International Women's Day 2022: Hear the voices of the women on the ground
On this International Women's Day we must use all our power and passion to bring attention and action to help women, children and men affected by the unjust conflict taking place in Ukraine.
Below is the speech I gave in the House of Lords on February 25th in response to the conflict:
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As the crisis in Ukraine escalates, it is important to hear the voices of women on the ground, as well as global experts. In February I attended a meeting convened by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, which stands with the people of Ukraine, especially the women peacebuilders who have been struggling for their freedom, democracy and integration in Europe. We simply must amplify their calls to action. Leading up to this terrible situation, they worked on the ground with other NGOs to provide economic and financial support to Ukraine and to ensure that aid is given to those women who are working in Afghanistan—I am so sorry, in Ukraine; I usually make speeches about Afghanistan.
The majority of SME workers in Ukraine are women. With Covid and the present situation, they are unable to be helped. They are the breadwinners of those families, as we know. I hope all the international aid, and aid from this country, has a gender and family lens.
We must ensure that there is monitoring and accountability of internal actors. The OSCE and other third-party organisations must closely monitor and report on the human rights situation. They must prepare and publish a joint statement on how security threats affect the women in Ukraine, since we know what has happened to women close by in Belarus.
We must ensure women’s participation and leadership. Those assessing and reporting on the current security situation are almost exclusively men. We as a country have promised that we will try to ensure that there is 50:50 representation in these sorts of situations, otherwise women will be erased from the crisis narrative, which will hinder their ability to prepare. We must advance inclusion security. Gender should be mainstream in all internationally supported programmes, and security responses in Ukraine and the OSCE should create a regional action plan on Resolution 1325.
We should support civil society, including those international and local NGOs working on the ground, such as the International Rescue Committee. Women’s rights organisations and activists should be supported through targeted funding. We should train and provide mentorship to them from afar, and when this tragedy is over.
We should engage regional and international allies to leverage unprecedented co-operation from ourselves, the United States and our European partners, and maybe as far as Australia and New Zealand. We must raise awareness through the media, such as the World Service and other media platforms we talked about earlier.
I call on the Home Office to publish an urgent plan outlining how the United Kingdom can offer safe and legal passage to people fleeing Ukraine. We must absolutely do this, and I call on the Minister to make sure this will happen, because nothing has happened at all. I do not want to see what has happened to other refugees happen to those in Ukraine.
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On this day and every day going forward we must come together to put a stop to this conflict and the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Like the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and elsewhere, when peaceful people are subject to aggression driven by a thirst for control and power, it is the world's duty to use all its tools to put a stop to it.
