Less violence and more women leaders

The 25th of November will be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It kicks off 16 days of global activism against gender violence.  Two initiatives, one global and one in the Philippines, give an insight into the lessons we must learn and the future we can build.

Before becoming the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague met female rape victims from the conflict in Darfur and Srebrenica, and last month he spent time with female and male survivors in Sarajevo. He saw for himself how the lack of justice for survivors inflicts terrible suffering and makes recovery from war even harder. But this is not an isolated problem. From Bosnia to the Democratic Republic of Congo and to Rwanda we have seen rape used as a weapon of war with the number of successful prosecutions shockingly low compared to the number of instances chronicled by the United Nations and civil society organisations.

Secretary Hague wants the world to take responsibility for ending the problem and has launched a major new initiative. This will involve creating a specialist team of experts that will be deployed to conflict areas to support efforts to prevent and investigate sexual violence in conflict. It will include police, lawyers, psychologists, doctors and forensic experts. It will support UN investigations and civil society groups. We want other countries to create similar teams.  This initiative is an important British foreign policy priority, including for our next turn as presidency of the G8, in 2013.

Elimination of this very specific problem is but one half of what the UK wants to see and links with a really important bilateral initiative we are proud to be involved with in the Philippines.

The Magna Carta project aims to increase female participation in all forms of public life. The Magna Carta for Women was passed into Philippine law in August 2009 and seeks to entrench women’s rights and awareness of them.  The challenge is to make sure the Magna Carta is more than just a statement of good intentions and that it makes a real difference.

To that end, my Embassy works in partnership with the WeGovern Institute to build the capacity of women to participate in political life. Workshops and meetings have been taking place around the country.  Members of my Embassy team went along to one in Cabanatuan City and met women of all ages wanting to make a contribution. This project follows up similar work last year, which helped hone the skills of community women leaders.

Getting women more involved in government, business and all sectors of society is not simply a matter of fairness. In most countries, women represent a majority of the population. No country can afford to waste so much skill and productive capacity. Discrimination against women also fuels some of the attitudes which can lead to the horrors of rape we see around the world.

Ending discrimination against women has been a long battle. The Suffragette movement in the UK of the 19th and 20th century, of which Emmeline Pankhurst was amongst the most prominent figures, fought and won the right to vote for women. Margaret Thatcher took things one step further by becoming British Prime Minister and one of most important political figures of the late 20th century. At the same time, Cory Aquino was securing her place in history by bringing democracy back to the Philippines, something Aung San Suu Kyi is doing today in Burma.

In the Philippines, we have a number of very senior women in public life including Secretaries de Lima and Deles, Chief Justice Sereno and 3 lady Senators. Unfortunately the battle is not over. However, initiatives such as the global elimination of sexual violence and efforts to increase participation of women in public life in the Philippines can take us closer to that goal.

(Stephen Lillie is British Ambassador to the Philippines)