility is even greater-you can go out and make the argument for our work being investment for the long term.

There has been an incredible shift in the world in terms of the reduction of overall poverty. It is nowhere near there, but in the focus of the millennium development goals and the focus on alleviating poverty-that remains the focus-we have seen change. Not all of that was measurable; much of it was technical advice to Governments. There are myriad things that you cannot measure, but those long-term internal changes will actually deliver a different future.

Q173 Mr McCann: My final question is about women’s organisations, which have been touched on in answers to previous questions. The Theory of Change highlights the key role that women on organisations play as catalysts for change. Yet, in terms of DFID’s funding arrangements, it appears that there is little scope to reward those organisations by giving them money. Are there any plans to change the funding mechanisms?

Lynne Featherstone: We do give quite a lot of money to civil society organisations. I think it was about £1 billion this year. Obviously, we support BOND.

Q174 Mr McCann: How much?

Lynne Featherstone: £880 million-not quite £1 billion; I exaggerate.

We fund centrally through a number of mechanisms or through multilateral programmes. Obviously, we are big supporters of UN Women in particular. Now that it is getting it more together, it is becoming quite a mover and shaker, as you would hope, in terms of catalytic advice across the world. We do accountable grants, such as the acid burns survivors programmes.

Country offices have a small budget to give small grants to local NGOs, because we obviously want to build capacity within countries to hold their own Governments to account, and to lobby and fight for things. For example, in Afghanistan we fund Tawanmandi, and in Bangladesh the Manusher Jonno Foundation, and we support social inclusion action programmes. Local offices look at where their grants would be best given. They are also supported by engagement with our country offices. We sometimes forget and assume everyone has the same capacity or knowledge which just does not exist in some of the places where we work. So our local offices are best placed to judge how to support and build the capacity in local civil society.

Q175 Pauline Latham: You talked about the Theory of Change and earlier on you talked about health, education, water and sanitation. Can you tell us a little bit about the detail of how DFID plans to work on violence against women through those programmes? We know that girls are abused on the way to school, collecting water, collecting firewood, going to use latrines that are not separate from boys’ latrines. So what are DFID doing?

Lynne Featherstone: In terms of our WASH programmes or the multilaterals that we fund through WASH, I saw one in the DRC where I visited a spring which we have enabled a village to have. So the women no longer have to walk for hours every day. It is about 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back now. So obviously that is a protection. They also have sanitation but within an enclosed area, so they don’t have to go and find places to defecate in the forest.

Q176 Pauline Latham: So do they have proper latrines?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, they have proper latrines. By our standards they are not the same-

Pauline Latham: But separate ones for men and women, not shared?

Lynne Featherstone: I don’t know the answer to that for the ones I saw. I didn’t ask that question. I just visited the latrines that had been built, but I did not ask whether they were for different genders.

Jen Marshall: Standard practice is that they would be separated.

Q177 Pauline Latham: I was going to say. That is pretty key. You went to see something like that and you didn’t know whether the sanitation was separate. One of the key things that we talk about is that girls can go to the toilet privately and not be hassled by men.

Lynne Featherstone: I must have gone to the girls’ one.

Q178 Pauline Latham: You must have done? Okay. Can you tell me whether DFID are going to issue specific guidance on working on violence against women in the sectors we have talked about? How will you make sure that the sectoral advisers have adequate knowledge of violence against women and girls? Which staff members are responsible for mainstreaming violence against women and girls across those sectoral programmes?

Lynne Featherstone: The senior girls and women strategy group maintains a strategic overview of DFID’s work across all the priority areas. It consolidates and shares best practice. We have senior divisional gender champions who are appointed in each division. They are responsible for each division.

Q179 Pauline Latham: What does that mean?

Lynne Featherstone: It means that is what they look at within their purview.

Q180 Pauline Latham: In Britain or in-country?

Lynne Featherstone: We regard ourselves as one organisation. Country officers are not that separate inasmuch as it is done as one piece. It is not just done here or done there. It is done across the piece. I don’t know whether there are daily conferences but there is no separation in terms of what is going on in the country. Video conferences go on on a daily basis so offices are not regarded as being over there or over here. This is a one-organisation approach.

