Impact of Conflict on Women and Girls

We can all do our part. Like others present, I joined many Members of Parliament in signing a letter, organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), to the England and Wales Cricket Board, asking it to speak out and boycott the match against Afghanistan—because all action matters.

I turn now to Sudan, where an estimated 6.9 million people are currently at risk of gender-based violence; where 75% of girls are not in school; where there is evidence of mass and systemic rape; and where women are reportedly committing suicide out of fear of that rape. Evidence shows that women and girls from ethnic minority groups are being deliberately targeted. The accounts are horrific. I read one from a 35-year-old Nuba woman who described how six Rapid Support Forces fighters stormed into her family compound. She said:

“My husband and my son tried to defend me, so one of the RSF fighters shot and killed them. Then they kept raping me, all six of them”.

Sudan has been described as the world’s forgotten conflict. As the UK is the penholder on Sudan in the United Nations, will the Minister set out what we can do now to support women in Sudan and change the situation so that it is no longer the world’s forgotten conflict? Does she agree that the United Nations and the African Union should urgently deploy a mission to protect civilians in Sudan that is mandated and resourced to address sexual violence? Does she think UN member states should bolster support for the UN fact-finding mission, as the Secretary-General has urged, to help to pave the way forward towards meaningful accountability?

Let me turn to Gaza; I know that more Members will speak about the situation in the middle east. As I said in the Chamber recently, there are 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza right now who cannot access the care that they need. Imagine giving birth in the hell that is Gaza right now. If the ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East goes ahead at the end of this month, that will have a devastating impact on everybody, including women and girls, so I hope the Minister will update us on what we are doing to push harder on that front.

Many people may ask why we in the UK should care about this. Why should we care about what is happening to women in other parts of the world? Well, it is the right thing to do, as was set out by the previous Government in their national action plan on women, peace and security. It is also the smart thing to do, because empowered and engaged women mean more secure and prosperous societies. When women’s rights are rolled back anywhere, they are rolled back everywhere.

Finally, women’s participation is not “a nice to have” in any area that we are talking about, and certainly not when it comes to peace processes. Women’s participation is fundamental for effective peacebuilding, but women are still not adequately involved in such processes. Yet we know that when women participate in peace processes, it works. Their participation increases the probability of an agreement lasting more than 15 years by 35%. We have seen women play a really important role in many peace processes, from Libya to Libera to Colombia.

The UK must work actively to promote the fundamentals of the women, peace and security agenda: prevention, participation, protection, and relief and recovery. Women are not victims and women must not be voiceless. The progress that has been made on this agenda would not have happened without the courage and perseverance of women. We must be hopeful for change; in the words of Plan International’s report, still we dream. Indeed, a survey by Women for Women International showed that, across 14 countries, 81% of women are hopeful that there will be change, and that their circumstances will improve in the next five years. But that will not happen without the international community acting.

As this debate progresses, I am sure that we all have in our minds different women and girls who are impacted by conflict, such the Yazidi women; the girls abducted by Boko Haram; the Israeli women slaughtered and raped on 7 October; the women and girls living in hell in Gaza right now, where nowhere and nobody is safe; the women of Ukraine; the women of Iran; and the women of Syria who are hopeful for a better tomorrow. Let us resolve to do what we can as parliamentarians to tackle the scourge of violence against women and girls, wherever it is found and in whatever form it takes.

As well as that,

“because of the collapsing healthcare system, as a pregnant woman, you barely have the luxury of delivering your baby in a hospital.”

If pregnant women are “lucky enough” to, they cannot stay and

“many women have had c-sections without anaesthesia because it had run out.”

That is one of many “continuous struggles”, with

“hospitals lacking anaesthesia, painkillers and other basic medications and medical supplies.”

Israeli authorities have denied entry to many of those critical supplies, including anaesthesia supplies, oxygen cylinders, ventilators and other medicines. According to UNRWA, of the total—extremely limited—humanitarian supplies that have entered Gaza since October 2023, just 2% were medical supplies. On 4 November last year, the United Nations Population Fund announced that attacks on hospitals have forced the only functioning neonatal intensive care unit in northern Gaza to close. The denial of access to newborn and maternal healthcare and the removal of the conditions necessary to give birth safely represent a grave threat to the survival of pregnant women, and Palestinians more widely, in Gaza.

