Poverty in the Developing World

My Lords, as other noble Lords have done, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for getting this debate on the agenda. I am being selfish, because it gives me an opportunity to talk on a subject that I feel passionately and strongly about. The noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, has spoken about some of the things I would have mentioned—that is, the situation of women. Who are the poorest of the poor in the poorest countries? It is the women. They eat last when everyone has been fed. The girl child does not get as much food as the boy child. We all know these things, and we should be talking about women, first and foremost, because they keep the family going and, in fact, they keep everything going. If women stopped working, those countries would stop working. I begin by congratulating the Government on what DfID is doing. At last, after a long time, it has returned to look at issues that concern women—family planning, education for women and girls, and all matter of things that help women. Unless we can help them, nothing can change. It is women, not men, who will bring about change to poverty. Men have been ruling the roost for at least 2,000 years that we know of. Has anything changed? No, it has not. They do not work as hard as women; they do not take responsibility like women do; and I disagree with the noble Lord who said that, if we educate children, everything will change. Who will educate the children? The women will. It is the women whom we have to provide for. We have to give them the ability to send their children to school. I know of the many terrible things that are done to women, because I have been involved in development for 18 out of the 20 years that I have been in your Lordships' House. I have seen projects and the situation of women. I have visited the fistula hospital in Addis Ababa, where there are rows of cots with little bundles on them. You cannot see them without getting tears in your eyes—I might break down, so I apologise in advance. I asked them, ““Are these all very young girls?””. They said, ““No. Most of them are very malnourished””. The women cannot give birth, either because they do not have the strength or because they are too young. In Nigeria you can buy a girl of 12 for two goats—and they do. I have a new friend from Nigeria. When her mother became a widow, his brothers came and took everything away from the house. They not only took every thing away, they took his two younger wives as well because they could work. They left my friend’s mother with all the children—13 of them—with nothing to feed them on and no possibility of looking after them. She parcelled out the children to friends and neighbours—one child here, one child there—and eventually got a job cleaning toilets in a hospital for £30 a month. Then she took back all the children. My friend was educated by the Commonwealth Countries League education fund. She put herself through university by going to Lagos overnight and buying things that she could sell in her town. She did this constantly to pay for her university education. Women are incredible. Give them an opportunity and they will grab it and run. Three-quarters of Indians live on 30p a day. Yesterday, the Secretary of State said that the poorest people are in India. Certainly, the most malnourished are. All statistics tell us that Indians are the most malnourished people in the world—even more so than Africans. Yet India is booming; that is the other side of the coin. There is so much money in India now that it makes you feel ill, because it is in your face all the time, in every city—money, money, money. They say that Indians have $3 trillion in Swiss banks. None of it goes anywhere; it sits in the banks, or is spent in India in a grotesque and obscene way. Nothing is spent on the poor. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett wrote to Indian billionaires to try to arrange a meeting. They did not even get a reply. The billionaires did not say that they would not come; they did not even reply. This is the position in India, despite the fact that it is booming. To some extent it is right to ask why a lot of aid should go to India when the Indians do not want to help themselves. The Government give money for poverty alleviation, but where does it go? It goes to all the hands that it passes through: hardly 5 per cent reaches the poor. Corruption is a cancer in Africa and on the Indian subcontinent. It is horrifying to see how little of what is provided reaches the people whom it is meant to reach. I have talked about all the things that I worry about. Now I will say something about how we can start changing extreme poverty. We should start employing women. In India and Africa, people will not employ women. I was told by a number of big businesses, ““Women are not trained””. Of course, the boys come out of their mothers’ wombs ready trained. It is a question of giving training to women. They learn very quickly; they are hungry for everything. If you help a woman to earn money, what does she do? Does she gamble or drink? No, she spends it on her family. She sends her children to school and improves her health and that of her family. The only way to change the future is to work with women and give them opportunities to earn money. That will change them within weeks and months, not years. It is not a question of education; they will not get education. However, if they have the resources they will certainly give education to their children. No man has ever said to me, ““I want my children to go to school””, but every woman in every project that I have visited has said, ““I want my children to go to school. I want my daughters to go to school. I do not want them to have my sort of life””. Providing family planning and financial resources is the way forward. Women in India are used as hod carriers. My builder was appalled to hear that. The Indians do not see them; they do not see what women do. Let us make a plan to help women to earn money, because that is the way forward.