The policy division and the gender team oversee the implementation of the strategic vision across the pillars. They facilitate cohesion across the strategy. They chair the meetings and they produce the annual progress reports. Girls and women pillar leads are the technical experts in the four policy areas. Within their pillar area they work closely with regional and country colleagues to maintain a strategic overview of the work; establish communities of practice; share the evidence, innovation and best practice; provide technical and peer support for business case development; and develop new policy resources and evidence. I don’t know whether my officials want to add some detail in terms of how they know enough about VAWG.

Jen Marshall: One of the key roles of the social development adviser, when they are posted into an office, is to have those exact conversations with the sectoral teams. They are often quite stretched because they work across whole ranges of programmes, including growth, security and justice. They work closely, for example, with health and education advisers to discuss how in that context you should best tackle gender and violence , linking up to, as the Minister said, the main ideas and the people who lead that thinking at a global level. So it is an active conversation. For example, in our girls’ education work in Nigeria, it is the education adviser and the social development adviser who sit down and look at how to make schools safe places to be, in the context of Nigeria, and design programmes that will deliver those results.

Lynne Featherstone: May I go back to your previous question, because I did not answer you on education. The girls education challenge fund is one of the very innovative new programmes. I went with the Deputy Prime Minister to Ethiopia to launch a new girls education challenge fund programme there, which was a massive investment. And it was exactly that. It was about very marginalised girls-the poorest of girls-who could not get to school because the dangers en route were too severe. It was about some very practical things like going to collect children from various parts-I suppose it is the equivalent of children going to school in a crocodile here-to enable them to get to school and get back safely.

Local providers and implementers are developing the actual practicalities of how you do it, how you get to the most marginalised girls, how you bring them to school, and how you protect them. Those are some of the things about keeping girls safe that really inhibit them having any chance. The girls in that example are the most marginalised and the most vulnerable.

Q181 Pauline Latham: On 4 March, the Secretary of State pledged that DFID would launch an international call to action on violence against women and girls in humanitarian settings. Do you have any more details on that, please?

Lynne Featherstone: The details are being worked out right now. I don’t have more detail to give you. However, as I was saying at the beginning, I think there has been a gap in terms of the attention on violence against women and sexual violence in humanitarian circumstances. On the point you raised earlier about the UN not having a mandate-that kind of crossover-I hope that this event will be an opportunity for all the agencies and all the actors involved to bring forward the issues that need to be addressed, in particular, not in general. I do not have details about the conference; I understand it is to be in the autumn. I don’t know whether Jo or Jen have more up-to-date information on that.

Q182 Pauline Latham: We have heard that UN relief agencies still miss very basic benchmarks for safeguarding women in displacement and refugee camp settings. Do you think that DFID is sufficiently clear that its funding of these agencies is contingent on international guidelines on tackling violence against women and girls, and do you think those guidelines are being met?

Lynne Featherstone: I think we recognise, as I said, that there is a gap. In a sense, this is about everyone being aware that we are upping the ante on this. We think that this is important. It is about focusing all the agencies and all the actors on something that has not been delivered in the way it was meant to be.

Q183 Pauline Latham: So what has changed?

Lynne Featherstone: The change is not here yet. Part of the point of the call to action is to begin that change. How do you change those things, other than by withdrawing your money from the multilateral? We have had conversations about that, but you need the focus to be on the gap so it becomes a priority for those agencies, and it is no longer secondary to the food, shelter-

Q184 Pauline Latham: So is this going to happen in two years, like all the other things?

Lynne Featherstone: No; this is happening in the autumn.

Q185 Chair: Is this incorporated into the multilateral review?

Pauline Latham: Or is the international call to action to do with the conference?

Lynne Featherstone: That is a special thing to focus attention on the very issue you are raising. In terms of the multilateral aid review, violence against women was not in the 2010 MAR. It will be in the next one.