Let me also touch on the impact of the conflict in Sudan—mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North—which is having similarly grave consequences for women and girls. For example, reports of gender-based violence in Sudan have drastically surged, encompassing alarming incidents such as kidnapping, forced marriage, intimate partner violence, conflict-related sexual violence and child marriage. The UN has witnessed a staggering 288% increase in the number of survivors seeking case-management services for gender-based violence, and at least 6.7 million people in Sudan are at risk of gender-based violence. There are also cases of sexual exploitation driven by food insecurity and water scarcity, and there is severely limited access to essential post-rape care and support services for survivors, who are in desperate need of medical, psychological and mental health support.

Despite the horrific impacts of conflict on women that we have heard about, often it is women in conflict zones who lead the response. Women are often the first responders. In Gaza, women make up 70% of frontline healthcare workers and 60% of caregivers. We know that that can lead to improved healthcare outcomes. For example, in Niger and Burkina Faso local organisations are nearly twice as likely as international organisations to report increased GBV caseloads, which suggests that women are more likely to report violence to those local women’s organisations. Women are also some of the chief advocates. For example, in Niger, when groups of women who were IDPs—internally displaced people—were excluded from receiving humanitarian aid, they lobbied district authorities to officially recognise their community, and in doing so secured services for people with disabilities and cash assistance for their community.

When I spent time with Syrian refugees in Jordan in my previous role at IRC, I met incredible Syrian refugee women who were there without partners, or had lost their partners in the war, and who had set up their own businesses on top of caring for their families; and not only doing that but pushing donors to change their approach to better support women refugees to be entrepreneurial and to earn a living alongside looking after their families. Women, showing such great leadership, are proving absolutely critical to building lasting peace in places where conflict is being brought to an end.

There is strong evidence to demonstrate that the involvement of women and girls in peacebuilding is key to achieving successful outcomes. Research shows that where women lead and participate in conflict prevention, response, recovery and peacebuilding, societies are more stable and peace is more durable. Women’s participation in peace negotiations results in peace agreements being 35% more likely to last at least 15 years, while the participation of civil society, including women’s organisations, in peace processes makes them 64% less likely to fail. Yet despite the huge volume of evidence showing that women are best placed to understand and meet the needs of their communities before, during and after conflicts, too often their voices are still ignored.

I will highlight two key solutions. I have been pleased to hear the Minister speak passionately about her commitment to gender equality and I know that she has hit the ground running to make that commitment and ambition a reality. I also welcome the Prime Minister’s appointment of Lord Collins as the special representative on preventing sexual violence in conflict. I pay tribute to the many brilliant NGOs that are delivering important support for women in conflict and championing the rights of those women, including with funding from our Government. They are not only international NGOs such as IRC, Co-operative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Plan and Save the Children but, most importantly, women-led local groups like the International Committee for the Development of Peoples in Somalia and Right To Play in Pakistan and elsewhere. They are doing fantastic work, but there are two particular ways in which we can do more.

The first is funding. Of course, we must recognise that all Government budgets are limited, and that there are many competing priorities for those budgets, including for the global humanitarian and development budgets—that is just the reality that we are living in—but we can get our limited budgets working harder. We can expand the amount of multi-year funding available to organisations that support women and girls in conflict—that makes a real difference to their ability to plan and deliver their work effectively. We can ensure that funding is flexible to adapt to the evolving needs of women and girls at different stages of conflict and crisis. We can introduce measurable targets to increase the amount and quality of funding that goes to women-led organisations within a particular humanitarian budget. We can use our influence within the UN to reform the multilateral funding mechanisms that are absolutely crucial in some contexts where funding is otherwise very difficult to get in—such as the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ country-based pooled funds. That would make it easier for women-led organisations to apply and succeed in receiving funding.

The second point I want to touch on is how we think about and categorise the issue of women and conflict in the first place. We must start thinking about women in conflict as central, not just to our development work but to our foreign policy. We have such a great track record and reputation to build on, and real, live opportunities to make progress, for example, through our work through as penholder on women, peace and security at the UN Security Council.

But it means much more if we encourage countries to adopt and adhere to international human rights treaties that cover the rights of women in conflict; it means increasing pressure on perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict and external parties that back those perpetrators through sanctions, where appropriate. It means using the UK’s voice at the UN Security Council to continue shining a light on this issue and calling for accountability. It means fully supporting UN fact-finding missions so that evidence is compiled and perpetrators are deterred through monitoring. Another example is to facilitate meaningful participation of diverse groups of survivor-led organisations and women’s rights organisations in conflict prevention and peacebuilding processes.

I look forward to our Government’s continued progress on this important matter. I believe those two things—reforming the way we think about funding for women in conflict, and elevating women in conflict—are not just a development priority but a diplomatic one, and are the right places to start.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on freedom of religion or belief, I particularly look at how conflict impacts women of different faiths. In the rest of my short speech today I will focus on that issue, and most importantly on how it impacts their lives daily, because it does—with a vengeance.

