Short debate (Lords) on International Widows Day - June 28
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Lord Loomba (CB):...Now in its 13th year—its eighth under the
auspices of the UN—the day is one for coming together and
advocating for the rights of widows worldwide; it is a global day
of action, raising the profile of widows and the awareness of their
plight. From Kenya to Nigeria, and even in Australia, events have
taken place to mark the day and give widows a voice. The Loomba
Foundation held events in Delhi, attended by India’s
Vice-President and its Union Minister for Law and...Request free trial
Lord Loomba (CB):...Now in its
13th year—its eighth under the auspices of the UN—the day is one
for coming together and advocating for the rights of widows
worldwide; it is a global day of action, raising the profile of
widows and the awareness of their plight. From Kenya to Nigeria,
and even in Australia, events have taken place to mark the day and
give widows a voice. The Loomba Foundation held events in Delhi,
attended by India’s Vice-President and its Union
Minister for Law and Justice, and in London, attended by the noble
Lord, Lord McFall, Senior Deputy Speaker of the
House, and other dignitaries in the River Room. I was very pleased
that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, Minister of State for
International Development, also joined us. I thank him...
...I am pleased to say that today widows are being considered more thoughtfully by Governments, NGOs, stakeholders and global institutions. For example, the Supreme Court of India is currently considering a petition about the welfare of widows. Some 10,000 widows from all over India wrote to the Prime Minister for International Widows Day this year, asking for a widow’s pension. Another example is of a philanthropist in Nigeria who has announced a widows’ economic and empowerment project worth $500,000, while an NGO called Helpline Foundation for the Needy in Abuja has offered 5,000 widows interest-free loans to start businesses... ...The World Widows Report for 2015, published by the Loomba Foundation and presented to the UN Secretary General and the Prime Minister of India, showed that there is a lack of reliable information on widows in many countries, including the UK. This lack of information underlines the low value placed on issues relating to widows and their children. For International Widows Day, I call on the British Government to examine and monitor the treatment of widows and their children in developing countries, especially with reference to local customs and traditions that discriminate against these women and hold them back from leading fulfilling lives... Baroness Flather (CB):...I will, however, just go through some rather more horrible things that happen in other places. In India, for example, a long time ago—actually not so long ago: in the 18th and 19th centuries—they used to burn the widow on the husband’s funeral pyre. Someone called Raja Ram Mohan Roy stopped that. He made the British Government stop the burning of widows. Another extremely important thing that he did for India—I am sad that he is not better known—was that he made sure that English remained a language in India. We should remember how important that has been for India. He was a great man. He has a little memorial in Bristol because he died there and at that time there was no cremation—the burning of bodies was not allowed, so he has a little memorial in the cemetery in Bristol. Other horrible things of this kind are still going on, to a lesser extent. One of the most horrible is child widows. A girl is betrothed to a boy when they are seven, eight or nine years old. If the boy dies, she is left a widow and cannot marry again. How ridiculous and stupid that is. When I was young, there were lots of ladies who were child widows. They either worked in people’s homes or joined a religious community and spent their lives like that. When I remember them, I think, “What kind of life did they get?”. These things are still happening—not much, but there are still child widows, which is utterly horrible.
The main problem in India, as my noble friend Lord Loomba has said many times, is that a
woman has no status. Once she becomes a widow, she becomes a
non-person. She is not a human, she is something which has no
position in society. If you are rich, it does not matter, but
even the rich treat their widows very badly. If you are poor, you
are sent to Varanasi, for example, to beg. You sit on the
roadside and beg. You have no opportunity to do anything else.
Some are taken into temples where they pray and sing at the right
moment and get food for doing so. This is no way to treat any
woman... There are other situations where women find themselves thrown on the mercy of others—for example, through de facto widowhood brought on by “wilful neglect”. By that I mean where husbands have abandoned their wives to their fate, left the family home and for all intents and purposes are dead. A few years ago, in my role as the honorary patron of the UK Coptic Association, I had the opportunity to visit a Coptic project in Cairo run by an amazing Coptic woman, Maggie Gobran—often called the “Mother Teresa of Cairo”. There, she helped de facto widows to get back on their feet again, to achieve a meaningful legal status and to be able to provide for themselves and their children. Often “invisible and forgotten”, and robbed of any chance of providing for themselves, they need practical enablement and empowerment, in line with the development goals. We need markers in national and international programmes to say precisely what resources are being set aside to provide elementary dignity.
Countries such as India are making strides to improve the
position of widows, but the Supreme Court of India has
rightly lamented the lack of interest in the position of widows,
calling on the Indian Government to ensure that they are
properly trained in skills in order to contribute to the life and
prosperity of the country. At the moment, the Loomba Foundation
is petitioning for further help for widows from the Indian Government. As my noble friend said,
the case is to be heard in the Indian Supreme Court at the end of July. If
successful, it will give widows special status as a minority
group and allow them to be the extra help that they so badly
need... |