Jo Moir: In terms of looking at violence in humanitarian settings, at the political level, yes, the call to action is really trying to galvanise agency leads across the humanitarian system-leaders from the recipient developing countries-to make sure that this is prioritised as part of first humanitarian response. Very practically, we have committed to assessing all our humanitarian programmes-new programmes and existing ones-for violence against women and girls risks and to taking action where appropriate. That is happening over the next financial year, so by March 2014 we will have assessed all our programmes.

Also very practically, we are rolling out new training and guidance to our humanitarian advisers, so that they are much better equipped to design the programmes and to hold our partners to account when we are making investments.

Q186 Fiona O'Donnell: I wonder whether I could ask you, Minister, about the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. Do you not think that you should have been leading on this, rather than William Hague?

Lynne Featherstone: I wish I was.

Q187 Fiona O'Donnell: That’s good to know. So what is the role of DIFD in taking it forward?

Lynne Featherstone: This is brilliant. This is a bit about male leadership. It is great that William Hague has taken this on and has seen it as a priority. He really is pushing-you had the G8 declaration and onward.

In terms of what DFID is doing, I will let the officials say that, but basically there are a couple of things coming out of the G8 conference that we are mandated to do. I will let Jo give you a description of those two areas.

More generally on PSVI, I am the violence against women champion, and PSVI has a narrow focus-rape as a weapon of war-and it is extended to children now, but it is the most phenomenal flagship in terms of the message around impunity. Male impunity in all its situations has been one of the bottom lines of why nothing changes, because there are no consequences to actions. Although this is flagshipping on something that can rivet the world’s attention because it is so high profile, it is a message right across the violence against women agenda, and I have been a really enthusiastic supporter.

Q188 Fiona O'Donnell: There has been criticism that it is a bit of a risk just talking about sexual violence in conflict zones-

Lynne Featherstone: But the marvellous thing is that it is unable to limit itself to that-with any conversation you have around PSVI. In terms of what it is trying to do, it is focused on getting the evidence-I think there were 13 commitments-and getting some prosecutions in the ultimate of extreme situations. In general-I took it to CSW myself in terms of the G8, a world platform-it is upping the ante beyond measure in terms of sexual violence and violence against women, and it is unable to confine itself to strict definitions in terms of what PSVI itself will do.

At the dinner I went to last night, as I say, with the Special Representative Zainab Bangura, it is all about the whole issue of violence against women, and particularly about the attitudinal stuff and how you change social norms. So although it is focused relatively narrowly, it is benefiting the whole field.

Q189 Fiona O'Donnell: You mentioned that it has been extended to include children. What evidence do you have that the expertise is there to support children through that process and afterwards, where children are victims or witnesses?

Lynne Featherstone: Well, I think that is one of the things that are being worked on at the moment. I will let Jo answer. I was with Save the Children last night, and it has just produced a report giving the children’s witness to their need. In terms of the expertise that is available, it is kind of in the FCO but I will hand over to Jo for any more detail on that.

Jo Moir: In terms of the communiqué and how that speaks to DFID’s work, there are two key things coming out. One thing is a commitment to ensuring that where we are working in conflict countries we are supporting national security and justice programmes to be able to look at issues of sexual violence and violence against women, and the second is around ensuring that violence against women and girls is included as part of first response in humanitarian programming.

In terms of children, in humanitarian programming, the protection of children is the responsibility of the agencies involved in the protection cluster. A cluster is one of the humanitarian system’s ways of co-ordinating agencies around a particular sectoral issue. We would expect that where there is programming on violence that would include looking at issues of how you protect children.

Q190 Pauline Latham: Minister, you are the lead Minister on FGM, and the plan is to end FGM in a generation. In this country, we have 20,000 people at risk of FGM. Some of the cutting happens in this country. Why is that? Why have we had no prosecutions and what are you doing about it?

Lynne Featherstone: The Home Office leads on FGM in this country. I was in the Home Office before I went to DFID. The Home Office is doing a whole range of things. They published guidelines for front-line workers, because part of the problem is recognising it. Those guidelines are for social workers, teachers and health workers. Keir Starmer has just published an action plan-

Q191 Pauline Latham: Keir Starmer?