Such conflict, which includes the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, spans regions and affects women in particular. Some of the horrors of 7 October come to mind. Last year at Easter, I visited Israel, including some camps where the people were brutalised and the women sexually abused. Some women were burned; their bodies were burnt to a cinder. I find such things incompatible with life; the life that I lead is certainly very different from the lives of the people who carry out such crimes.

Women almost always bear a disproportionate burden of the suffering in conflicts, as they often traverse the dangerous terrains of conflict zones to support their families. A critical perspective must not be overlooked when addressing the issue of unexploded ordnance, which has been left, for example, in the aftermath of war. The alarming reports of increased sexual exploitation and trafficking of Ukrainian refugee women, particularly young and vulnerable women, highlight the critical need for immediate targeted action.

When I was in Israel, I met some people involved in groups that addressed or tried to address the issue of sexual violence and attacks on women and children. I was made aware by some people in the delegation—they were similar to me, but from a different country—that children as young as eight and women as old as 80 had been sexually abused by some Russian soldiers. Not every Russian is a bad Russian, but the ones who carried out those actions need to be held accountable for their brutality, their violence and their depravity against young girls of eight years old—my goodness me—and 80-year-old pensioners. Of course, as a Christian I know that a day of judgment will come, and that those who carried out such actions will all be held accountable, but I would like to see their day of judgment come quicker, and in this world; that is what would happen if I had my way.

I remember visiting a refugee camp in Poland a couple of years ago. Along with some other members of the delegation, I noticed these guys—I would probably call them predatory males. Remember that the people who were in that camp were there just a matter of months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. These guys were pushing trolleys around, supposedly collecting laundry and so on, but we noticed—not that we are smarter than anybody else; I am not smarter than anybody else, but I do take note of things that happen around me—that some of those men were not actually doing anything. They were just watching to see what the women and girls were doing. It was obvious to me that they were predatory. When we left the camp, we made sure that we told the police people in charge. Whatever those men were doing there, it certainly did not look like they were there to help anybody.

With reports from Germany indicating that only 14% of female refugees are employed, the risk of female refugees’ falling prey to human traffickers has grown, and that situation has been exacerbated by a lack of adequate accommodation and economic support. A busy mind and a busy person cannot always be distracted by things that happen around them, so it is important to focus on that as well. In conflict zones worldwide, the experiences of women and girls are shaped by a convergence of vulnerabilities, gender, faith and socioeconomic status. Tragically, these intersecting identities often make women and girls the first and most enduring victims of violence, coercion and systematic discrimination.

One of the most harrowing manifestations of freedom of religion or belief violations in conflict settings is the targeted abduction, forced marriage and conversion of women and girls from religious minority communities. In her introduction to this debate, the hon. Member for Norwich North mentioned Pakistan. I have been to Pakistan twice, primarily regarding the issue of freedom of religion or belief. I would love to say that the second time I went, two years after the first time, things had changed; but I did not see any change. If anything, I saw that the situation had got worse.

I am reminded of the case of a 13-year-old girl, which is two years younger than my eldest grandchild. Her name was Kavita Oad, a Hindu girl who was abducted and forcibly married. Her family, who were already financially marginalised, faced threats of violence and theft when they sought justice for their 13-year-old, in a country that seems to think it is okay to marry off a young Hindu, Christian or Sikh girl of 12, 13 or 14 to a predatory male who should never have any say on the issue.

Unfortunately that is not an isolated case, but part of a systematic campaign to erase the religious identity of minority communities. Courts often fail to protect those girls, framing their exploitation as consensual marriages—no, they are not. Their mums and dads do not want them to be married, but when they go to the police, the police either fail or are unwilling to act, and the courts of the land do not protect them. I know that the Minister knows those things—I am not saying anything she does not know—but they disturb me greatly, and we need some idea of what those countries are doing to stop them happening.

In conflict zones, sexual violence is wielded as a weapon to intimidate and destabilise entire communities. Women and girls are targeted not only because of their gender but because of their faith. For example, in Nigeria and Sudan, Christian girls and girls from ethnic religious minorities find themselves suppressed physically, in terms of their human rights, and through their faith—something that is incredibly difficult to comprehend.

Such acts of violence aim to extinguish the cultural and religious identity of persecuted groups. I visited Nigeria about two years ago and had the chance to speak to some of the displaced people. They were not just Christians; they were also Muslims, who also find themselves suppressed because of their religious beliefs. Again, that disturbs me greatly. I know the Minister knows these things, and I would be pleased if she were to give us some feedback on this issue. Women and girls often find themselves doubly marginalised in refugee camps or in settlements of internally displaced people, such as those we visited in Nigeria.

