Baroness Crawley – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Crawley on 2016-03-01.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to match the initiative of the government of Germany in providing special counselling, care and other medical support to Yazidi women who have suffered sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Islamic State.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
In the last few years, the UK has led the world on tackling sexual violence in conflict, working with international partners such as the UN, EU and Red Cross. In the Middle East we are supporting vulnerable women and girls through our role in the international humanitarian relief effort. The more than £2.3 billion we are providing in response to these crises is the UK’s largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis.
We recognise the plight faced by vulnerable women and girls in the region, and particularly those women, including Yazidis, who have escaped following enslavement by Daesh. That is why we have funded the establishment of three community centres in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq which provide them with psychosocial and legal support, and the provision of two UN technical experts who will continue to improve the coordination of the humanitarian response to gender based violence in Iraq. Through the Iraq Humanitarian Pooled Fund we are also providing life-saving maternal and specialised support for escapees of Daesh terror.
The British Government is also funding a project which aims to improve the documentation of sexual violence and other gender based cases in a victim sensitive way. We also co-sponsored the UN Human Rights Council Resolution mandating the UN to investigate and report on Daesh abuses.
Ultimately, the only way to protect civilians, including Yazidi women, from Daesh is by defeating this terrible organisation, which in turn requires, amongst other things, ending the conflict in Syria. The UK has been at the forefront of these efforts. The Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), set out the Government’s comprehensive strategy for dealing with Daesh and the conflict in Syria in his response to the Foreign Affairs Committee on 26 November 2015.