Lynne Featherstone: The Director of Public Prosecutions. You are right that there have been no prosecutions. We would love there to be prosecutions but it has been very difficult. Cases have been brought but have not got to court. I think six or eight possible prosecutions are being looked at or re-examined at the moment. You would have to go to the Home Office for the detail on that. I think there have been some cultural eggshells in this country that people have been tiptoeing over.

This has come from me at DFID. However, part of the £35 million is about the diaspora here, because they are intrinsically linked. We know that girls get taken every summer back to their mother countries-let alone the ones who are cut here. I think you will have seen, partly because of the media and human interest, that the ball is now rolling. I am about to conduct meetings. As champion in the area of violence against women, I straddle DFID, and as VAWG champion on this one, part of my responsibility is policy coherence across Whitehall. I will be undertaking meetings with Health, Education and the Home Office, to see how we can use the galvanising effect that is already beginning to be seen in this country to help us deal with our diaspora FGM issue.

Q192 Fiona O'Donnell: I am sure, Minister, that we would all welcome the fact that for two weeks the TV programme "Casualty" decided to cover it as a story. I was disappointed that there was no reference to the police or justice issues. It seemed to think it was something you quietly intervened in and stopped. At least it was mainstream.

Lynne Featherstone: It is a start and it gets to a lot of people that we can’t reach as politicians.

Q193 Fiona O'Donnell: Absolutely. You have spoken about the £35 million programme to tackle FGM and said that what works in one area might not in another. You have focused on a social norms approach used in Senegal. Given that there is no evidence base supporting different approaches, why have you gone with the social norms model?

Lynne Featherstone: No, we haven’t gone with anything yet. I just said that is what I saw. To me, it made extremely good sense, when you are talking about fundamental change. It is interesting. FGM is violence against women; it is child abuse. How do you get people to change? Do you go in and say, "You are the most dreadful people on earth. You have been doing this for 2,000 years. It is really wrong. You have got to stop"? Will that be effective? Or do you work with the community in understanding and providing information so that change comes from within?

Q194 Fiona O'Donnell: So you are not adopting a social norms approach?

Lynne Featherstone: No; there is not adoption. I am simply saying that I was impressed by that approach because it made sense, but it is a very long-term approach. That is what the research part of the £35 million fund is to do; it is to create a global evidence base of what works and what does not work. I am not fixed about it. I might think something is really good, but if the evidence shows that it is the worst possible way to approach the matter, then I would accept the evidence base.

Q195 Fiona O'Donnell: It is interesting that the Department has focused on the one intervention that is political and institutional. Every example you have given us today of where you have seen change has been at a community level. In terms of FGM, you spoke about a community where they were standing up and saying, "No more in our community." One of the consequences is that that can then lead to early marriage because parents become concerned that if their daughter has not been cut she is more likely to lose her virginity outside of marriage. How are you joining up the two streams of work?

Lynne Featherstone: I think that that is part of being a community. The way it works, from what I have seen in Senegal-I do not want to harp too much on one example-is that they are interlinked communities. Communities marry in the next village and the next village. They are all in the same situation, so no one child is vulnerable. One of the big issues in terms of change, and one of the problems that we have here, is that you cannot do it one girl at a time. When whole communities do it, the risk is not so much there. Within that programme, they work on early marriage as well, so it is not just one thing. From what I saw, it is not 100% successful, but it is probably 70% or 80% successful, which is a long way on from where we have been before.

Q196 Fiona Bruce: You talked about being a Ministerial Champion and obviously that involves a huge amount of cross-Whitehall co-ordination. You talked about the Health Department and the Home Office. Baroness Warsi, who gave evidence before you did today, talked about the MOD, the FCO and the Attorney-General’s Office. Do you feel that you have sufficient access authority and resources to drive forward this cross-departmental strategy, and how are you doing it in addition to the meetings that you have referred to that you are going to hold?