The hon. Member for Norwich North referred to Sudan, and the stories from there are impossible to finish. The other day I read about a mum who was asleep in the house, and three soldiers from a Sudanese terrorist group, or whoever they were, broke in and abused a young girl. The family all slept in another part of the house and did not even know about it until the next morning, when they found that their wee young girl of 13 or 14 had been abused by soldiers that night.

If Members have not read the stories from Sudan, they need to—they are unbelievable. What has happened in that country is one of the worst genocides that I have heard tell of across the world. Not only are people uprooted from their homes, but they face discrimination based on their faith, compounding their vulnerability. The trauma of forced conversions, violence and displacement inflicts profound psychosocial harm on people, coupled with restricted access to education—the hon. Lady also referred to that—and economic opportunities. People need to have something to do. They need opportunity, because those experiences perpetuate cycles of poverty and disenfranchisement among minority groups.

There are pluses in this depressing and negative story, however, so I will highlight three things and perhaps the Minister could give me some feedback. The UK Government have initiated a preventing sexual violence in combat initiative, as they have done in many parts of the world, including Ethiopia, Iraq, Ukraine and Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. They need to be commended for that. We sit here and ask the Government to do things, so we should give them credit when things are done right and thank them for that.

We also need to ask how we can increase that and help more as the violence and sexual violence increase. May I say very gently that, as a Government, we need to match that with funding? Again, these are constructive comments for the Minister—they are not meant to be critical; that is not how I do things—but can the Government increase the aid available to specifically target women and children?

That last thing that I, and I think all of us, would love to see is for those who have carried out the horrible, depraved physical and sexual abuse of women and children to be held accountable. There are stories to tell—those women and those girls will tell their stories—and those who did it need to be accountable, so let us have that day of reckoning. As a Christian, I know that there will be a day of reckoning in the last days of this world, but in this case I would like to see a day of reckoning coming sooner.

To conclude, achieving gender equality and safeguarding FORB are not merely aspirational goals; they are moral imperatives. Let us commit to amplifying the voices of women and girls who have suffered in silence for far too long. I urge the Minister to work in conjunction with her counterparts to ensure that these issues are addressed and that more is done to protect women facing hardship. My job, and the job of us all here, is to be a voice for those who have no voice, and today, that is what we are doing.

When it comes to peacebuilding—hopefully we will move to peacebuilding efforts eventually in some of these conflicts—women are often excluded from the efforts and discussions, which leads to further entrenched disenfranchisement. Women are often the people who hold together communities, and often have a deeper understanding of the whole-community needs in humanitarian emergencies in particular. As we know, in many traditions they still hold the major caring responsibilities and are very much integrated into their communities, but they are not well resourced or respected as international humanitarian actors. Our Government’s commitment to take forward resolutions to these conflicts is very welcome, and it is what we would expect, but I hope the Minister can give us some sense of how women will be involved in that work as we go forward.

Women being affected by conflict is not a new phenomenon—it has probably been with us for the whole history of humankind—but now we know how wrong and unacceptable it is. Because of social media, television and all the other media channels that we have, we know for ourselves exactly what is going on. We cannot turn a blind eye to it. If we do not involve women in resolving conflict and in peacebuilding initiatives, we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past—something I suspect none of us would wish to do.

In Ukraine, women ranging from 16 to 83 years old have reported being raped. This often happens during home incursions—a home will be searched by Russian troops and they will rape the occupants while doing so. One particularly sickening case was verified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Russian soldiers entered a family home outside Kyiv in the initial stages of the invasion. They shot the family dog, before murdering the father. They then raped the mother for several hours, while her four-year-old hid under a blanket and watched. While they were raping the mother, they were drinking, then they passed out when they were finished, allowing the mother to escape with her four-year-old son.

While these crimes have been going on in a systematic fashion, the Russian state has also been destroying healthcare facilities in Ukraine, which obviously has a wide-ranging effect. When coupled with rape, it takes away the very treatment services that Ukrainian women rely on to offer some solace and care after the brutality and depravity of rape at the hands of a Russian soldier. These crimes of the Russian state are systematic. They are an attempt to break the Ukrainian spirit and resolve to resist.

I served several times in Afghanistan as a British officer and the tragedy that has befallen Afghanistan since 2021, when the Taliban took over, is immense. That tragedy particularly falls upon Afghan women. Women’s rights have been decimated in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over—indeed, they no longer really exist in any meaningful sense. That has been extensively documented. Many Members have commented on what has happened in Afghanistan to Afghan women’s rights, so I will not go into it in great detail. I will mention one or two particularly extreme examples.

