Ann McKechin MP

Labour Member of Parliament for Glasgow North

International Development: Ending gender subjugation and promoting female representation

15 November 2007

As an international donor we need to support work that challenges the status quo, creates a space for women’s voices to be heard and supports a strong, consistent call for their rights to be upheld. Ann has again brought the Government's attention to the urgent need to induce and work for the just imperative of an equal voice for women in the developing countries and the practical solutions greater social justice - greater gender equality and representation - presents in crisis zones or 'fragile states' where millions of citizens have no say in their communities or their country due to their gender.

Ann McKechin (Glasgow, North) (Lab): I commend the Department for International Development for its work. As a Member of the Select Committee, and having seen its work first-hand on a number of occasions, I feel that we should be proud of the palpable dedication of many of its staff, particularly abroad. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) for his International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006, because it helps us to focus our attention on our work on international development, and to hold our Government to account for what they do. That is a strong message to send, not only to people in the UK, but to our partners.

As a number of speakers have pointed out, and as the Select Committee stressed in its report, we need to concentrate more on the outcomes of our interventions, and not simply on the inputs. Since the Gleneagles summit in 2005, a false argument has sometimes been put forward on quantity of aid versus its quality. For the world’s poorest it is not an either/or debate: we need both. As the Prime Minister rightly pointed out in his speech to the United Nations on 31 July regarding the millennium development goal targets, the pace of change is

“too slow; our direction too uncertain; our vision at risk.”

I shall focus on a few areas where the pace and direction of our interventions, as a bilateral donor and as part of the wider international donor community, needs to change. The first area is gender. Time and again the Select Committee has returned to the topic in its various reports as a matter of concern, and I am happy to say that that view is shared by all my colleagues on the Committee, all of whom, by coincidence, are male. The reason for concern is blindingly obvious. Over 60 per cent. of those in absolute poverty are women, and many of them are young girls, but too often gender in development is treated as an added-on issue, rather than core to the way in which we tackle poverty. In aspects of development such as security or private sector development, the issue of gender is rarely mentioned and when it is, there is a tendency to tack it on at the end or just to say that it is very difficult.

We need to view gender in the context of basic human rights, rather than merely as an awkward problem. Girls in particular face a raw deal. They face double discrimination due to their gender and their age, and as a result in many societies they remain at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. They face discrimination even before they are born. It is estimated that 100 million girls and women are missing because of the growing practice of female foeticide in some parts of the world. Girls are less likely to be educated, are more likely to suffer malnutrition, and are more at risk of gender-based violence and forced marriages at an early age.

We need to take a whole-of-life perspective if we are to get to grips with the scale of these problems. DFID has rightly focused attention on schooling and health care, but discrimination takes many forms. Lack of formal birth registration processes entrenches girls’ invisibility. Local and national traditions of lower minimum ages of marriage for girls and the use of child domestic workers effectively lock out their voice from the wider community. Lack of equal rights of inheritance and the creation of status offences discriminate against girls in legal systems and entrench their low economic status.

As an international donor we need to support work that challenges the status quo, creates a space for women’s voices to be heard and supports a strong, consistent call for their rights to be upheld. The need for this is never greater than in so-called fragile states. I am aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) hopes to speak later on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the UK is the largest bilateral donor, but I, too, want to add my voice to the call for us to redouble our efforts in that region.

We can justly claim that in the DRC rape and sexual slavery have reached epidemic proportions. Members may have read reports in The Guardian this Monday about the increase in violence in the eastern DRC in recent months and the shocking statistics in relation to women who live there. Médecins sans Frontières was reported as stating that over 75 per cent. of the rape cases that it dealt with worldwide emanated from this region. We can justly claim that in the DRC rape and sexual slavery have reached epidemic proportions. It is the main form of attack. The many, many stories of absolute barbarity are truly shocking. It is perpetrated by all the various military groups in the region and also by civilians, as society has effectively broken down in many areas after years of the most intense conflict witnessed on this planet. It is believed that 4 million people have been killed since 1998. More than any other conflict, this has become a war against women, yet where is their voice in the current discussions about how we achieve peace?

I recently received correspondence from the platform of Congolese women in the UK, outlining their concerns at the current crisis and calling on the Government, together with members of the international community, to implement a national action plan based on Security Council resolution 1325, seek to restore security and effective demilitarisation, and start to address the causes of the conflict to ensure that a dangerous vacuum does not emerge again. Most importantly, we need to end the total impunity that exists for serious violations of national and international humanitarian law. I hope that the voices of Congolese women will be raised by our Government consistently, and I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister would address these points in his closing remarks today.

The issue of security was also uppermost in our discussions when the Committee visited Afghanistan two weeks ago. Again, although there is a recognition that Security Council resolution 1325 is important, there appears to be little practical implementation. The Ministry of Women remains weak and largely ineffective.

It is of deep concern to me that in respect of the women’s prisons of Afghanistan, we found countless references to women being imprisoned because they did not want to marry the person chosen by their family, because they ran away from home or because they had sex outside marriage. That is an issue that we will address further in next year’s report, but I flag it up today as another example of the challenges that DFID needs to face—and face urgently.

As we work in fragile states, we often find a dearth of functioning civic society for ordinary working women. When we speak about the need to bolster governance, we also need to see how women’s voices can be heard not only at parliamentary level, but at grass-roots level. We need to bolster capacity and representation for women in local councils and allow the space for women’s organisations to grow and develop.

We need research and policy development to see how to manufacture renewable technology in the regions themselves at sufficiently low cost to be affordable. The second issue that I want to raise today is that of environment. It has been the subject of a great deal of debate, and the Government’s commitment to the World Bank fund and to the area of research is welcome. Some people airily declare that it is perfectly feasible to plant solar panels and wind turbines in health clinics and schools throughout remote rural communities as a means of combating the problem. However, we need research and policy development to see how to manufacture renewable technology in the regions themselves at sufficiently low cost to be affordable and to have the reliability and easy maintenance required to meet the environments in which they will be located. That is no easy task and, by definition, it means developing a whole range of skills that could be picked up by large numbers of people. I sometimes think that that is more of a challenge than the inventions themselves. We also need to help low-income countries to retain their low-carbon status, while at the same time being able to invest in areas that will achieve greater economic growth. The capacity for such long-term strategic planning is currently low and I believe that the UK and other major donors can contribute significantly to this field.

There have been concerns that the funding required for adaptation over the next decade will swamp the existing Overseas Development Administration commitments, so we need to consider now the innovative solutions required to bring in this extra finance. In his report, Sir Nicholas Stern estimated that we need an extra 10 per cent. on top of existing estimates for aid requirement. The UK has been a world leader in innovative funding through the international finance facility and UNITAID.

May I take this opportunity to recommend that Ministers look at the report, launched last week, of the all-party group on debt, aid and trade, of which I am the Chair? The report looked into the possibility of having a sterling stamp duty on all sterling foreign exchange transactions. At a rate of only 0.005 per cent. it would generate £2.4 billion a year. I would like the Government to consider that report and undertake research into whether it could be used as part of a new funding mechanism. As I said, it is not just the quality of aid that is important; we also need more on quantity as well.

From Hansard - Parliament's record

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