Lynne Featherstone: I suppose the official mechanism is the inter-ministerial group on violence against women. A Minister from every Department comes to those inter-ministerial groups and those sorts of issues can be raised there and then; each Department has the responsibility to take it up and drive it through. When I was in the Home Office, we published the violence against women strategy. I think it had 88 actions and then there were 14 more. That includes the international action, so there is an action plan that guides some of these issues. It is part of that whole overarching plan on violence against women, and I lobby very hard.

Q197 Fiona Bruce: Do you think you need more resources?

Lynne Featherstone: No, actually since I have been placed at DFID, it has been really good. What I will be looking to do-we are working on it now-is how I can pursue certain things. You know I talked about the messages that we had crafted. One of the challenges there is getting a grip of the Ministers’ timetables and travel arrangements in time. There are core scripts. It is an organisational thing. We have to work through country desks and we could do with a bit more oomph.

Q198 Fiona Bruce: More authority?

Lynne Featherstone: Well, I would just like it to be more successful. It is beginning to be. You know when you start something new, it takes a while to get it going. We have the messages and the system; we now need a checking process, because unless you read every read-out from every meeting, how do you know what was actually raised? Part of it is about the fact that senior Ministers raise these issues at the highest level, Government to Government, so that could do with a bit more oomph.

Q199 Fiona Bruce: So are your officials going to try to put that in place?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, I think one of my officials is working on that particular programme.

Q200 Fiona Bruce: Do you think that you should sit on the National Security Council in addition to the DFID Secretary of State, given that your mandate includes violence against women and girls in crisis and conflict settings?

Lynne Featherstone: I am sure the Secretary of State is able to take that role on the National Security Council, but I would love to sit on it.

Q201 Jeremy Lefroy: Good morning, Minister. Sir John Holmes, representing the International Rescue Committee, told us: "If there was one single thing that DFID should do...it is to insist, when they are dealing with UN agencies, NGOs and so on in their funding decisions, that they will not fund unless" violence against women and girls "is a priority in their programmes". I would appreciate your comments on that.

Lynne Featherstone: I think he is a very clever man. He should be listened to.

Q202 Jeremy Lefroy: So is that something that you think DFID will do, given that you make the decisions?

Lynne Featherstone: That is the direction of travel. I appreciate I have been there five months now, but I have not-it is about getting all of these things in motion and moving. I am not sure that it would be conditional in the way that that was said, but in terms of its priority across all the agencies, it is rising and has to go further.

Q203 Jeremy Lefroy: Coming back to something that Pauline Latham talked about earlier, we as a Committee have long felt that the UN does not take this matter seriously enough. Three of us met a senior official from UN Women recently and she expressed the same view. I had a case from my own constituency. It seems the UN does not treat women working within its own organisation with sufficient respect sometimes, which greatly concerns me, and I have raised that to a higher level. Can you comment specifically on that?

In the case of the DRC, we were told by the representative of UN Women that the renewed mandate was a stronger one that would give UN peacekeeping forces more ability to tackle the perpetrators of violence against women. Do you feel that that has made a change already? There are two issues.

Lynne Featherstone: I wouldn’t be able to verify that change. I have no personal experience. I am not aware that it has effected change yet, but if that is the case, I would hope that it does make a difference. These things are very important. It is one of the things I was talking about on leadership. It signals and delivers a great change. I turn to Jo Moir on the UN.

On the particular issue about how the UN treats its own women, it is not something that has come across my desk, to be honest. I met the UN representative in South Sudan, who was a woman. She was very clued-up and able and certainly gave no impression to me that there was anything like that. However, I will look into it now that you have raised it. I don’t know if Jo wants to add to it. It is not something I am familiar with.

Jo Moir: In terms of the position of women within the UN, in my experience it depends very much on the culture of the individual agency or the part of the secretariat and what the leadership is like, and it varies from year to year and from agency to agency.

Q204 Jeremy Lefroy: But should that be the case? Should it depend on the culture of an agency?

Jo Moir: No, it shouldn’t.

Q205 Jeremy Lefroy: Is that something that we are taking up as part of our MAR?

