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International Women's Day

I, too, regret the fact that we have such a short time today for this very important discussion. I wonder whether my colleagues have been to Prague. I went there last year, and it really is a beautiful city. I visited the Jewish sector and was immediately struck by the written legacy of the survivors of the Prague scouring of Jews, which took place during the war. Women had written about their experiences, and about just how awful their lives had been. Then I thought about all the women on the continent of Africa who have been involved in terrible wars and the most appalling atrocities over the past 20 years, and how little exists of their experience. What is left for their families and societies to learn? If individuals read about what has happened to women on that continent, they read accounts by people living in America or members of the diaspora living in the UK, but very few from the women in Africa themselves. The reason is obvious: those women are illiterate. I regularly visit Sierra Leone, the poorest country in the world, where only 25 per cent. of women can read. During the rebel war that gripped that country in the 1990s, there was barely a woman who escaped some form of rape or torture, yet little remains as a record of those experiences. There is very little for their children to learn about, and there is very little for us to embrace, reflect on and base our policies on in order to ensure that it does not happen again. So many women's lives have been left unaccounted for, and because there is no account they appear to be valueless. I am retiring at the next general election, but I appeal to everyone whom I leave behind in the House to remember the importance of illiteracy and its profound effect on women when they think about the funding of countries and provide Department for International Development funding or intervention. Illiteracy in Sierra Leone means that women there experience the highest incidence of maternal mortality, and one quarter of their children die under the age of five, because the country's limited medical resources cannot stretch to providing any written guidance, and even if it were available nobody would be able to read and understand it anyway. Women who have been given notices on how to prepare dysentery medication leave them to one side and their children die of dysentery. Women cannot represent themselves in any sphere. They cannot go to the police with complaints or create their own bank accounts, because they simply cannot read. That paucity of written material means that many women never enter Parliament or become a part of their local democracy, so it is difficult for them to call on resources in order to escape that position. DFID funds Sierra Leone, but it funds the army and police. Although that is important for ensuring the security of individuals, it will not liberate women or their potential, and we have a duty to those women, who cannot speak for themselves. There are wonderful organisations in this country which are trying to do something about that problem. I chair an organisation called the Construction and Development Partnership, and I know of others, such as Build on Books, which are dramatically trying to change the face of literacy in poor countries. The private sector is not interested. No great opportunity exists to make a lot of money in such countries; they are poor, so there is no great return on any investment, and it is left to charities in our country and throughout the world to pick up the cudgels and move forward. Those charities in this country are essentially managed by women, directed by women and for women. So, when decisions are made about intervention in those countries, I hope that colleagues will reflect on the support that women in this country provide to women in other parts of the world, and remember the illiterate women of the world, who depend on our voices and days such as this. They depend on us to promote their cause of concern—advocate women who are more literate than they and ensure that there is funding to make them so, so that they can advocate on their own behalf and write their own histories. That is really important.