Before the Taliban took over, Afghanistan had a system of support for survivors of gender-based violence, of which there was certainly some. There were shelters, legal aid, medical services and psychological support, which offered a lifeline to thousands of women. Since the Taliban took over, the incidences of rape have increased and the shelters have also been targeted, looted and destroyed to the point at which they are non-existent. It is the same pattern that we see in Ukraine. It is not only the crimes; the services that are meant to offer comfort, solace and care after the event are destroyed. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Human Rights Commission, of course, are no longer extant in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

One particular egregious example in Afghanistan was reported by The Guardian newspaper. In July, a video was disseminated on social media of the Taliban raping a female human rights activist at gunpoint in a Taliban prison. We should ask ourselves why that video was filmed and disseminated. It was because women must be not just violated in Afghanistan but shamed and humiliated to make a point. It is particularly poignant, given the cultural history of Afghanistan, that if someone stands up for women’s rights they will not only be violated but their family’s name will be shamed through their violation on social media. These crimes are beyond depraved.

I have spoken of conflict and of post-conflict, if that is indeed what we can call what is happening in Afghanistan. I will now talk of peace, because it is only through peaceful, stable societies that women and girls—and boys and men—can be safe. Peace must be our policy; peace must be our goal. As many Members have already mentioned, it is a fact that if there is a peace agreement that women are involved in negotiating, that peace lasts longer. By definition, if that peace lasts longer it means that more women and girls—and boys and men—will be safe.

It must be the policy of the British Government not to urge but insist that where peace negotiations are happening under the auspices of the United Nations, the African Union, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe or any other body with which we are involved or affiliated, women must be fully represented in those negotiations. That is not just a moral but a deeply practical point, and it is the one thing we can do in an age of constricted Government budgets that is free and will have a definite, practical outcome. It is crucial that the UK insists that women are involved in negotiating peace agreements.

Rami Shmuel, an organiser of the Supernova music festival and a witness of the massacre, in which 360 people—mostly Israelis—were murdered, saw female victims with no clothes as he escaped. He said:

“Their legs were spread out and some of them were butchered.”

Another Supernova survivor, Yoni Saadon, reported seeing

“eight or 10 of the fighters beating and raping”

one woman. She also said:

“When they finished they were laughing, and the last one shot her in the head.”

These were not random acts, but a systematic effort that the women’s rights campaigner Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari has characterised as a

“premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war.”

We must also take a moment to recognise that Hamas’s sexual violence may even be ongoing. Around 100 Israelis —the figure may be just under that, according to last night’s news—remain held hostage in Gaza, of whom we know 12 are women and girls. Reports have indicated and survivors have confirmed that both female and male hostages have been subjected to sexual assault in their 424 days in captivity.

Likewise, I remain gravely concerned about the sexual violence that Palestinian women and girls have endured and continue to endure in this ongoing conflict. Credible reports from UN experts highlight that Palestinian women and girls in detention have been subject to multiple forms of sexual assault, including being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli officers. Photos of these vulnerable Palestinian women in degrading circumstances have also reportedly been taken and uploaded online by members of the Israeli army.

Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, argued that all those numbers are, in fact, likely to be even higher due to the secrecy with which the assaults take place and the stigma around reporting sexual violence and rape, which discourages women from speaking out—something that exists wherever they are in the world. Wherever the victims are, we as both parliamentarians and human beings should be saying, “If you are a victim of sexual violence, we believe you,” but all too often they face scepticism and even outright denial.

The Israeli women and girls subjected to sexual violence on 7 October 2023 were met with deafening silence from many agencies and organisations founded to support victims. Many organisations initially ignored or minimised Hamas’s crimes of sexual violence, or even doubted that they had even taken place. UN Women issued multiple statements following 7 October, none of which made reference to the sexual violence of that day. The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls blandly expressed concern about

“reports of sexual violence that may have occurred since 7 October committed by State and non-State actors against Israelis and Palestinians.”

Worse, many supposed feminists dismissed discussion of Hamas’s rape as colonial feminism and unverified accusations; the latter will be all too familiar to those victims brave enough to report their experiences, whether in conflict zones or non-conflict zones. We know that this is sadly all too true for most victims of sexual violence.

We know that sexual violence is perpetuated by stigma, silence, victim blaming and denial. All those prevent women and girls from getting the justice that they deserve. When we deny the reality of sexual violence, we perpetuate it, so it is incumbent on us all to ensure that we treat all victims of sexual violence with the respect and compassion that they deserve. Wherever you are and whoever you are, we believe you.