Lynne Featherstone: I have just said I will look at it. It has not come across my horizon. I am quite alarmed to hear you say that. I will look at it.

Jo Moir: In terms of the priority that the UN attaches to looking at violence against women and girls and its programming, it is fair to say that the humanitarian agencies have strong policies. They are not always implemented. It is not always treated as a priority as a part of first response. As I said before, that is something we want to look at. We are looking across all our programmes to make sure that it is part of it.

In terms of the development agencies, as the Minister said, violence was not something that was looked at in the 2010 MAR. It is a factor that we want to look at in the 2015 MAR, when we come to that. In the meantime, I think that we have got to do a bit of homework, and go out and have meetings with UN partners.

UN Women is now a couple of years into its establishment. It has had some success on the ground-particularly in terms of advocacy, it is well placed in the UN system to do that-but it has also faced difficulties in terms of demonstrating results, so that is where we would like to work with it further to make sure that it can have traction with its UN partners.

Q206 Jeremy Lefroy: I would also like to follow up something that Pauline Latham referred to earlier. I very much welcome the emphasis on practical programmes that either stand alone or are in conjunction with other programmes, but it seems to me from personal experience that some things can be solved without huge amounts of money-compared with the amounts of money available-and just with will. I am particularly thinking of water and the drilling of wells. Although that is not easy in many countries; it is certainly not incredibly difficult. I have seen programmes where, with a relatively small amount of money, large numbers of wells have been drilled and huge differences have been made to communities, particularly to women and girls and particularly to girls’ education.

I think that we sometimes miss the blindingly obvious. In its water and sanitation programme-perhaps under your leadership, Minister-DFID might say, "Look, for a cost of $5,000 or $10,000 a well," which is often what the cost is, even in fairly remote communities, "we can make a huge difference to large numbers of people by just concentrating on something like that, together with the provision of sanitation facilities." I just wonder whether we sometimes make things a little too complicated, and whether we should actually say, "This is what we can do. If you, as a country, are determined to make sure that every single community has access, within a short distance, to basic water and sanitation, we will support you in that," rather than trying to put it into some more complex programme.

Lynne Featherstone: Well, I would agree with you that water really is one of the simpler things-if that is what you are saying-that you can do quite easily. We have doubled our target for our WASH programmes to £60 million, and we are scaling up to deliver right now, so I think that in a way we are already doing what you are asking.

Q207 Jeremy Lefroy: Well, no. That is very good to hear, but I am just thinking that, given that violence against women and girls and women’s rights are so important to the UK and this Government, you can actually say, "Look, even this is not enough. We need to do more on this, because it is such a fundamental part of the issue."

Lynne Featherstone: Well, yes, but these things are not quite as easy as described. You have to have the capacity, and it is no use putting in a water facility if it cannot be maintained. It has to be sustainable, which means a whole range of other things. We have to make sure that where we do invest money, it is for the long term in terms of WASH.

The other thing is that, while it is very effective in terms of women obviously not having to go out, the level of need around violence against women is so huge across so many places-there are barely any refuges; there is barely any justice-that we need to look at it more globally. Although I understand that you are saying that that is a quick win, it would solve one of the issues, but it would not solve some of the more fundamental issues-around the social norm stuff, for a start.

Q208 Fiona O'Donnell: There is no doubting your passion and commitment on the issue of violence against women and girls, and that of the Secretary of State and of the Foreign Secretary, but in order for that to live beyond the lives and careers of existing Ministers and to ensure that it is embedded in the FCO, the MOD and DFID, do you agree that all three Departments need to recruit and train more staff on these issues, so that it is truly embedded?

Lynne Featherstone: There are a lot of competing priorities. If it was just up to me to say, then yes, of course, but it is perhaps even more important to get the world to focus on it. As Ministers, we do not have an opinion on the MDGs because of the Prime Minister being on the High-Level Panel, but there will come after the report of the panel is published the opportunity for contributions in terms of consultation in the broader sense. I am hopeful that this type of issue will gain high visibility in whatever the resulting framework or goals are. A world focus at something like that level might make the step change greater than any one country, any one person or any one organisation could deliver.

Q209 Chair: I suppose, Minister, that we obviously should not overplay our hand, but the fact that the UK will deliver 0.7% makes us the second largest aid donor globally and gives us quite a high degree of authority.

Lynne Featherstone: It does.

Q210 Chair: There are two things. One is in relation to the United Nations. We all know it is a somewhat dysfunctional, or varifunctional, organisation. Some things it does well and some things it does badly, and the politics makes it very untidy to say the least, but presumably, as a major contributor we can perhaps have some influence over improving it. Sir John Holmes takes a very radical step. Nevertheless, would you agree that the UK has a right to expect some degree of response when we are engaging with the UN, when we say, "We are major players, major contributors and major partners of the UN and there are some things that really just have to improve or we cannot go on funding the bits that don’t work"?

Lynne Featherstone: I think we are looking at how we can ensure that our admirable and substantive contribution in terms of development in the world can have more influence and more payback for the money that we give to various organisations-not just the UN-in making sure that our voice is listened to.

Q211 Chair: The Secretary of State says in terms of the post-2015 framework that she wants a stand-alone goal on gender equality. The Prime Minister has talked about an overarching abolition of absolute poverty by 2030, but would you have something that is about gender equality or the rights of women, not subservient to it but alongside it? Those are the two key issues.

Lynne Featherstone: Like climate change, I think that women needs to be embedded across all the goals. If I am talking in my personal capacity, as I understand the Secretary of State was when she spoke about having a stand-alone goal and a mainstreamed goal on gender equality-and I agree with her-I would perhaps go more to the violence against women part of that, because it is an issue for both the developed and the developing world.

It is a very important part, perhaps, of the millennium development goals that it is not just developed countries-the voice of the poor and all that. Even more than that, the thing that has shocked me most, as I have held this role, is that this is an epidemic and a massive issue in every single country in this world. There is not one place where violence against women is not a serious issue, including the United Kingdom, so I would welcome a focus on that.

In fact, having discussed this with others, I think that sometimes it is almost too difficult for countries. It is quite simple, in a way, to deliver water and sanitation, and who is going to argue against educating girls in school, but getting rid of something that is based on a social norm, such as violence against women and sexual violence, is something that many countries, right across the developed and developing world, wrestle with, and they perhaps feel that if it were to be so prominent it would be very difficult to achieve. My view is that if you don’t make it that important, people will not strive to achieve it.

Q212 Chair: May I just clarify the point? You implied that the Secretary of State was speaking in a personal capacity.

Lynne Featherstone: My understanding-

Q213 Chair: My point is: is there a DFID agenda to try to promote this post-2015?

Lynne Featherstone: There is not a Government position at the moment, at all.

Q214 Chair: Is DFID arguing for a Government position?

Lynne Featherstone: Oh, always. You argue from where you stand.

Q215 Chair: Is there any resistance to it, or is it just that there isn’t a position?

Lynne Featherstone: There just isn’t a position. Until the High-Level Panel reports and the consultation, there is no Government position.

Q216 Chair: So the process is that because the Prime Minister is co-chair, the panel gets its work done and whatever happens is in the second part after that. At some point or another there will be a-

Lynne Featherstone: I am not saying that we haven’t put our two penn’orth in wherever the opportunity has arisen-you have given me the opportunity today to so do-and I am sure that the Secretary of State is doing the same, but there isn’t an official position.

Q217 Chair: We will also publish a report, which will be timely, so it is something for the Committee to consider in that context.

Lynne Featherstone: Excellent.

Chair: Thank you very much, Minister, for appearing in front of us again. I hope you will see from the questions that this is an issue that the Committee also recognises as absolutely central to development, and the fact that we have a champion in you and the fact that the Government are raising the issue up the agenda is something that the Committee welcomes. The Committee’s Report hopes to be part of the process of promoting it.

Lynne Featherstone: I would like to thank the Committee for its interest. All of this is helpful in pushing forward this agenda with a focus that we have not seen before. It is an opportunity to drive this one through.